Social media is all fun and games until it absorbs the whole of reality and by the time you have seen too much, you realize there is no escape. That is the theme of your life right now, but it also happens to be the theme of Loviet’s new single, “Picture.”
This song would be an act of solidarity, some recognition that we’re all in this together, except that’s exactly the problem. At some point—likely many many hours ago—we should ask ourselves if social media is a tool that augments our lives, or has it become the reality in which we live, only occasionally venturing forth to collect fresh materials for the ‘gram?
“Picture,” questions that reality and the superficiality of it, and the much deeper question of whether we, as a generation that has both molded and been molded by that reality, would recognize ourselves in any other context.
“I’m a millennial, so I was practically out of high school before I had my first cellphone. I still remember how that felt, and I remember dying for this day to come, where we’re all connected and have access to everything and everyone,” says Loviet. “But just like everyone else, now I don’t know how much I like it after all.”
Social media has come a long way in a short period of time. As the kids say, I remember when this was all farmland as far as the eye could see. And before that, there was Messenger, ICQ, IRC, Telnet, BBS… Social media has been a one-way street since the beginning. Destination: total emersion.
Rather than augment our reality, as it has long been righteously touted, it has done more to supplant it. As such, it has developed its own culture, etiquettes, and expectations and, furthermore, has been engineered for constant engagement. We ourselves have become the product, forming dependencies on those little bursts of dopamine with each notification.
Most of us will remember the Great Facebook Outage of 2021 for some time to come, rather unexpectedly, as a reprieve.
For a brief handful of hours, we were tossed back several decades to a time when you found your friends by looking for the yard with all the bikes in it. The urgency and pressures of messages, comments, likes and shares, vanished in an instant. Most of us, assuming that the entirety of the internet had failed completely, simply walked away and began enjoying our lives.
“This is the kind of purity I think back to, before that era. But it’s weird because I also don’t think I’d feel right if it was gone,” says Loviet.
The double-edged sword of that sentiment of that is heavily reflected in the song’s chorus, with Loviet singing of the frustration and futility, but also the dependency and demand for relevancy that comes with the territory. “Take a picture of my face, God I don’t want it to be replaced, they don’t care if I really say anything, I don’t think I should really think into it,” she sings.
“I think I’m crazy. I worry and overthink everything I post. Especially of myself and the female side of it [and] just that perpetuating culture,” explains Loviet. “It just feels like a heightened sense of ‘Am I adding to the problem, am I a product of the problem?’ or, ‘Am I just a gal?’ It does feel like a bit of a time where the social media world can be an escape or a hellscape.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the song was conceived in the most organic, if not entirely analog fashion; with Loviet sitting beside the ocean, writing songs, and then, as she describes, throwing her hands up in the air, presumably in exasperation at the state of everything and its contributing factors. And thus this was born. Much of the song even retains many of its raw pieces, incorporating parts of the demo Loviet had recorded and then working with producer Anton DeLost to recreate the track in the studio.
“It feels very cool that there are stems from the demo in this song.,” says Loviet. “They were important parts that I got in that moment. No multiple takes on certain things, just laying the stuff down that carried the message.”
Paired with a video directed by Ryan Faist, Loviet hammers home the message of the strange dichotomy that seems to exists in our online world: that of the Instagram-perfect fabrication and the sausage factory behind it, not to mention the exhausting grind it takes to keep on top of it all.
“It’s just so crazy cause some of the world wants the truth and the sadness on their feed, others want the pretty, gussied-up side that makes life feels exotic,” says Loviet, noting that there is plenty happening in the background of the video and even more questions to be asked.
Loviet’s “Picture” will appear on her upcoming album, 777.