Cyn’s Swaggering ‘Drinks’ Video Is Made For Blowing Off Guys In Bars
the initial thing I notice about
Cyn is her suit. Her
power suit, I should mention. We're on the set of her music video for "Drinks," and she's wearing a tweed blazer with a matching vest, a crisp white shirt, and khaki trousers, all of which she accessorizes with siren-red lipstick, white heels, and her signature curly 'do. She is a dead-ringer for '90s Meg Ryan, I tell her.
"Thank you!" She exclaims, throwing her arms up. "Some folks are saying other things and I'm like, 'Wrong!' Yet Meg Ryan, absolutely."
It's just before 11 a.M. On a Thursday in late February, although Cyn has been up since the crack of dawn. Her call time was 4 a.M., She explained, and the nerves and jitters that come with a shoot like this meant she didn't sleep very well the night before.
"It's big day, as well as a lot of what we did today for the 'Drinks' video was my vision," she mentioned while in a break between shots while curled on a couch, munching on a protein bar, and letting her feet breathe in flip-flops. "I wrote the treatment and then brought it to the director, and he added a number of cooler things to bring up the production. I picked the place and I picked [the outfit]." Right after running it by her mentor
Katy Perry (Cyn is signed to Perry's label, Unsub Records), whom Cyn says is "stoked" about the vid, KP even helped bring on the director, Taylor Fauntleroy, and offered one of her makeup artists.
Right now, the world gets to be able to see Cyn's totally realized vision come to life. In the video for "Drinks," released on Friday (March 6), she strolls around an intimate, dimly lit bar, staring down the camera with cool confidence while flippantly shrugging off a guy's bullshit. "He got irritated, so I got drinks / No I'm not walking around in circles worried about what he thinks," she speak-sings over a beat that borrows identically from jazz and hip-hop. "I don't know what the problem is, I don't think it's me."
"Drinks" is the lead single for the soundtrack of the upcoming feminist revenge fantasy
Promising Young Woman, which stars Carey Mulligan as every would-be rapist's worst nightmare. For Cyn, the song — which she lovingly describes as "feminine and bitchy and confident" — has its roots in an argument with a now-ex-boyfriend.
"I just was reeling," she recalls about the quarrel in question and the ensuing bit of writer's inspiration, which, yes, came right after knocking back a drink or two. She texted several collaborator companions of hers and mentioned she wanted to write a song with the best line, "He got angry, so I got drinks." Cyn mentioned, "They were like, 'Girl, it's 2 a.M. Sure, however converse with you later.'"
Soon after putting the chorus to paper, she ended up playing it for
Promising Young Woman's music supervisors, who loved it and asked her finish it. Cyn got to be able to see an early preview of the movie, and determined to write the verses from the perspective of Mulligan's character, Cassie.
"I imagine it as: That hook is my life. And then there really are some lines in there that were inspired by the movie; something like, 'As soon as it's over, I can be me again.' That feels very much like Cassie," Cyn explained. "I was thinking, what would Cassie mention if this was her song? Like the lyric, 'taking a Band-Aid and ripping it off.' She has this hardship in her life that she's going through and she just has to get it off to the side because once it's over, she can be herself again."
This isn't Cyn's first brush with movie music — earlier this year, she contributed the tantalizing "
Lonely Gun" to the women-powered
Birds of Prey album, then had "
I Can't Believe," a sunny cut from her 2019 EP
Mood Swing, featured in
To all of the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. And also "Drinks," she has one more song featured in
Promising Young Woman, "Uh Oh," which she wrote to complement a specific scene in the movie. She's not sure if there's something inherently film-friendly about her work — "Maybe it just ties back to me really enjoying the feeling of certain kinds of films and bringing that feeling into everything I do musically," she suggests — yet there's definitely a cinematic flair to "Drinks" and its accompanying video, which she modeled soon following the mood of '90s rom-coms. (That would definitely explain the Meg Ryan vibes.)
"The way that feel While I watch a movie that was made in the '90s is such a stamp, and I really wanted to feel that in the lighting, in the decorating she mentioned. Although I also didn't hope to complicate it. This is a song about two women getting drinks, and I didn't hope to have some crazy shock-value situation. It's not that. It's just an eas story."
High Rise PRA simple story, sure, nevertheless with a little bit of an ironic twist. The video was shot at the vintage-era cocktail bar Checker Hall in L.A.'S Highland Park neighborhood. Cyn once had a rehearsal in the bar's adjoining music venue, The Lodge Room, before joining Perry on her 2017
Witness tour. She also had a date here with the guy she wrote "Drinks" about — before that fight happened, obviously. They're not with each other anymore, she explains, although she doesn't seem sad about it. "Drinks," right considering that, has given her a new sort of buzz.
"I was about to do a scene and I'm looking around and all of those folks are here for me and my art," Cyn marvels. "It's weird and it's excellent. I mean, if I was a little bit girl, I'd be like, 'Don't worry about it. You're going to be doing cool things one day.'"
"Drinks" appears on the Promising Young Woman
soundtrack, which also features songs from Charli XCX, Fletcher, Sky Ferreira, Donna Missal, and more. The album arrives on April 3, two weeks before the film hits theaters on April 17.
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