Today, Declan McKenna premieres the new music video for "The Key To Life On Earth," the second single from his forthcoming album Zeros (August 21st), via Flaunt Magazine. The video, directed by Will Hooper, features actor Alex Lawther (Netflix's The End Of The F***Ing World) alongside Declan and Flaunt says: "Although we've heard plenty of these Brits before, and in recent years, might have come to expect a certain sort of mainstream sound from the biggest names, there isn't anyone who sounds quite like McKenna. He's been joyfully singing along to the sound of his own strange and fantastic drum from the very start of his career."
Watch the music video for "The Key To Life On Earth" below!
Declan McKenna revealed about the making of the video:"The Key To Life On Earth reflects on mundanity and hostility. I suppose it's set in suburbia much like my hometown. The video sees two people, who are very similar, in conflict with each other, and I think that's the simplest analogy for the song's purpose. "Alex Lawther is someone I've wanted to work with for a long time, I enjoyed watching his roles in Carnage, BLACK MIRROR and The End Of The F***ing world, and I was trying to get in contact after seeing how much people compared us online. After finding I had a mutual friend with one of his family, I was eventually able to get his number and we got talking. We met up for tea a few times and found out we really did have a lot of mutual passions and ideas, and we shared and compared our experiences of working in our respective creative worlds. We hung out at the Extinction Rebellion and I ended up playing him some of my album. We were both keen to work together but syncing up timewise was pretty challenging.
"We eventually pulled together with the video's director Will Hooper who has helped to put together most of my video projects for this record so far, and with more ridiculous ideas than you could shake a vegan cream tea at; we finally managed to lock in a date to make this video - and just in time as it turns out."
Recently, Declan McKenna debuted "Beautiful Faces (Skream Remix)" a new version of the first single from his forthcoming second album. The song has been reanimated by Croydon's renowned DJ and producer Skream. McKenna also shared the music video for "Beautiful Faces", directed by Will Hopper (Idles, Slaves, Marika Hackman).McKenna's second album Zeros will be released on August 21st. The album, produced by Jay Joyce with mixing by Spike Stent, was recorded in Nashville and is his first since his critically acclaimed debut, 2017's What Do You Think About The Car?, which NPR Music hailed as "a powerful, clever album" and lead Rolling Stone to name him an "Artist You Need to Know." Said McKenna about Zeros: "In terms of my artistic development, it feels a major step on from my first record. With this album, if I'm performing as a character, I wanted it to give it everything- all the artists that I love like Dylan, Nick Cave or Bowie, are great storytellers because they give their characters really intense, sometimes strange voices." Declan McKenna's Zeros is available for pre-order on all formats here.
For Zeros, 21-year-old Mckenna decamped from his native London to Nashville, wanting to be away from the familiarity and consistency of home. He wrote all the music for the album himself and was backed on it by his long-time band. Like Nashville, the album is playful, wonderfully strange and intensely musical, and the themes and McKenna's concerns are familiar, if evolved. There is the anxiety and disconnection of an entire generation born into a mess they did not create, as well as their alienation from a world where there seem to be multiple realities: social media, fake news, post-truth.
Ultimately Zeros is a world-building, not destroying, album. The unshakeable confidence and boldness of McKenna's voice, as well as the stories he tells, are reinforced by the empathy and compassion with which he tells them. The "wisdom beyond his years" label McKenna's often charged with stems from this as well: his recognition that as diverse as his generation is, their struggles with the modern world are similar, and that as disquieting and absurd as these experiences might feel, no one is in it alone.
