Andy Ellis’ new single “TV Queen” is a neon pop confection that pays tribute to the ’80s via a love letter to the glamourous leading ladies of prime-time past.
TV Queen
You’re up on my screen
Now I can pretend that you want me
TV Queen
You cut your new scene
Right into my heart cuz you know me
You don’t care if I was born to lose
You just wanna make sure that it’s you I choose
You’ll want to roller skate to this song like it’s 1984, you’ve perfectly feathered and AquaNetted your hair, and there’s nothing but lasers and a disco ball guiding your glorious glide.
“‘TV Queen’ is a rockin’ retrowave track that takes a sardonic look at our romanticized modern addiction to media, along with a pounding 1984-inspired rhythm section,” says Ellis. “I tend to default musically to my European influences – Tears For Fears, New Order – but for this song I decided to bring a retro American ‘synth rock’ sound to the forefront. That is until the end of the song, when I wondered what Van Halen would have sounded like if Johnny Marr was the guitarist – and I went there!”
Playing with the retro theme, the accompanying music video features clips of TV queens from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s in a fun and hypnotic collage – everyone from Wonder Woman to Farrah Fawcett, to Tiffani Amber Thiessen, to the scintillating Sharon Stone.
The lyrics, as well as the video, examine society’s notions of femininity. “I’m trying to express what it feels like to have a relationship with that thing you project behind the image on the screen,” Ellis explains. “In this case, it’s fantasies of what a woman should be and what is feminine. Over the decades, that seems to have been pushed so far – stretched and twisted in so many different directions – that what the screen demands to meet our fancies is such an over-the-top performance that our ideals have been bent beyond any resemblance of reality.”
“TV Queen” is the follow-up to Ellis’ first retrowave single “Flower Punk Girl,” released last February. While “Flower Punk Girl” explored the ability of fantasy to find a transcendent relationship in our “dead-tech world,” “TV Queen” is about fantasy pretending to be human so convincingly that it limits our ability to relate with the actual world.
Andy Ellis is a music producer and all-around creative guy who explains he recently left mega-city life to “hunt for some perspective on my generation and its legacy while I wait for the apocalypse.”
“I did the mid-’90s Chicago music scene as a teenager; I did the late-’90s alternative So-Cal electronic music scene (with a little hip-hop thrown in). I did the A-list LA studio system, the major label band thing (Black Lab), the producer/engineer/mixer thing (Gavin Rossdale, Seether), and the co-songwriting thing. I now have studio capable of things younger me never could have dreamed of.”
Andy also made music for film and TV, including the Spider-Man, Blade, & Twilight franchises. He also helped make some viral YouTube videos. He did the indie electropop duo thing (The Boom Circuits); He made an experimental solo album (Sunshine at the Edge of the Earth); He has gold and platinum records, and now he’s starting a new phase of creativity in Austin, Texas – and, hence, some fabulous new music.
