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Sophia Kennedy channels grief and loss on the stirring ‘I’m Looking Up’

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There’s been a lot of talk this week about languishing, that dreadful sense of being we’re all likely experiencing as we navigate the second year of the pandemic age. But there’s another layer to the psychology of living in 2021 that adds to our increasingly lowered morale: Actual, true loss. We’ve long tuned out the numbers behind the COVID-19 pandemic, in this country and beyond, but the fact remains that many of us have experienced a traumatic death event over the past 12 months that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

“I’m Looking Up,” the stirring new single from Sophia Kennedy, tackles the grief and loss a lot of us are feeling, and aims to repackage it in a way that helps us move forward. The Baltimore-born, Hamburg-based artist drops the track today (April 21), the latest from her forthcoming album Monsters, out May 7 via City Slang.

“The song is an attempt to somehow describe the heavy feeling of loss and grief,” Kennedy says. “When you lose someone you are suddenly exposed to a new form of reality — it comes crashing in your life without a warning and makes you question your own existence… But the song also has a psychedelic level — it’s a somewhat childish, naive view of looking up into the sky and searching for someone or something that has gone forever. To me it’s an extreme piece of music, because it is an extreme experience to lose someone you love.”

The track comes with a captivating visual to match its tone, directed by Rosanna Graf.

“[T]he shoot took place in the early hours at a remote road by Berlin,” adds Kennedy. “The video was intended to work through its simplicity: It was shot out of the trunk of a car, which I chased for hours. We wanted to create the feeling of somehow lifting off, in a mysterious way — where you might ask yourself: Is she flying, running or falling? Why does it feel a bit discomforting but also intriguing at the same time?”

Look down at “I’m Looking Up” below, and process your grief and loss any which way that helps you most.