{"id":34063,"date":"2020-07-02T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=34063"},"modified":"2020-07-02T05:46:21","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T09:46:21","slug":"premiere-alex-mcartor-biggest-fan-visualizer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/premiere-alex-mcartor-biggest-fan-visualizer\/","title":{"rendered":"PREMIERE: Alex McArtor Critiques Celebrity Worship in “Biggest Fan” Visualizer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Credit: Lexi McArtor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Growing up in Austin, 18-year-old singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist Alex McArtor would often attend concerts and music festivals as a kid. These were the earliest inspiration for her music career – and they also led her to reflect on the mystique surrounding musicians.<\/p>\n

“I grew up around music, and my parents were always talking about the Elvises and stuff like that, and how ‘Oh my god, they were so amazing,'” she recalls. “I grew up seeing these people as not human.” She remembers going to one particular festival in middle school and “worshipping” a band that was playing, then feeling underwhelmed when she actually met the members. “When you see something from far away, it can be anything you want it to be \u2014 say some guy on stage looking like a total god,” she says. “And then you meet him and it just kills that magic of that.”<\/p>\n

That experience was the inspiration for her latest single, “Biggest Fan,” which was actually one of the first songs she wrote many years ago. McArtor’s deep, crisp voice, acoustic guitar, and somber lyrics conjure up Lana del Rey with a hint of classic rock as she paints a picture of a woman following a glamorous rockstar to his room, a “silver castle on the moon” that nevertheless “tastes like litter and cheap perfume.” In the catchy chorus, she sings: “Starry-eyed, she’s hypnotized\/Wants to stay with him for the night\/Says I’m your biggest fan.”<\/p>\n

Inspired by The Carpenters’ “Superstar” (and Sonic Youth’s cover<\/a> of it), McArtor used lots of reverb, echoing effects, and weighed-down electric guitar toward the end. “[Sonic Youth] gave it a very whimsical kind of alternate reality,” she says. “There was just a feeling when you heard it, and I kind of wanted to use the same instrumentation for my song as they did.” McArtor also uses film as songwriting inspiration, playing the music as she watches a movie on mute or looks at a still. For this one, she used The Virgin Suicides<\/em>, perhaps apt given the naive yet disillusioned woman at the center of the song.<\/p>\n