British-Chinese singer-songwriter Griff recently released a new song called ‘Black Hole,’ to all streaming platforms and dropped the official video to Youtube. The song is combination of a heartbreak anthem with a rant against consumerism with Griff singing that ‘There’s a big black hole where my heart used to be, and I’ve tried my best to fill it up with things I don’t need,’ expressing the trials tribulations of relationships and the western tendency to fill the emotional void with products and purchases.
The video has a simple and authentic feel with Griff being filmed inside a London warehouse making and mending clothes before cutting her hand on the sewing machine. The filming has an art house feel with emotive imagery and colour schemes being favoured over high end production values. The song has spiritual undertones with the lyrics in the pre-chorus stating ‘and boy you know I’ve tried to pray, i’ve bruised my knees,’ and ‘i’ve tried my best to find some kind of peace.’ The song gives the impression of a young soul searching for meaning and understanding of the difficulties faced in early adult life and relationships.
The song’s video has received a very good reception and has already received over 62 thousand views on Youtube in just a few days since it was uploaded. The song has also quickly rocked up over 748 thousand streams on Spotify, an impressive feat when such a short time has passed since its release. Griff had a very good year for streaming in 2020, with her single good stuff, a laid back piano and vocal ballad, receiving well over 21 million streams so far. Her other releases last year also performed well on the platform, with ‘Love Is A Compass,’ and ‘1,000,000 X Better,’ both reaching in excess of 5 million views.
Griffs mixtures of gentle piano ballads and alternative-tinged pop songs are an appealing combination and well suited to the social media based music consumption which looks set to dominate the 2020s, especially via TikTok which is quickly becoming seen by many as the saving grace of the music industry which has taken such a big hit from the loss of live music through the pandemic. Though will Griff’s laid back style is suitable for online consumption, her 3 million monthly listeners will surely be craving to see some of her songs performed live, so we can only hope that this will once again be possible soon.
