Outstanding New Video from Junior Brother - This Is My Body

Irish Alt-Folk act Junior Brother, the pseudonym of Co. Kerry, Ireland singer Ronan Kealy, has been going from strength to strength over the last few years. In 2019 Junior Brother was chosen as The Irish Times’ Best Irish Act of 2019 and nominated for the 2019 Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year.

His new album “The Great Irish Famine” is set for September 2nd via Strange Brew, and for his second album single ‘This Is My Body‘, he called on Ellius Grace to Direct the accompanying video, which tackles a whole gamut of emotions tied into relationships and anxiety over our self-image. Those inevitable physical changes, like the video, may appear to be initially tinged with humour, but there’s an inescapable heavy sadness to the song and video.

This is my body now, like it or not.
The price of exercise when the exercising stops.
She said she’d love me with a body or without,
I find that hard to believe when I look down, and I can’t see my feet.

Grace has previously worked on videos for the likes of James Vincent McMorrow, Aoife Nessa Frances, Soak, Saint Sister and more. The scene is set by an opening dialogue over the breakfast table, the husband reminiscing about the time they picked oranges in Spain, wanting to share those memories again…but she has no interest…he slowly fades, blending into the everyday objects that populate his monotonous invisible existence.

Ronan Kealy says, “The song is about being a human being. The anxiety of self-image, and the sheer heights of absurdity humans go to denigrate ourselves, all for only being utterly human. If we’re lucky, we find our soulmate, who can heighten this self-loathing in the loathing self – But a soul mate mates with soul, and that can only grow stronger as body bobs and weaves through a nourished life.”