| July 27, 2022 – Today, LA-based alt/pop project BEGINNERS announced their new EP If The World Is Ending will release on November 2nd. Helmed by founder, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Samantha Barbera, the stark 7-song collection grapples with the all-too-familiar presence of doomsday fatigue and the sense of despair that the whole world is burning down around us. BEGINNERS also shared today “I Hate That I Love Brooklyn,” a raucous anthem featuring Matias Mora (K. Flay, Broods) full of razor-sharp punk rock guitar that represents the spikey feeling of a toxic relationship – with a person, with the news, with a whole city or country. Listen to “I Hate That I Love Brooklyn (feat. Matias Mora)” HERE. Pre-order/Pre-save If The World Is Ending HERE.“ ‘I Hate That I Love Brooklyn’ is a giant metaphor for my manic addiction to someone I used to love,” stated Barbera. “The same way that a city like Brooklyn makes you feel alive but can also completely drain you. Passion can be so invigorating but costly. Matias Mora, a fellow queer artist, and I are friends and work on music together a lot. Our only goal in the studio (and maybe life) is to get as weird as humanly possible and experiment with sounds and concepts. One day when I got to Matias’ house he had this amazing blinged out Brooklyn hat sitting on the piano. My guitarist in BEGINNERS, Posey, was there with us as well, and we couldn’t stop taking ridiculous photos in the hat and editing them into mock 90s rap album covers. After wasting 2 hours on Brooklyn hat rap photos we finally sat down to work on music. And we all agreed that the song HAD to be about Brooklyn. “Difficult times can make or break people. As a society, we’ve been going through an endless cycle of news that induces an ongoing fear of the apocalypse. The tiniest thing could be that last straw that separates any of us from our sanity. Instead of imploding, Barbera got into the studio. And that’s how If The World Is Ending was conceived: as an explosion. “While I was making this record, the world was (and still is) fully melting down around us: Covid, war, economic collapse, global warming, women’s and LGBTQ+ rights being stripped from us. And on top of that I was also going through a difficult breakup.” If The World Is Ending came together after a steady stream of collaborations and recording sessions all over the West Coast that included Mora, Robert DeLong, Nick Ruth (FINNEAS, Kelly Clarkson), Carlos Chairez of Kinky, and Foreign Air. For Barbera, collaboration is the key to success. She co-produced and co-wrote all the songs on the EP, but those intimate moments of sharing her personal stories with her collaborators helped tap into a sense of connection that brings her art to life. “I’m cutting vocals and singing words that I’ve literally just written and talked about in that same moment, so the emotions are still really high on the recordings.”  BEGINNERS is the DIY genre-bending creative force of Sam Barbera. With punk roots spanning multiple scenes and styles, Barbera has made a name for herself in the LA music scene as well as garnered national praise from the likes of Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Bustle, and Interview Magazine among others. Her incredible, hook-based, left-of-center productions has earned her over 55 million streams on DSPs, over 300,000 monthly listeners, and placements in campaigns for the likes of Apple, Samsung, Adobe, and New Balance as well as shows such as The Walking Dead, The L Word, Shameless, Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon and Netflix’s Honey Heist, Elite, and Sex/Life (which also included a name drop of the band with a full two-minute-long dance scene). BEGINNERS Website – Facebook – Twitter – Instagram – TikTok |
BEGINNERS Announce ‘If The World Is Ending’ EP Out This Fall: New Single Featuring Matias Mora, ”I Hate that I Love Brooklyn,” Out Now
