We've been in love with the bashful blond songbird Sally Shapiro (not her actual name) since we spoke to her in 2009 in her first-ever interview and discussed her incredible collaboration with Johan Agebj'rn. Since then they've attracted legions of fans, but now the Swedish Italo-disco pop princess is back with a new project, and the single "Starman" from the Drive soundtrack has already been listened to over 50,000 times so far on Soundcloud. And the video by German director Edwin Brienen is amazing.
"A starman, in this song, is someone who interests you despite, or maybe because of, being different than the people you usually surround yourself with," Shapiro explains. "Given that a few of our other music videos have depicted boy-girl-love, we wanted the music video to illustrate something less heteronormative. We had already asked the German director Edwin Brienen to direct the music video when we told him that. It turned out that he was gay himself, so he was enthusiastic to come up with the music video concept that we went for!"
We got a first look at the official video for "Starman," which features Electric Youth. Because of the title and the fact that David Bowie has a new album out soon, we asked the collaborators if Bowie influenced the song and video.
Sally/Johan responded via email: "Yes, we see the Starman as being a metaphor for someone who is different. The difference is that in our song, the Starman is more someone who interests you because of being different, whereas David Bowie probably identified himself with the Starman, since he played the role as Ziggy Stardust (at least that's how we interpret it)."
And now we share it with you. Watch the video below:
