Ever since releasing her debut single, “Might Not Like Me” in 2018, alt-pop artist Brynn Elliott has continued to foster a sense of authenticity in her poetic songwriting.
Two years after her debut, Elliott has returned with her latest anthemic single, “Tell Me I’m Pretty.” The song promotes embracing everything about ourselves and knowing we’re, “worth more than some numbers or a score.”
We chatted with Elliott about her new single and video.
Excerpt from our upcoming podcast with Brynn Elliott. You can listen to the full interview here on January 25.
What inspired your new single, “Tell Me I’m Pretty”?
“Tell Me I’m Pretty” was a song that I’ve wanted to write for many, many years. I started to have the initial idea for it when I was in college and there was this scandal that happened on my campus where the men’s soccer team was found to have this group chat. The men’s soccer team basically rated women on the women’s soccer team with a number, like an actual number, to kind of access their physical attractiveness, and more than that, they just kind of said really horrific things about these women on this chat. Some of those women were my friends, so it was really hard to see them go through that. These relationships of trust that they built with these guys on the men’s soccer team just kind of imploded and I remember just thinking about how they felt objectified. I remember moments when I had felt that in my life. I had this line, which is in the song, going through my head “maybe I’m worth more than some numbers or a score.” I had that lyric and I knew this is going to find its song some day. Then about a year ago, I was sitting down with a friend of mine, Michelle Buzz, who is also a songwriter. We were talking about what it means to be a woman in the age of social media and all the pressures we feel being on social media and taking selfies and taking so many selfies all the time, just wanting to kind of be free from that. I told her about this idea and about my experience at school and then “Tell Me I’m Pretty” just flowed that day and became this song that was just exciting for me to finally write.
Where did the concept for the video come from?
As I was just thinking about the song and dreaming up ideas for the video, I was sort of torn. It’s a song about social media and what it means to be living in an image obsessed culture and your mind immediately goes to selfies and iphones. I just was resistant to go there visually because I really wanted to show that it’s not instagram, it’s not the technology itself. It really just exposes something in us as humans that has been there through all of history, especially with women. I knew I wanted to play on this Jane Austen world of beautiful pretty things, romanticism, and just show how the female spirit has moved through all of that and continued today. Then, just drawing the similarities of life back then – they had corsets to change their bodies and now they have filters. I love history and I just wanted to sort of think outside the box for the video.