Photo credit: Laura-Mary Carter

L.A.’s Queen Kwong (Carré Kwong Callaway) says “Without You, Whatever” is the only “pop” song she has ever written and it’s about missing someone that you know deep down you are better off without

Couples Only is a divorce album; Queen Kwong was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis while married to a famous musician who left her soon after her diagnosis.  Most of the songs and lyrics on the album are inspired by the ugly divorce.  

Queen Kwong was originally “discovered” by Trent Reznor at age 17 and he invited her to open his With Teeth shows in 2005.  Since then, she has released a handful of albums.  Roger O’Donnell (The Cure), Kristof Hahn (Swans), Laura-Mary Carter (Blood Red Shoes) all play on Couples Only and it’s produced by Joe Cardamone (The Icarus Line, Dark Mark vs Skeleton Joe).

“We shot this video while I was visiting Laura-Mary in England,” tells Callaway. “She’s one of my best friends and we also have a podcast together (Never Meet Your Idols), so having her co-star in it just added to the fun. Mimi Supernova (Roger O’Donnell / Permafrost) directed and shot it – we’ve been friends for years, but this was our first time working together. We filmed it the first two days of my trip, so I was really jet-lagged and felt delirious, but that added to the wackiness of the video. 

We used whatever was lying around the house (rubber gloves, vacuums, fake flowers, etc.) to stage mundane domestic scenes with hints of disturbances or discomfort. Mimi has a great eye, and we have a lot of respect for each other, so the process was totally painless. Usually, making music videos is very emotional and draining for me, but this was the opposite. We just hung out, drank wine and had fun.”

Atypical of the music she normally writes, “Without You, Whatever” is admittedly the only “pop” song  Carré has written.  The “Joe” she is referring to below is her producer Joe Cardamone (The Icarus Line / Dark Mark vs Skeleton Joe).

“Initially, it wasn’t even going to be on the record,” laughs Carré. “When I recorded it, I was just trying to entertain Joe  by singing in falsetto and trying to imitate Bowie. When I sent the folder of tracks to Tchad Blake (studio engineer – Sheryl Crow, Arctic Monkeys, U2), I said ‘Oh, don’t bother mixing ‘Without You, Whatever’ because I’m not going to release it,’ and Tchad basically said, ‘WTF? That’s your single! It’s nearly impossible for me to sing because it’s so high and out of my range, but I like that it’s extremely different from anything I’ve ever released.”