PREMIERE Queen Anne, "Baby Girl (Likes to Lie)"
Loitering about the chapel grounds with Katie Silverman of Queen Anne; photographed by Ashley Briglia.
Pop music that is molded and shaped in the scale and magnitude of the silver screen work in maximal ways. It’s the pipeline that begins with the tunesmiths, to the studio, en route to the mom & pop vintage picture house or multiplex. The multi-disciplinary artists whose skills can jump from the stage, to the lot, to the recording booths where imagined characters and universes are built from the pen, to the voice, delivering a presence, and environments that capture and command the audience’s senses.
Presenting an assemblage of cinéma pour les oreilles; Queen Anne debuts the western romp of tough love, iron will, determination, and dereliction titled “Baby Girl (Likes to Lie)”. The follow-up to last year’s dusty desperado cover of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”, the Los Angeles duo of Katie Silverman (of New Girl, PEN1 & The Exorcists fame) and writer/producer Sandy Chila create the pop personality of a tough street smart rabble-rouser rolling like a steamrolling stone down the Sunset Strip. A modern day twist on the outlaw western aesthetic, “Baby Girl” plays up the bad girl looking for a good fight in tinsel town confrontation sortie that ain’t big enough for the both of us.
The golden hour arrangement glow gives the song a sundown style like boot spur-sliced spaghetti noodles in the great Morricone tradition. Kicking in the saloon doors, “Baby Girl (Likes to Lie)” brings big bully attitudes to a fabled one horse township with the character of a good gal gone wrong. Queen Anne moves like a drifter fleeing from the scenes of crimes to the nearby rural expanses of desert and mountainous wildernesses. Silverman motors down the boulevards, taking the backroads beyond the congested freeways with a vagabond’s sense of determination, like a rambunctious tumbleweed striking out for the security and shelter of anywhere.
Queen Anne plays up the constructs of heroes, antiheroes, villains, and a supporting cast members in a song that operates in an 'on the run' sense of style. Gusty guitars set the scene with a sweltering summer heat that plays it calm, cool, calculating, and collected. Conflicts, threats, and a devil may care type of swagger are the engine for entanglements of dangerous liaisons and dastardly showdowns that send our heroine motoring straight toward the sunsets of destinations unknown. "Baby Girl (Likes to Lie)" updates the Lee Hazlewood canon for a new world of derelict debutantes, dilettantes, and all the artful dodgers in between that are caught up in the games of deceit, destitution, and the kind of determination that could span a thousand different film and serial television franchises, universes, spinoffs, and other pertinent IPs.
Katie Silverman shared the following insights on the making of the new single:
The most important thing to know about “Baby Girl” is that the lyrics aren’t literally true. i actually hate lying, and my mother knows everything about me.
Queen Anne cover art; photographed by Ashley Briglia.
The most challenging part of the process was honestly naming the song. No song, to my knowledge, has ever gone through so many iterations, maybe ever. We couldn’t have sheriff in the title because no one knew how to spell it, and I didn’t want to call attention to “Strawberry Ice Cream” because I’m publicly out as being lactose intolerant, which puts me in an awkward position with big dairy. Ultimately we picked “Baby Girl (Likes to Lie)” because nobody was strongly in favor of it, and sometimes, in art, it’s important for everyone to be a little bit upset with the outcome.
Queen Anne’s “Baby Girl (Likes to Lie)” is available now.