Acclaimed and rising Norwegian singer/songwriter and pop artist Beharie released his highly-anticipated, 12-song full-length debut, Are You There Boy? last year. The album met the artist where he was at that particular moment and invited listeners into a carefully curated sonic world that featured vibrant melodies and delicate, smooth.
Thematically, the album touched upon love. self-doubt, desire, longing and pain with his heart unironically and proudly worn on his sleeve — and with a remarkable sense of nuance. Throughout, the album follows a multifaceted, fully-fleshed out character, who seeks meaningful connections, follows his curiosity wherever it takes him and ultimately discovers himself. And as result, the album sees its main narrator — and in turn, its creator — exploring the ever-changing, versatile aspects of their own humanity and identity while showcasing his insecurities, complexities, passions and growth in a very real fashion.
“This album has given me the opportunity to delve into various aspects of my own identity, and in the process, I have explored the complexity inherent in my personality and expression,” Beharie explains. “We have nurtured different characters and played with their distinct expressions. These characters have been assigned unique names: Washed-out jeans boy, float in space boy, constant fear boy, make believe boy, and lost in thought boy.” Each of those characters represents fragments of Beharie’s soul, personality and essence — all in search of a sense of belonging.
The album also features collaborations with two rising singer/songwriters — Dublin‘s Uly and The Netherlands’ Judy Blank.
Album single “Desire,” is built around a buoyant melodic groove, skittering boom bap serving as an ethereal and silky bed for Beharie’s tender and yearning delivery. The song’s narrator sweetly wants to prove to a prospective love interest, that he’s the right one for them — and for the rest of their lives. Beharie explains that “Desire” is a confident love song about “insisting on being the right one for someone you like and telling them without any doubt, and being willing to do anything to make it happen.”
“Desire” reveals a songwriter, who seems to effortlessly craft a catchy, buoyant songs rooted in earnest, lived-in lyricism that playfully eschews cliches and formulas.
Directed by Martin Kopperud, the accompanying video features the acclaimed and rising Norwegian artist as part of a weird, sociological and psychological experiment in which he discovers — much to his own frustration — that he can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. At some point, Beharie gets up and escapes into the streets. The video offers two important lessons: learning self-acceptance and standing firm in being yourself and in your beliefs, even in the face of a world that often enforces conformity and the path of least resistance.
“We explore the idea of self desire, to do and be yourself, and how we often meet forces that don’t necessarily agree or comply with what you believe in, that’ll rather tell you how something works,” the video’s director Martin Kopperud says on the video. “We hope this can be a reminder to always stay true to yourself and to stand for your beliefs.”
“It has been a really fun and interesting experience working with Martin Kopperud,” Beharie explains. “The track is a quite playful and energetic tune, but put together with this visual universe it becomes a bit more mysterious and quirky.”
