“The Body” is one of the most gorgeous, surprising songs I’ve heard in awhile.
First released on the 2020 EP Body Child Light Crime—originally reviewed here in the INDY—“The Body” now has an accompanying music video, premiering online at the INDY today, ahead of FitzGerald’s LP, due out with Sleepy Cat Records in early 2022.
For those unacquainted with Carrboro musician FitzGerald, his voice sounds a bit like Jeff Tweedy’s—raspy, emotional, reassuring—and to hear him croon the refrain “My body, my body was meant for me” is uniquely reassuring, a kind of medicine.
The song, FitzGerald says, was written at the end of a shift at Twin House music store and is sung from the perspective of a Wake Forest University chaplain who is reckoning with their body after watching the BME Pain Olympics online, and begins with the wry, wistful lyric, “I could’ve moved to Berlin / Oh well.”
Despite the specific (and hardcore) premise, the song’s appeal and message is broad and feels a necessary listen for, well, anyone who has a body.
“This song is an empathetic short story to my trans and non-binary friends,” FitzGerald writes in the liner notes, “Thank you for being yourselves. The song is also a claim to my own body and a push against fear. I’m a sober person in recovery, and when I’m sick I attack my own body with my own body. The song is a reminder that I have been brave before, and can be brave now.”
Out now, the surreal, shapeshifting video evokes that reassurance of claiming your own body as it is. It features a performance by Nelle Owens Dunlap, who also contributed costuming and editing.
“Body dysmorphia and self-hatred is heavy,” FitzGerald writes, “Your body was meant for you. Your body belongs to you. Anyone saying different is in sales and can get fucked.”
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