San Holo featuring Broods, "Honest"
Honesty is always appreciated, but when did it become so scary? To be truly open, you've got to be vulnerable, and no one understands that more than the musicians and artists who rely on connections so real, fans can feel it through the speaker.
San Holo (born Sander van Dijck) is on a mission to be as real as possible in every aspect of his life. There's always an intimacy to his music, even when it's bombastic, and in "Honest," his first single of 2020, he wears that worry on his sleeve.
"I spent over two years changing the drop over and over again," van Djick says. "I was trying to get it to sound as ‘radio-friendly’ as possible, even though I always loved the very first original version which I had started calling the ‘ugly drop.’ I started to produce the song with my head instead of my heart, which is never a good thing to do for me. Eventually I realized that the ‘ugly drop’ was exactly what made that song so special and heartfelt, so I stuck to the very first version and went with that."
"Honest" features additional production and vocals from alternative duo Broods. The lyrics became a surreal experience for singer Georgia Nott, stemming from some subconcsious place deep inside herself, only to reveal a hidden meaning with time.
"It’s one of those songs that you listen to a year later and understand what you meant more than when you wrote it," she says. “When I meet someone that makes me feel real and seen, there is this weird involuntary bluntness in the way I talk to them. I just kind of let my pheromones lead the way and trust blindly. It’s fitting that this song is all about honesty, because I think both songwriting and love require an ocean of it, but I often feel like people have become a bit afraid of it.
"Things can become so corrupted by false expectation and self-preservation. Honesty, to me, is the opposite. Honesty leaves little room for that bulls--t. Honesty is fearless.”
The accompanying video is digs into this theme with self-referential irony. We watch as the producer and Broods' singer Georgia Nott hang out on the set of a video, going over their lines, catching a quick moment of quiet, running on a treadmill before a wind machine.
Directed by Mason Thorne, the clip just premiered on YouTube. Check it out below.