The Italian duo She Owl have been enchanting audiences throughout Europe and North America for the last five years. Still Beauty is the second single from the duo’s much anticipated new album Invisible Heart, due out in January 2023 (pre-order via Bandcamp from today).
The lyrics of Still Beauty explore the ideal of beauty and attempt to pin down its origins. “What was it again that made you beautiful?” Is it a precise moment, or is it a spacetime singularity that makes us fall in love? Questions are asked throughout the song, but the conclusion is that “You’re still beautiful; you’ll always be”.
Musically, the song begins with soulful piano and builds up to an orchestral crescendo. Ending with a refrain of a few whispered words that feel unequivocal, simple, and true. “It’s not a serenade or a celebration of the ones we love,” says Demian, “the song is about facing the truth together, and finding beauty within it”.
The single Still Beauty premieres along with a video of Jolanda and Demian singing together while immersed in a phantasmagoria of butterflies. The video was directed by Jolanda Moletta, who explains that “we live in a material world where almost everything is ephemeral. I wanted to show how beauty goes beyond what we sense. We pretend that we will live forever. We spend our time trying to define beauty so that we can hold on to it. We have the illusion that we can preserve beauty by capturing it somehow – perhaps surrounding ourselves with butterfly wings. But beauty is life, and beauty transcends the material world. Beauty goes beyond our senses. This is one of the main themes of our forthcoming album.”
Still Beauty was written and recorded in Europe and California by She Owl. The album was mixed in London by Sam Beste (The Vernon Spring, Hejira).