Entertainment
Phebe Starr Sings About Heartbreak On "TOUCH XXX"
Maybe feelings should come with a content warning
Australian singer-songwriter Phebe Starr is coming to terms with the emotional struggle of growing up—and she's processing her feelings through her music. Today, Starr announces her forthcoming EP Ice Tea Liberace and shares the gutting lead single "TOUCH XXX" exclusively via NYLON.
Usually, a triple-X signifies explicit "adult" content and "has some sort of social stigma and shock attached to it," Starr says, but she also points out that emotions can similarly be upsetting. "Those feelings of shock are how I felt learning I'd lost emotional connection in a relationship that I'd been in since I was a teenager and I thought would last forever," Starr tells NYLON. "No one ever warned me about that adult content. I would like those emotions to come with an adult warning because they are not PG."
And Starr's emotional outpouring on the track should come with a content warning, because it's going to perfectly fuck you up. She cries out about her love lost over bare piano and synths, letting her vocals take center stage and really hit you from every angle.
Along with the song, she shares a lyric video she made personally after a recent move to Los Angeles. "I like to take broken or old things that nobody else likes and make them beautiful," Starr says. "I made this lyric video by hand-drawing out each frame on scrap paper and using my housemate's scanner while watching Rick and Morty and Nashville. It was a nice way to end most of my days in a new city whilst I try to figure out my life."
Listen to "TOUCH XXX" below. Ice Tea Liberace comes out via PALACE on August 30.
