Jupiter 4

Album: Remind Me Tomorrow (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • Sharon Van Etten's Remind Me Tomorrow album is a synth-driven sonic departure from her previous material. This '80s-influenced track was one of the first songs that she recorded for the record.

    The song is titled after the Roland Jupiter-4 synthesizer, which can be heard on tracks by Duran Duran, Gary Numan and The Human League.
  • Sharon van Etten wrote "Jupiter 4" about her boyfriend, Zeke Hutchins. It is her first true love song. Asked by Q magazine why it sounds like a funeral dirge, desolate and barren, she replied: "Fears of the unknown. Being excited that you wanna be with someone for the rest of your life, but also knowing that one of us is going to die first."
  • The video, directed by Katherine Dieckmann, heightens the song's eerie emotion further. Van Etten worked with Dieckmann previously when the singer scored her film Strange Weather. According to Van Etten, when Dieckmann asked her what the mood should be, the singer replied "apocalyptic mom."
  • Dieckmann said in a press release: "The song is a fever dream, a spell cast in the name of obsession. I was hypnotized by it when I first heard it, and have never stopped being hypnotized by it – and by now I have probably heard it over a hundred times, maybe more.

    The trick was to figure out how to match the power of the song with visuals that could serve its ideas without spelling any of them out. I decided right away to work in an inky black-and-white palette and use raw elements (water, fire, earth, mist, dirt, summertime's lush meadows and blooms) as a natural support for Sharon, and shoot her as a strong sculptural presence in space, to accompany the deeply immersive quality of the track."

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