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Adulthood doesn’t mean that an acquaintance can’t manage to make you feel like shit. Anya Marina is an accomplished singer-songwriter, known for an expansive catalogue, including “Satellite Heart<\/a>” (from the platinum-selling soundtrack to Twilight: New Moon<\/em>) and her bomb-ass cover of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like<\/a>” (6 million YouTube views and counting). Her latest single, “Pretty Vacant,” off 2020’s Queen of the Night<\/a><\/em> album, strips away the resume and showcases the raw pain of adult friendships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “I wrote that song in Nashville and I was really hurt, at the time, by this famous girl,” Marina remembers. “I thought we were friends and I heard through the grapevine that she didn’t like me – it was like junior high school all over again. She showed an email that I wrote to a group of other people who I respected and I was just like: I am too old for this bullshit. It was so wild to me that adult women could act this way. Of course they can – we can all get that way. She had her reasons for being threatened by me or not liking me, but it really took me by surprise.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n The resulting song is a gel-penned hate note for the modern era, its pleasant guitar strumming and gentle vocals mocking the reader: “Darling, I don’t want your money or fame\/Darling, I don’t want the keys to your place\/Don’t you see I’m happier, too?\/So happy without you.” From Marina’s point of view, the unnamed celebrity was only interested in an entourage, not a real friendship (with real sparring and emotions). And while she could understand not being liked, it was this woman’s approach that turned her stomach. “I was really shocked by the gossiping. I can’t believe that a 35-year-old woman who’s so strong and powerful and revered would say this stuff about little old me,” Marina says with a shrug. “I’m nobody to her.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n The video for the single, premiering today via Audiofemme, strays from the original plot of the song and focuses on Marina’s real-life move from her longtime hometown, New York City. In a series of cutaways, Marina cleans her apartment, carefully sweeping dust bunnies from the corner of her living room; the city looms outside the window, as static and ever-permanent as it could be. The move was a difficult, but necessary turning point for her. “I know the Buddhists say you suffer when you resist things, but it was hard,” Marina confesses. “I did not want to move. I loved my apartment. It was my little Shangri-La. But you know, when I started to move I was ready to do it.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n