FEATURING ANASTASIYA SCHEGLOVA
Lyrics and vocals by Benedict Sinister
Composed by Nils Rasmussen and Michael Sylvester
Produced by Benedict Sinister
Remixed by Miss Beltran
AN UP-TO-DATE HOMAGE TO A ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME NOMINEE
“Ne Dramatise Pas“ is possibly the ultimate homage one musician has paid to the work of another. French-Australian poet Benedict Sinister took lines from sixteen different songs by veteran British art rock crooner Bryan Ferry, and combined them into a new house-lounge track, which nods musically to the Ferry’s hits of 80s.
This new paean to Ferry’s under-appreciated talents as a lyricist emerges at a moment when Ferry is enjoying renewed acclaim. At age 73, on the back of announcing a world tour in 2019, his band Roxy Music (formed in 1970 with Brian Eno) was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The title is an ultra-obscure Ferry citation for Roxy aficionados. However the song’s combination of French and English marks Sinister’s “coming out as bilingual.” French references slipped into the grooves include Romantic poet Charles Baudelaire and designer Karl Lagerfeld, as well as French music artists Serge Gainsbourg, Les Rita Mitsouko, even Plastique Bertrand.
LA-based artist and DJ Miss Beltran takes the track into the house-lounge genre.
The Ne dramatise pas video is provocative in the spirit of Bryan Ferry himself. Model/actress and Instagram celebrity Anastasiya Scheglova stars as the glamorous, sexy and indomitable muse – a constant figure in Ferry’s own album cover art and videos, for which he collaborated with supermodels Amanda Lear, Jerry Hall, Laurence Treil, Kate Moss, and even with excited fans for the scandalous “Country Life” album cover.
The clichés of video clips are self-consciously and roguishly recycled. Blondie’s Heart of Glass clip and Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines are referenced. And the trend of models appearing in lyrics videos (Alexis Ren in The Chainsmokers’ Paris, Chelcie May in Loud Luxury’s Body) meets the opening shots of Michael Bay’s Transformers 3, as lyrics are superimposed on close-ups of the near-naked rear view of Scheglova.
Yet all this is topped by the clip’s most daring and bizarre feature: it is the world’s first lyrics video to use academic footnotes.
