The second time recently for the Berlin-based Norwegian, Eera, and with a video in which she channels Marilyn Monroe with a series of singing and dancing Monroe-like mannequins and puppets that might have been borrowed from Spitting Image.
‘I’ll stop when I’m done’ is the title track from her third album, which will be released on 26th September and was inspired by a quote from the iconic actress, “I don’t stop when I’m tired, I only stop when I’m done”, and with the song delving deeply into Marilyn’s psyche.
The song was written to focus on Monroe’s vulnerability and the sense that while always in the spotlight when she could be, she consistently felt the need to prove herself while at the same time obsessed with her search for “someone to love” and to be constantly by her side, something she had missed out on in childhood owing to her mother’s mental illness.
Personally I always think it is brave of any artist to tackle the Marilyn conundrum. No matter how many years pass after her untimely death she remains utterly iconic to her fans, who span multiple generations and a large part of whom are gay.
I recall a club in Manchester called Monroe’s, sadly now replaced by one of the towering apartment skyscrapers that dominate that city, where at certain times you couldn’t even get in if you didn’t have her ‘appearance’ – male or female. I had no chance.
The patronage was entirely wedded to her personality and woe betide anyone that didn’t acknowledge her everlasting charms.
I really wish that club was still in existence because both the song and the video act as a top class tribute to Marilyn and would have been greatly appreciated there.
It seems a little kitsch at first; a battalion of Marilyns all ‘singing’ in unison to the nerdy memorabilia collector played by Eera, (and some of them making her look like a gargoyle straight out of Phantom of the Opera while one is a dead ringer for Nancy Pelosi) but those pouty lips remind you that for all her looks, her magnetic personality and status as a sex symbol she never really got to use them as well as she might have during her troubled private life.
The video maker, Jamie She, uses a technique I’ve only encountered once before previously, on Skott’s (Sweden) ‘My name’ – the moving lips on inanimate objects.
That was brilliant and so is this.
Musically, it is lushly catchy but it is the video adaptation that will really give it the promotion it deserves, within Norway and further afield.
Find Eera on:
Website: https://www.eera.co.uk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eeramusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eera_official/
