FLETCHER Talks 'If You're Gonna Lie', The Brutally Honest Prequel To 'Undrunk'

"I honestly think that having your heart damaged is the closest thing death that we plan to ever experience," says FLETCHER as she discusses her music and love life, which at this point, are totally intertwined. Since January, the 25-year-old has been steadily climbing the charts with "Undrunk," a unfiltered post-breakup letter to her ex with the clever hook, "Wish I might get a little bit un-drunk so I could un-call you / At five in the morning, I would un-fuck you / Although some things you can't undo." Right now, she's keeping the narrative rolling with "If You're Gonna Lie," a prequel to her breakthrough hit, that lets listeners hear why the relationship fell apart in the opening place.


"I poured you a glass of wine and drank it for the second time," she starts, setting the scene. "Then 7pm turned to 10 / I'm still alone and my lips are red." The chorus is even more revealing, as she pleads, "So if you're gonna lie, do it in my bed / If you're gonna lie, make it worth it."


FLETCHER wrote "Undrunk" and "If You're Gonna Lie" on successive days at a studio in L.A.'S Koreatown. That was over each year ago, any time if she was "super fresh" out of that pivotal, painful breakup.


"It was a situation where I was cheated on, and 'If You're Gonna Lie' is about that denial phase of a relationship where you know things are getting sort of sketchy," FLETCHER told MTV News. "You know they're cheating on you and texting other people, however you would rather have them lie to you and lie to yourself than have them not be in your life."


That anguish is illustrated in the track's accompanying visualizer, which was filmed in Joshua Tree, California, at the same time as her "Undrunk" video. Interspersed between scenes of her and her ex in sunnier times, we visualize FLETCHER distressed and spiraling, singing her heart out in a motel bathroom.


"'Undrunk' order kind of highlights the nostalgia of being in a relationship and what that felt like, and then 'If You're Gonna Lie' is the moment as soon as you're by yourself and just feel really crazy," she explained. "Like once you're in the washroom, curled up on the floor, bawling your eyes out. I think love makes you do really crazy shit. It makes you feel insane, and I just wanted to capture that feeling."


The story set in motion by "Undrunk" and "If You're Gonna Lie" will keep unfolding on FLETCHER's forthcoming EP, which she says is all about that one relationship. And, as you might've guessed, there will be no specifics spared — each song resembles a specific moment that happened to her. "Like, I remember one night," she mentioned, "the person that I was dating didn't come back up until, like, 8:00 in the morning and shut their phone off, and I just knew. I knew that something was happening."


As tough and arguably masochistic as revisiting a breakup sounds, it's for now giving FLETCHER her best music to date — not to say, the closure she required to move on.


"For a long time I thought it could be really hard, nevertheless I came out on the other side of it," she explained. "To be on the other side of that right now, and to have noticed love again... And most importantly, I noticed out how to love myself. I survived that, and I just wish to let other people know that you are going to be OK."