Q&A: Beatrix Reveals the Second Single “Dead Dog” off Her Haunting Album
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
Photo by Rogue Bonaventura
“DEAD DOG” SHOWS THE LASTING IMPACT OF WORDS THROUGH HEARTBREAKING IMAGERY—In a gritty rock atmosphere, Beatrix details the anger felt at words that were thrown at her years ago. Playing on the metaphor of being compared to a dead pet, the artist shows the emotional damage inflicted by this person with chilling vocals and moving lyricism.
Beatrix (Arielle Kasnetz) is an LA-based musician who was trained in classical music in Nashville. She discovered her voice during the pandemic as she considered what she wanted to express with her music. Armed with an acoustic guitar, she created what is now Beatrix’s sound. She released her debut album Vertigo last year and is getting ready to unveil her sophomore project.
Beatrix sets the scene for her new project with the first single, “Ghosts of Tennessee.” While her debut album speaks of where she was at that moment, the artist now takes inspiration from her past. She returns to haunt a person she was in a relationship with 10 years ago, showing the consequences of hurting someone will come back even if it takes a long time.
“Dead Dog” was inspired by being compared to a dead dog during a conversation with her ex-partner after he cheated. She leans into the metaphor, providing a much needed cathartic moment and making people think twice before they speak. The visuals of the song happen at a high school prom as she processes the heartbreak during what was supposed to be a joyful night.
Luna spoke to Beatrix about “Dead Dog” and her new project—Read our interview below.
Photo by Rogue Bonaventura
LUNA: Could you tell us what “Dead Dog” is about in your own words?
BEATRIX: There's a fucked up story behind that song. I have this ex from ten years ago about who a lot of the songs on my new album are about. He cheated on me and then after we broke up, we had one of those closure conversations where I just wanted to understand what happened. I vividly remember being like, “How could you do this to me? After you told me you wanted to marry me, and all this stuff.” And he said, “It's kind of like when you have a dog and you love your dog so much, but then it dies and you get a new dog, and then you forget about the old one.” That's the inspiration for the concept of feeling like a dead pet, then someone has moved on and replaced you and forgotten about you.
LUNA: What musical influences did you have for the single?
BEATRIX: I love a good crash out song, and this is definitely that on the album. I love Mitski so much. She's been my top artist for many years. She has a bunch of crash out songs, like “Your Best American Girl.” This wasn't a direct influence, but “Happier Than Ever” (Billie Eilish). I don't think I really had anything specific in mind when I was writing it, other than that conversation I was telling you about and feeling really angry. The baseline of that song is definitely Mitski—she has really interesting bass lines. I started writing that song with just the baseline in mind, and then for production we really wanted to make it rock. This song took so long to record. We tried three different keys. I originally wrote it a bit lower and slower, and then we ended up raising the key so that way it has more impact when I'm belting at the top of my voice and it feels nice and angry. I wanted electric guitars, garage-feel with drums and everything.
LUNA: The lyrics are very visual—you can feel the emotions coming through. When did you first start writing these lyrics?
BEATRIX: I first started writing in the fall of last year and I finished the song in the fall of last year. It took a few days to finish the song. I had the chorus, “I'm a dead dog to you” in my head for a few months, and that's how a lot of my songs end up happening. I'll have the hook, or just the concept, or a few words that keep coming back, and I'm like, “Okay, it's a sign I should finish this.” I did have that in my head for a few months, but then the actual writing of the song took a few days.
LUNA: On the cover art, you're dressed in such a bright pink dress, but the eye makeup and the look you give to the camera and the people you know in the background, you can tell there's a lot of anger beneath the surface of it. What does this cover art represent for you?
BEATRIX: We shot a music video for this song. I am obsessed with it. It takes place at a high school prom, so the relationship that it's actually about happened for me in college, but the next single is called “Class Reunion” and it takes place 10 years later so I wanted to have the high school prom, and then 10 years later the reunion. I like the look of prom and the concept of the props and stuff, it's fun visually. Then I definitely wanted to look sort of angry and goth in my makeup a little bit because of the emotion of the song. My closet is black, I definitely didn't have a pink dress like that, so we found one, but I really liked the contrast of the dress being my innocence and the high school prom being more innocent. My emotional state internally was really a lot of turmoil and anger.
LUNA: I want to talk a bit about “Ghosts of Tennessee.” There's Morse code in the beginning of it and if I understood right, the beat is linked to the Morse code. How did you come up with that idea of having Morse code in the song?
BEATRIX: I wanted it to sound like the beginning of a cryptic message. The whole concept of that song is setting up the album, which is supposed to be like, I'm coming back to haunt this person who hurt me from 10 years ago. I really love the sound of it starting with just the Morse code, because it's like, “There's some sort of message that's trying to come through, but I can't really understand it.” The Morse code is actually the lyrics of the song that we put into a Morse code generator. It didn't fit the exact length, the actual full lyrics went longer, so we cut it off at the end, but that's what the Morse code is.
LUNA: I don't think I've heard that anywhere, it fits really well especially with the lyrics, the overall production and the video. How was the creative process for the music video?
BEATRIX: Oh, it was so fun. This was my first music video with a big team and the director that I worked with, Rogue Bonaventura, she's so amazing. I definitely had a vision for these videos, but she elevated it to a different realm. She was pulling in these David Lynch references and liminal spaces because the whole album takes place outside of the normal space time continuum. I'm going back in time to retell these stories of the past and also to haunt my ex. For that video in particular, I wanted to look like a ghost, because [of] the title and the concept of coming back to haunt someone. In my first album cycle, I was dressed as a clown. I liked the continuation.
I love makeup. It's helpful to me to express myself through it. I liked that it was a metamorphosis of the clown makeup into the ghost makeup. All I knew for the video is I wanted to look like a ghost, and I wanted to slowly get into the water and go underneath the water at the end. That's what we did. We shot all day. It took so long because we shot on 35 millimeter film, which was so cool. I'd never done that before, but it's a lot of, “Okay, stay right here,” and then they measure where the sunlight is from the camera, and then you move two feet. It took a long time, but it was really fun.
LUNA: You had a training in classical music and it took some years to discover your own voice. How did you end up with the sound and the overall project of Beatrix?
BEATRIX: I studied classical music and I graduated during the pandemic. For me, music has always lived in two very separate worlds. What I was listening to and what I was singing in my free time, and what I was seriously studying and thinking about my career, it was like a very rigid, intellectualized thing. The classical world can be a bit elitist and rigid. I had amazing teachers, they taught me so much and I still use things that I've learned from my classical background, but I was discouraged from pursuing anything outside of opera and classical singing. It took me graduating and having a moment of pause with the shutdown. I really had so much time to just sit and think and absorb everything that I had learned over the past four years in college, and figure out what I wanted to do next.
My parents had gotten me a guitar for my birthday two years before, and I had tried to play it but I was really busy with school, and also it hurt my fingers really badly at first and I couldn't really get into it, but I finally had time, and I picked up the guitar. I moved back home to New Jersey with my dad because of the shutdown and I just got obsessed with playing guitar. I started learning my favorite songs, like what I was listening to at the time, which was a lot of Elliot Smith and Mitski and Lizzy McAlpine and Punisher (Phoebe Bridgers) had just come out. That whole indie folk singer-songwriter, that's what I was listening to. I played piano in college and I took classical guitar when I was a kid, but for the first time, I was connecting these two different parts of my brain. That was like, “What am I listening to in my free time, and what am I playing?” I was learning the songs I was listening to. It was a very cool experience. Everything shifted into place. I was playing in open D, which is really easy on guitar, so I started writing in that style naturally. That's how I found my sound.
LUNA: You released your debut single and album last year. Was it an easy decision to figure out what to put out?
BEATRIX: These were the first songs that I had ever written. I started writing a bit in 2020 but I really didn't start finding the sound that I have now, because I was also listening to a bunch of R&B. I was a big Ariana Grande fan. I have a lot of TikTok videos where I'm singing riffy pop R&B covers. I was still evolving in my sound, but when I moved here in 2022 that's when I started writing stuff that feels part of the Beatrix project. That's when I changed my name and started going by Beatrix. All those songs that were on the first album are pretty much the first 12 songs that I wrote. It wasn't hard to choose because I was like, “I'm proud of these songs, and I want to record them and put them out.” I also felt behind because I was 25 when I wrote those songs. That's still super young, but I was like, “I'm ready to put this out there [and] see what happens.” I didn't think too hard about it.
LUNA: How does your new project differ from the first album?
BEATRIX: I continued to evolve in my songwriting. I was figuring out what works, so that's a natural progression that just happens the more you do something, you get better at it. I started working with different producers for this album. I did my first project with Charles Myers, and a lot of it was super makeshift. It was a completely independent project. I was paying for everything myself, and Charles was kind enough to be doing it for free. We split everything half and half, but it was super makeshift DIY. We did everything ourselves, except I hired someone to play drums, and they did the drums after the fact, on top of everything, which is not usually how you do stuff but that's how it ended up working out.
This album, I signed to a record label, so I was finally able to execute my vision to the extent that I wanted to. I got to hire the best musicians ever to play on the record and we had some studio time. We did some sessions at different recording studios here in LA. It wasn't all in someone's basement, so that's the main difference. The other thing is that Vertigo, all those songs were about my present situation and the current moment, but all the songs [on the new album], most of them are about this relationship that I had 10 years ago. There's one on there that's about my sister, and there's one that's more about loss generally, and then there's one about me, just myself, but the rest of them are about that relationship. This was the first time that I had written about the past.
LUNA: That's pretty cool to get to explore the past. I feel like our memories are a great place of inspiration, especially because the more you move on in life, you have such hindsight and growth that you get to write about it from a more, I wouldn't say exterior perspective, just a more grown perspective.
BEATRIX: Definitely, and also I could sit here and say, “I wish I started writing earlier.” I wish I had found myself or whatever, but if I had been writing songs at the time of this relationship and that whole heartbreak and everything,, the songs would be so different. Maybe I would have processed those emotions from a different perspective. Everything's meant to happen the way it's meant to happen.
LUNA: What can we expect from you in this upcoming year?
BEATRIX: Well, I'm going to put out an album. I'm so excited about it. I have a few more singles first. I hope to play a lot more shows next year, I'd love to go on tour. I'd love to open for someone. I have no idea what's gonna happen. We'll see.
