Hannah Grae Kicks off 2024 with Her Latest Single ‘Better Now You’re Gone'
Breakout Atlantic Records star Hannah Grae kicks off 2024 with her latest single ‘Better Now You’re Gone’. The fiery, guitar-fuelled track is sung from Hannah’s perspective as she navigates how she’s really feeling following her first serious breakup.
The promo, directed by Lola Webster, and produced by Angela Mulhern, depicts the reality of adulthood while on a night out, in comparison to Hannah’s high expectations. For all the promise of a fresh start, her attempt to create a new identity is complicated by the fact that she remains the same person with the same emotional baggage.
‘Better Now You’re Gone’ explores themes synonymous with the journey of being a young woman; the intent of evolving, being conflicted between self doubt and self confidence and never living up to the idealised version of yourself.
The splitscreen creative was inspired by the iconic scene in ‘500 days of Summer’, which shows two alternative timelines: Expectations and Reality. Lola taps into the visual world of 2010s coming-of-age movies, and employs the Expectations vs Reality split screen as a sort of postmodern referential device. With our current cultural obsession with indie-sleaze nostalgia, she wanted to incorporate all the cheesy tropes of coming-of-age movies from that time, including Freaky Friday, Mean Girls, and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, as well as British cult classics like Wild Child and St Trinian's - high camp, indeed!
Lola explained, “The timelines depict Expectations - intoxicating, dreamlike, warm and glowy. I wanted to bring ‘rose tinted glasses’ to life. It had to stand apart from Reality, which in comparison feels lonely and cold. I worked with the amazing DOP, Chaimaa Ormazabal, to work out how we could make these two timelines feel distinct but cohesive. We shot Expectations on a wide lens to bring a slight dreamy distortion, and handheld it to feel more likely and dynamic. Whereas, Reality was shot on sticks with limited movement, and showing more space around Hannah to get that lonely, isolated feel.
"I wanted to blend the cheesy visual tropes (wipe transitions, freeze frames etc) with a more gritty, contemporary lens. So we decided to shoot in an underground bar in Dalston, which was dressed to look beautifully lived-in by Art Director Eoin Greally. We wanted to show the very London-centric grimy bathroom, and capture some of the buzz of the street outside, blending some grunge with the glam which I think is very Hannah.
"Hannah’s aesthetic is quite Riot Grrrl/ Pop Punk. She has the angst and rebellious attitude paired with really vulnerable storytelling in her songs. She’s like a Welsh Olivia Rodgrigo. Naturally, Molly Manning-Walker’s ‘How to Have Sex’ (standout film of the year for me) became a huge inspiration for the club scenes - I wanted to show how the dance floor can make you feel empowered vs vulnerable and lonely, vs the centre of attention. I knew I wanted to shoot contrasting colour palettes, warm and cold, but with a bit of an unusual, acidic twist to bring a gritty surrealism to the video, to bring in that rebellion and angst, rather than a classic Hollywood-feeling palette. So, for example, yellows lean toward chartreuse, the greens more lime and the blues toward teal. This was the genius combo of Chaimaa’s lighting and grade by Megan Lee (Electric Theatre Collective).”
