WL//WH Video Of The Day: LAL TUNA “Don’t Forget Me” (Official Music Video)

Video Of The Day LAL TUNA

The up-and-coming Istanbul-born, Bordeaux, France-based singer-songwriter Lal Tuna follows up last year’s two promising singles, “Car Crashes” and “Television Forever”, with the nightly, intimate, heartbreaking ballad, “Don’t Forget Me”, via Modulor Music, accompanied by a DIY music video.

Lal Tuna composes, records, and produces her music entirely on her own from her apartment. Her work creates a universe that is both intimate and cinematic, blending Pop, Gothic, and 60s-inspired Garage sounds.

“Don’t Forget Me”, with its highly diaristic lyrics, may at first seem like a simple heartbreak song. Yet the artist presents it as a prequel to “Television Forever”, a track that addresses an experience of sexual assault and thus opens a door to a darker side to the song. Inspired both by alternative bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain and by folk songwriters, notably Paul Simon, she blends these influences into her writing. The song ends with the repeated line: “I whispered when you were sleeping,” suggesting that everything she confides is impossible to express directly to the other person.

Surrounded by the heart-rending recollection of a significant teenage relationship at thirteen years old, sad obsessive glistening guitar melodies gently reverberate and rock back and forth on the steady hypnotic slow pace of round, moody bass pulses and resonant drum hits to steer, with final restrained emotive bursts of searing distortion, layered enveloping tides of lush, wistful female vocals, achingly confessing feelings of fear, confusion, and loss to a sleeping loved one.

Filmed in her own space, the music video enriches Lal’s visual aesthetic while ironically critiquing the “hysterical woman” stereotype often seen in films, as highlighted humorously in the lyrics: “…you said…There are quieter girls, that don’t make me mad”/And you went away”.

At the beginning of the DIY visuals, a hazy amber light shines on Lal Tuna as she performs “Don’t Forget Me” in a pretty white dress while holding flowers. Then, she appears wearing black clothes in various states of emotion and action against intimate areas of her apartment before a flashback to her original pure state, which now reveals blood on her hands.

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