James Blake and Slowthai Contemplate Mortality in ‘Funeral’ Video
Blake and Slowthai will perform the “Funeral” remix Monday night on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’
James Blake updated Friends That Break Your Heart album cut “Funeral” with a feature from U.K. rapper Slowthai and a very morose music video.
The duo play into the melancholy of the song’s metaphoric theme of attending your own wake — while begging to not be forgotten — with black-and-white aerial footage of a funeral procession.
For the new version of the track, Blake sacrifices his original second verse, where he laments “I would livе in the leaves that crunch undеr your feet/I wanna be heard if I can’t be seen” for a hyper-specific list of comparisons from Slowthai.
“I live in the shadows of, mmm, under the loose leaves/I spread my wings, I got a nose bleed,” he mourns. “I been the dust on top of trophies, the rust that makes it homely/The crust that no one wants, I was forgotten, I’ve gone moldy.”
The song was originally produced and written by Blake, who told Apple Music: “This song is all me, done on a very sunny but slightly miserable day. I was thinking about how it feels not to be heard, and to worry that people have given up on you.”
Blake and Slowthai will perform the “Funeral” remix Monday night on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
From Rolling Stone US.