Beautiful Losers is the glorious third single from the forthcoming debut solo album from Bren Berry, following the release of his previous singles Winter Song and Hairpin Bends.
Berry wrote the intimate love song for his wife as a wedding anniversary gift to her and as a tribute to Leonard Cohen. “Karen & I are massive Leonard Cohen fans and I read his 1960s novel ‘Beautiful Losers’ to her when we stayed on the Greek island Hydra where he wrote the book.”
In turn the song is bursting with tenderly coded references to both Cohen and his relationship to Zen Buddhism and, of course, memory snapshots of Bren and Karen’s relationship. Once again, Bren summons a cacophony of soaring, melodic hooks and tenderly harmonized vocals from Mark McKowski & Rachel Grace to bring an uplifting, emotionally impactful power to the song.
“I had Covid when I wrote the song, so I wanted it to be slightly trippy. I also wanted it to have a Japanese feel, so my co-producer Gavin Glass and I worked on creating keyboard sounds to enhance and complement the guitar hooks. We were inspired by artists like Ryuchi Sakamoto, Flaming Lips, David Bowie, Echo & The Bunnymen and David Sylvian.”
Each of Bren’s three singles to date have been accompanied by music videos and visuals that represent both the themes within the songs themselves as well as some of the visual art that inspires his own creativity.
For Beautiful Losers he worked with Global Tour Creatives and their Chicago-based Motion Designer Mark Rizzo once again to help visualise the song. “Bren came to Global Tour Creatives with the idea of creating a video for Beautiful Losers based on a short video that I created, which was one long reverse camera move. He wanted the same idea but using imagery from Japanese art,” explains Rizzo.
“He also wanted it to reflect Leonard Cohen’s work and his interest in Zen Buddhism, so we bounced reference images off each other, and I created a mood board and style using computer generated images that represented the feel of the song. I really loved the process of making the video for Hairpin Bends using Steve Simpson’s stunning art and it was a very exciting, creative process to create the video for Beautiful Losers.”
Beautiful Losers is released on all digital platforms on March 19th 2024.