“It’s really hard to remind yourself that the online bandwagon is a horrible beast that preys on the most vulnerable,” says Mariel Loveland of NYC-based indiepop band Best Ex about her new track/video “Feed The Sharks.” “It wants to brutally devour someone it doesn’t even know for some perceived belief about how they are. It doesn’t allow for humanity. To me, it felt like I was feeding pieces of myself to sharks every time I opened my phone.” Premiered viaBrooklynVegan, “Feed The Sharks’ is taken off her Good At Feeling Bad EP which was released on May 22, 2020via No Sleep Records (Alcopop Records in the UK).
She tells BrooklynVegan, “This song is really personal and important to me because I wrote it about what happened when I finally spoke up about being in a horribly abusive relationship with a tour manager.” Adding, “At the time, I felt like I had to say something because I read some aggressive things about him online. I always wanted parents to drop their kids off at my shows and know that I’d keep them safe. When I read that stuff, I felt like I had failed at my job. So, I spoke up — but it spiraled out of control in the press, getting coverage in places that hadn’t even ever covered my music.” Instead of receiving support, Mariel was met with months of online abuse, called just about every nasty name in the book, and sent various physical and emotional threats as her social media lost thousands of followers. “For a while, I was afraid to play or be seen at shows because people would come up to me and ask me why I’m a liar.” She explains, “I was told by industry people that I had been blacklisted because I spoke up. It was basically the playbook of every reason why people say survivors keep their mouths shut.” After nearly a year of that sort of traumatic response, she wondered why she would want to be part of an industry that would blacklist her for doing what’s right. “So, I said f*ck ‘em. Let them talk until they’re blue in the face.” She adopted the name of Best Ex, wrote this song, and started only doing what she wanted to do. She claims, “It was a real turning point.”
| The “Feed The Sharks” music video was filmed during the first NYC COVID lockdown and Loveland says she wanted to play around with the color so it would represent how it feels when you’re in a “hole of internet negativity” — from the awful comments to the terrible news cycle. “There’s this Wizard of Oz moment,” she says, “when I step outside and realize the whole world is actually beautiful as long as you choose to go out and experience that beauty. I think that’s something important I often forget: the internet makes the world seem like a terrible place, especially during a pandemic when we can’t go outside and it’s like our lifeline, but it’s lying to us.” Good At Feeling Bad is the follow-up to Best Ex’s debut EP Ice Cream Anti-Social (2017), and it’s a balance of the yin and yang of her life from 2017-2020 (with some lyrics dating back to 2015). She says the EP is a ‘greatest hits’ of some of the worst stuff that’s ever happened to her as it captured the “full spectrum” of the loneliness and isolation she was feeling at the time she wrote it. “There’s that heartbreak, that rawness, and that tongue-in-cheek demeanor because if I can’t laugh about the sheer amount of times my heart has been broken, I don’t know how I’d survive. To me, this EP is a middle finger from a woman who’s over it and finds happiness regardless of the things that constantly try to knock us down.” Best Ex’s new video “Feed The Sharks” is out now. Her EP, Good At Feeling Bad, is also available on all DSPs. It is also available on pink-splattered clear vinyl at No Sleep here. |
| Good At Feeling Bad Tracklisting:1. Gap Tooth (On My Mind) 2. Lemons 3. Bad Love 4. Feed The Sharks 5. Two Of Us 6. Good At Feeling Bad |
