Art of Bodybending is debuting a new vintage swing jazz sound in her new single Roses on My Piano.
The singer-songwriter has titillated us for the past year with her signature style, which involves the concealment of a sad story inside an entertaining, poetic, and astoundingly sexual allegory.
“I call it a sexuallegory!” she laughs during the interview. “Roses on My Piano is my last love letter to my one and only love that I have to say goodbye to. That’s the piano. Growing up, my parents were absolutely anti-art and wouldn’t let me sing, dance, or even let me near instruments. But I wanted to do piano so bad, and in first year high school, I saved up all my lunch money instead of eating lunch to save up enough for piano lessons, and then I would sneak out of school to take them at a nearby mall”.
Poor AoBB got caught though, and her parents took her ATM card and watched her every move to make sure she wouldn’t pull any artistic rebellion again. “I ran away from home eventually at 15”, she recalls, “but all my energy and expenses were spent initially on survival, of course, and I was never able to complete my piano training. Then I started getting modeling and dancing gigs, and here I am now, as Art of Bodybending. It took a few years for me to find the guts to go back to music, my true love, and here we are now, with my music releases, but my dream of playing the piano has long passed me by. There are so many years of dedication, hours of practice, funds for lessons, that I can no longer get back. I’ve already been building my career in my other art forms too, so I can’t just give all that up to go back to this. It really breaks my heart”.
But always one to choose sharing joy over sadness, AoBB has cleverly wrapped her broken heart in a feel-good, vintage swing jazz song about…
“F***ing a pianist!” In her own words, as she laughs so hard that she slides lopsided on her chair.
“I’m saying goodbye to an old dream by transposing the love I had for the piano into love for a hot pianist, for everyone’s entertainment. The song has a lot of cheeky one-liners and was written along with choreographies, to help me transition from my old dream to my new reality. I may have always wanted to be a pianist, but now I’m a performer and songwriter that can make a crowd have fun, singing with a bunch of my talented musician friends, and really, that’s not a bad place to end up with at all. Roses on My Piano is a homage to my past that transitions into a celebration of my present, so I can finally move on.”
The song itself is a nod to the past and a herald to the future. It sounds like it came from one of your grandma’s old vinyl records, but once you listen closely, it’s obvious from the lyrics that this was written by a woman in the 2020’s who is way ahead of her time.
“I loved creating that paradox. The sound is so traditional that you could call it antiquated, but the lyrics are very progressive, inspiring listeners to break from the world that they’re used to. That’s the gift I want to give to my audience, and it’s also a gift to myself, since I love swing music more than anything, and that’s the kind of song I want to make, regardless of modern times or marketability. And the greeting card of that gift which is the lyrics says to everyone, especially women, you can just ask for what you want.”
The lyrics of Roses on My Piano are about a woman who tells a guy that she’s into him, and tells him exactly what she wants him to do to her — which involves graphic sexual acts, cleverly presented by puns and figurative language that is truly a treat to listen to.
“When I write my songs, I like to use the things we’re most ashamed of. Things like sex, fetishes and dark, dirty deeds. Then I narrate these in the most witty, entertaining and lighthearted way that I possibly can, to shake away people’s fear of bringing up these things. I really want to break the stigma around these topics so people can start to discuss them openly, and express their desires safely without being judged. No matter how much society conditioned us to find these things shameful, the thing is everybody thinks about it, feels it, and has a ton of questions about it. I just think the world would be a better place if we validated what we wanted, and actually asked for what we wanted. If everybody did that, everybody would also listen to someone who asks for what they want. Whether they choose to give someone what they asked for is up to them, but what’s important is that person is heard and aware that they deserve to desire.”
Art of Bodybending’s Roses on My Piano is out now on Spotify! Have fun enjoying the catchy swing and amusing lyrics, and on a deeper level, appreciate the meticulous weaving of layers this singer-songwriter has achieved in immortalizing her childhood and past music influences, entertaining the crowd, and sharing radical new messages on self-worth all in a 4-minute song. This groundbreaking artist brings a whole new meaning to the term triple threat.
