Seraphina Simone wants to take us for a spin around Hollywood through her own perceptive lens. And the London-based musician and artist certainly has a view worth sharing — the daughter of Sananda Maitreya (formerly known as Terence Trent D’Arby) counts Pamela Des Barres as a babysitter when she was younger, and lists Prince, Miles Davis, Christie Hynde, and Pete Townsend as her godparents.
That alone is worthy of attention, but so is her new sophomore single, a confident alt-R&B and electronic-pop thumper, propped by some wonderful lyrical wordplay, called “Hollywood $$$.”
Listen to it below.
“’Hollywood $$$’ is about the Lynchian, fame-obsessive undercurrents of tinsel town, with its sirens, starlets, leeches & letches,” Simone says. “It’s about that world of smoke and mirrors — where nothing and no one is really as it seems, and the world of celebrity — where we deify or demonize people into these superhumans or arch villains.”
She adds: “It’s about how seductive fame can be, how it’s something we all envision in the back of our minds — the perfect life without money worries where everyone loves us and we can do whatever we want — but it comes at a huge price and can destroy you if you chase it too hard… Kim Gordon mentions ‘tarantula LA glamour’ in Girl In A Band, and that sums it up perfectly I think — the predatory darkness under the glitz.”
The darkness of Hollywood persists, but the glow of Seraphina Simone gets brighter. Enjoy the inevitable ascent.