COYLE GIRELLI – “…If They’re in a Theatre, They Can’t Escape.”
Words by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Wednesday 15th February 2023
Press Pic by: Shervin Lainez
Talking SENSE about the Perks of a Captive Audience
Christened “the shoegaze Elvis Presley” by SENSE – a moniker he’s been quite taken with – New York-based troubadour Coyle Girelli has followed up last year’s excellent Funhouse with something a little different … a musical theatre project called True Love Forever, with a music video of the cast pulling off a charming dance routine in an active subway. Coyle talked us through the challenges of filming in the famously boisterous city …
The video for it is absolutely adorable, though I have to ask, do you recommend dancing with random strangers on New York subways?
No. [Laughs] That would not end well, for anyone involved! I have no doubt in my mind. Yeah, we got lucky. That is essentially the cast – the sort of ten-person ensemble cast that we’ve been working with – that’s who essentially is in the video, directed by Janine at Third Rail Projects. Yeah, we got lucky. You go down into the subway to try and film anything, you’re in the lap of the gods whether you’re going to get anything useable, or it’s just going to be madness the entire time, but everyone kind of behaved, and even though we shot it over a couple of days, just after rush hour, so there’s still people around, but people were so well behaved. I was proud of us New Yorkers. Everyone kind of stayed on one end of the train or walked around, or just watched a lot. There was an audience for a lot of it as well. Yeah, kind of miraculously managed to get away with filming it, which is good.
I feel like you would have to do something pretty outrageous in order to get a reaction out of people who use the New York subway very often, because if it’s not crazy people shouting at each other or people filming TikToks … what’s it going to take to actually shock people in New York? [Laughs]
I guess, yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. But you know, usually, someone wants to get involved. I figured someone would always be dancing through the scene or naked through the scene. I just figured there’d be too much craziness to actually get it done, but yeah, everyone was like “whatever” for the most part, which I guess I should have anticipated.
Obviously you’ve written a lot of songs throughout your life, but what are some of the challenges of writing music for a stage production, as opposed to what you normally do?
It’s a different type of songwriting, for sure. It’s obviously more theatrical. You’re having to tell a story, or propel a story sometimes, with the song. You have to imagine different people’s voices throughout the song, which is not something you always do in traditional pop or rock songwriting. You know, for the most part, I think why I’m drawn to it is you’re able to write a concept album, essentially, and I think the artform of the album is harder to get across, and have people listen to it in the order and the manner in which you would like, because that’s just not how people listen to music anymore … they kind of stream music, and they pull a song here and there, and it’s all in the playlist, with one or two songs from your album, and maybe that’s how most people will listen to you. I think, with theatre, other than film, it’s the only place left where you can create a concept album, and write songs that work with other songs, in a certain order, to create a message or a feeling or a story for the listener, and if they’re in a theatre, they can’t escape, so they have to sit and listen to it in the order that you intended. I think that’s what I love about theatre – that you can tell a story in an album … That’s what really draws me to do it, is the art of the concept album still being alive and well.
True Love Forever is out now. Check out the full interview below.