New York, NY (Top40 Charts) With a style reminiscent of classic 60s-70s icons, pop-rock artist Eddy Lee Ryder has unveiled the video, "Vultures," the latest from her debut EP, Expected to Fly. The style of the video's cinematography recalls films such as The Birds, a play on the title of the song. Watch "Vultures" below.
As the video opens, we see Ryder driving down a desolate road while being stalked by the titular birds of prey, "which represent men in my life who have torn pieces of me away, little by little, the way that vultures do," Ryder says. "Around the start of the #MeToo movement, I was involved with a guy I thought wouldn't treat me the way other men in the past had. As the story goes, he ended up treating me worse. He was slowly taking from me, and I felt picked apart. Once I realized that, I wrote the song in about ten minutes." The film glitches from black and white to color and back again, a visual metaphor for the vultures sucking the life out of our protagonist.
A classically trained musician and opera singer, Ryder grew up obsessed with music of all genres. Falling in love with
Peter Gabriel and
Fleetwood Mac helped push her to start writing her own songs. As she grew, she began to take inspiration from eclectic people she met while driving around the country, as well as examining her own life. Ryder says the songs on Expected to Fly are "fully my stories. I try to create a world around a character - even if that character is me." The result is a tightly woven collection of Ryder doing what she does best: sad songs that are actually bursting with hope, and happy songs that are actually blanketed with darkness. A ready and willing mistress of everything from murder ballads to love songs and upbeat party tunes, Ryder's intricate storytelling twists and turns over staccato electric guitars, moody piano, and center-stage drums that nod to the extravagance of the '80s.
Expected to Fly pays homage to the musical style and spirit of decades past, complete with big themes, haunting melodies and interesting storytelling. "Those styles represented a freedom and wandering life that I always related to; a quest for utopia on the open road," Ryder explains. "I was writing while holding on to that sentiment but realizing there might actually be a more dystopian future ahead, so I wrote about trying to find the beauty and comfort in this strange future ahead. The songs are a blend of a bit hopeful but dark."
