Hi Candance, we have one question for you: what’s this track (AND VIDEO!) about?!
“K.I.S.S. is basically an angsty day-in-the-life rant from a former emo kid who’s all grown up. It’s funny how that angst never really goes away. The things that I’m stressed about are very different these days but the feeling is the same…it’s the feeling of “when am I gonna finally figure my life out?”. Everyone feels it, whether or not they like to admit it. This song is my wake up call. It’s my reminder that none of that nonsense matters! We are literally just a tiny blip in the universe.
The lyrics are extremely personal for me, getting into the topics of body dysmorphia, financial pressures, checking your privilege and struggling with how to talk about these issues to the people that are closest to me. I wrote it with my boyfriend Keyler Matthews and Robyn Dell’Unto who also produced it! This song was extremely therapeutic to write. We got out a lot of heavy hitting issues that I’ve not written about before, which was awesome.
I got to do the music video with the incredible artist / director Talia Stewart, and it was the craziest project I’ve ever been a part of! We brought back old looks from my past projects, like the orange and pink two tone hair from “Connect the Dots…” and the mint green and blue hair from “Pipe Dreamzzz”, complete with shiny space suit.
The concept was that I’m fighting against past versions of myself, drawing from the lyric “fighting with my ego”. To do this, I had to find 3 body doubles to play the past Candace’s. This was quite a task because I’m kinda tall haha. I was able to find two amazing ladies, Emma Morcroft (aka Fresh Lady), and Brittany Sperino, and my boyfriend actually played the Space Chef version of me which was pretty funny. But the hardest part was the wigs…I had to cut and dye three wigs for this shoot, and I had no idea what I was getting into. Never again! Ha.
I don’t want to spoil it for you but the video comes to a turning point when I shave my head on camera, after realizing “I take myself too seriously. Or maybe I need to take myself MORE seriously…fuck” I’ll let you watch the video to see what happens after that, but it’s safe to say this was the most badass I’ve ever felt in my life! Building a brand based on my hair has been really fun for me, but I think I started feeling boxed in by it as well. I started feeling like that’s all that I was, and I needed to challenge that notion. And just in case I forget about this lesson that I learned, I had it drawn into the back of my head–“K.I.S.S.”
