Lola Kirke Shares Origins of New Song “Lady for Sale”: Exclusive
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The post Lola Kirke Shares Origins of New Song “Lady for Sale”: Exclusive appeared first on Consequence.
Our recurring Origins feature series offers exclusive insights into an artist’s latest release. Today, Lola Kirke breaks down her new single, “Lady for Sale.”
Having starred in shows like Mozart in the Jungle and HBO Max’s Winning Time, multi-hyphenate Lola Kirke is already an established actress, but the Nashville-based singer is carving out a name for herself in the music world, too, by blending country music with ’80s pop influences. Ahead of tomorrow’s release of her sophomore album, Lady for Sale, via Third Man Records, Consequence is exclusively premiering the title track and its accompanying music video.
With a visual treatment inspired by Jane Fonda’s Original Workout and filmed at The Parthenon in Nashville, “Lady for Sale” combines ’80s synths with twangy guitars and country-tinged vocals as Kirke sings about a particularly rough patch in her life.
“I was really struggling with work at the time, feeling very unwanted and also unsure if I even wanted to be wanted by a world where the price of entry was a bustling social media presence,” Kirke tells Consequence. “So while the song seems to be about a nameless singer in a bar who is performing for no one but has a booming OnlyFans account, it’s really about me. I’m the lady for sale.”
Prior to releasing “Lady for Sale,” Kirke shared the singles “Better Than Any Drug,” “Broken Families,” and “Pink Sky.” You can pre-order a physical copy of the album here.
Watch the video for “Lady for Sale” and read Lola Kirke’s full Origins breakdown below.
On April 30th, Kirke will play an album release show at Brooklyn Made. Pick up your ticket here.
Jane Fonda’s Original Workout:
I have always hated working out but love having worked out. I also absolutely love Jane Fonda, so having her lead me in a workout felt like a fabulous compromise. There’s also something so wild about the conception of her home workout series: She struggled with an eating disorder her whole life and found working out to be a healthier way to engage with her body, which I relate to in my own way. I can’t stand dieting and feel so much rebellion toward the societal standards for women’s bodies, but also feel a need to be fit. It’s so conflicting. Working out has been my way of feeling good about my body because dieting, etc. has always made me feel horrible about it.
Also, I think all the proceeds from her first workout tape went to various philanthropic causes. This was very much during her first “fight the power” moment. So she basically used capitalism to fight it, which I think is fascinating. The marriage of art and commerce and the effects commerce has on art is something I’m really interested in generally but specifically for this record. What’s the price of trying to sell your work? It can be very expensive, both literally and figuratively. Is it worth it to you? I’m asking myself these kinds of things all the time.
Pink:
Long associated with femininity, I feel pink sort of gets a bad rap. Like you’re not supposed to like it if you’re a woman because it’s too on the nose, and if you’re a man it’s making a statement. For this record, I wanted to embrace a lot of the things that have felt constricting to women’s identities and have a little bit of fun with them: Working out, the color pink, women in country music!
I feel like a lot of people I know view women in country like they’re adjacent to things that are inherently oppressive: The South, religion, men, capitalism, etc., but in reality, I think women in country are and have been some of the most empowered women in media and through that have given voice to the personal empowerment of their audience, too. So ya, pink.
The Parthenon in Nashville:
Photo by Joshua Woods via Unsplash
I had heard of the Parthenon replica when I was a teenager through the Robert Altman movie Nashville. I think the Barbara Jean character (who I dressed up as for Halloween when I was a pretentious 19-year-old only to attend a 1994-themed party hosted by Vice magazine, so no one recognized me) is murdered there at the end.
In any case, when director Celia Rowlson Hall and I were talking about locations for the video she was really interested in finding strange spaces — there was talk of abandoned schools we’d have to break into, overgrown baseball fields, etc. — and I remembered this location and loved the Altman connection. They were so lovely to let us shoot there. Also, having been to the Parthenon in Greece, I have to say I prefer the Nashville experience. I was so hoping to experience the scope of humanity at the original Parthenon but instead, I was overrun by tourists like me except they had selfie sticks and I didn’t. There’s something so honest about the replica.
The bathroom wall at that bar I got drunk at in Texas:
Photo via Do512
The opening line of the song is “‘Weed is proof of God,’ that’s what it said on the bathroom wall of the bar where she’s singing.” The EP I made before this album was recorded in Fort Worth at a studio next to a bar. After a session one day, I went in there and saw a whole dialogue written on the wall in the women’s bathroom. It was sort of tragic, one woman had written about losing her husband to addiction. Another woman wrote “stay strong” and then some other woman wrote, “Weed is proof that God exists.”
It made me laugh and I was so happy to remember it when I was writing this song. I was really struggling with work at the time, feeling very unwanted and also unsure if I even wanted to be wanted by a world where the price of entry was a bustling social media presence. So while the song seems to be about a nameless singer in a bar who is performing for no one but has a booming OnlyFans account, it’s really about me. I’m the lady for sale. Except I’m not on OnlyFans. Yet.
Lola Kirke Shares Origins of New Song “Lady for Sale”: Exclusive
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