Jenny Lewis Parodies Her Child-Actor Past In Her New Video
Just because you are done with an album does not mean you are done with creating things for it and Jenny Lewis has just released a new video for ‘She’s Not Me’, the second single of her 2014 over and done with ‘Voyager’ album.
I heard that there was a time when Jenny and her ex-bandmate (Blake Sennett) did not like to be reminded they were both child actors, I suppose they wanted to be considered, well, real musicians, but these times are over and Jenny has decided to have a little fun with her past of child-actor. She directed herself this cute parody and has invited Fred Armisen (Portlandia), Zosia Mamet (Girls), Leo Fitzpatrick (another child-actor), Feist, and Vanessa Bayer (SNL) to play along.
You will certainly recognize some obvious references to ‘Troop Beverly Hills’ and if you are an avid Lewis fan you will also recognize references to The Golden Girls, The Wizard, and Pleasantville (really she was in that movie too?). Buzzfeed has all the details of Lewis’ career if you are curious… She even recreated the poster from ‘The Wizard’, but I never got the chance to see this one, and of course, hired Armisen as one of the Golden Girls.’The video is about former identities and incarnations of one’s self. It’s a super meta retrospective on my career,’ she said to Buzzfeed.
The video is supposed to be light and fun, very colorful like a package of SweeTart candies, and I wonder if these girl-scout outfits are the original clothes from ‘Troop Beverly Hills’, because Jenny has certainly not gained a pound since that time. However, she is still wearing that dreamy-rainbow suit most of the time… she seems to never get tired of it, and it goes very well with her collection of Care Bears.
While the song evokes a dance hit of the late 70’s-early 80’s with a sort of smooth Fleetwood Mac flair, the lyrics evokes the heartbreak of a woman acknowledging her mistake to an old lover who has found another girlfriend, ‘But she’s not me/she’s easy/all those times we were making love/i never thought we’d be breakin’ up/i bet you tell her i’m crazy/it goes on and on and on and on/but she’s not me she’s easy’… Is Jenny admitting she is a bad girl with that jail-handcuff scene? And what does her child-actor past have to do with all this?
