Smile
music video Press release
by Johnny Ross
Singer, song writer, and all around artist Eu4ic is releasing a music video for her enchanting and endearing song “Smile” from her debut album Soul Color. The music video is releasing on April 15th and will be available on YouTube. She’s an up and coming artist with a lot of promise who blends together multiple genres including trip hop. She’s been a pioneer in the electronic and trip hop music scene for women. Her music is currently available on Youtube, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Spotify and many more platforms.
The Song
The lyrics are mysterious and she sings with a soft and soothing but powerful voice. The beat is her signature electronic and trip hop. The song features a powerful bass line and perfectly timed synths. She mentions in her interview that the song is inspired by a breakup she went through. “Why does it always have to be that way? Yes, I can hear you. No, I don’t think you’re wrong,” she reflects on a hopeless situation. She loves her lover by seeing the world through his eyes.
The lyrics culminate into almost an outburst that seems to reflect a typical argument in a relationship that is falling apart.
You can still feel that these two people have powerful feelings for each other. “Didn’t say it was easy. Didn’t say you had no right. I don’t want you to give up,” she tells her lover with the realization that something between them is spiraling out of control. And, as the name suggests, she notices a change in him which is marked by his disappearing smile.
The song has been described as having a very laid back, trippy vibe that takes you on a journey. It is filled with emotional lyrics, and is one of the only songs where Eu4ic strikes us as a romantic. “So far beyond repair.” It’s a song that listeners can just zone out to and get lost in as the mood takes them. It is a great electronic / trip hop single that, as she has mentioned, has influences from many other genres as well.
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The Music Video
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The video starts off with Eu4ic singing in a dark cave while holding up a lantern. Outside of the cave there is a beautiful water reservoir with waves splashing water onto jagged, rough rocks before showing her again in the cave on solid ground. Next is a projection of a hand on a beautifully decorated and domed ceiling indoors in an almost enchanting composite image. We return to the cave and seemingly to a reality, and are greeted with a calm scene of natural peace.
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Then, clashing with the serenity, is a scene of fire behind Eu4ic, before we see a youth traversing through the abandoned ruins of some old building. After that we are treated to visuals of a ruined, decayed church that is missing its roof. This creates an almost haunting scene in a supposedly holy location. Afterwards, Eu4ic appears to confer with us from up in a star-filled night sky. This magical view is amplified by the fact that the small, jagged hole outlines this view at the top of the cave.
She explains it all by saying that the ruined church, “symbolizes a lack of faith.” She laughs a little self-consciously, adding, “I’m an atheist. When we were in this relationship, we were both lost young people, with an inner child that was struggling to make sense of everything. We are both atheists, but I guess I can say that I find it sort of… liberating to be able to make life into anything I want. By contrast, he found it distressing, disturbing… there was a sense of emptiness to his point of view.”
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At the video’s emotional culmination, the youth who was traversing the abandoned building finds a giant, open window to peer out of into the wilderness that surrounds him. Then we see an image of a hand mirrored while touching a tree, seeming to caress her image in a comforting composite video. We’ve also seen close ups of her hands while holding a lantern while traversing the cave. Eu4ic has mentioned that she wanted hands to play a powerful role in her music video. The video then ends with Eu4ic in a forest, wearing a purple dress, walking towards the sun as it sets. “There’s also a theme of natural versus urban decay,” she explains. “We are in a changing world that is at a crossroads in time. We have to keep up with that change and it’s... pretty messy.”
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About Eu4ic
Catie Gutierrez, also known by her stage name Eu4ic, is from the San Francisco Bay Area. A songwriter and music producer, her goal in music is pioneering a space for women in the electronic music scene. She credits her love of video games and animation for why she originally got into music in the first place.
As a kid, she’d play around with her electric keyboard. She played games on her Super Nintendo and loved the music from her favorite games. So she would play the music from them on her keyboard for fun. In the 7th grade, she was also in the jazz band. She went to college for Digital Media but also wanted to write, go into animation, and work with sound sampling. But eventually she realized that she had to figure out what her career was going to be and what she was passionate about.
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She explicitly stated in an interview with Tapestry Music that she can’t just go where the money goes, that she needed to start following her passion. She realized that her true obsession was really with electronic music, and decided that she needed to pursue this passion for good.
“I realized that once I just ignored money or peer pressure or anything else that’s superficial-- what I really wanted to do was make music.”
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Two songs from her first album Soul Color were inspired by the breakup, Smile and Get Out of My House. She says she feels like she’s pioneering a new genre, because she is blending many different genres into her music.
She is also a big fan of hip hop and R&B, particularly from the 90s, which has been a huge influence on her. She got her start playing her keyboard and singing on open mics in alternative spaces. Eu4ic also was a DJ for Dnb Heaven and participated in their chatroom. She is quoted as saying, “innocence allows us to be ourselves at our truest core.” This innocence allows us to ignore judgment, peer pressure, and other preconceived notions to just be ourselves, freely.