Every week, Milwaukee Music Premiere connects the city’s artists with our listening audience. If you’re an artist with a track you’d like us to debut exclusively on Radio Milwaukee, head over to our Music Submission page to learn how.
There are two things I learned while putting together this MMP package for the new single from Milwaukee duo Video Sex Priest:
- The song, “I Want the World,” is a dark and slinky number that’ll burrow into your brain.
- My Google search history will be a little messed up for a few days.
Putting aside number two, the pairing of Liv Mueller and Bill Backes put together a track that’s as solid as their background would have you expect. Both were members of The Lovelies once upon a time and stayed in touch after the popular local trio shut it down around 2004. Mueller and Backes began stoking some of those embers about a year ago with Loren Tee on keys, although the plan is for VSP to roll on as a twosome.
“We are both very inspired by music that was created in the ’80s, loving bands like Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, The Cure and so much more,” Mueller shared. “We find that all these influences creep their way into the music. Similar to ingredients in a stew, you never know how these influences will spill out into the songs that we write.”
In the case of “I Want the World,” the end result is pretty savory — even if the song’s genesis is more bitter. A dystopian droning combines with Mueller’s lead vocals to set the tone, and Backes sharpens it from behind the drum kit as Mueller (with Tee backing her) laments her inability to change the soul-crushing things happening around us:
Where do all our good friends go when they die?
And then there’s the why.
How far do they go into the sky?
Oh how I wish I could say goodbye.
“‘I Want the World’ came from a place of being so heartbroken by the state of humanity and the loss of so many people that we have all faced during the pandemic,” Mueller explained. “I felt like ‘I Want the World’ was my way of saying, ‘If only I could control things, things would be different.’ But, alas, we can’t. So we accept what is put at our feet and do our best with it.”
VSP put together “I Want the World” with help from Kyle White at Wire & Vice recording studios in Wauwatosa and is their second single (“Salt” came out last July). You can catch them live Jan. 13 at Club Garibaldi along with The Quilz and keep up with their latest goings-on via Instagram.
