𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗔𝗥𝗬: 𝗧𝗢𝗢 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗬 𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗦

”𝐓𝐎𝐎 𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐘 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐒” from the album “Loud like love” was made available as download eight years ago today on 9th of July 2013. On August 23rd it was also released as vinyl in Europe and additional as CD in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It peaked no. 14 in the German Singles Chart.

The song was recorded at RAK, Air and Strongroom Studios, all located in London. Adam Noble was responsible for producing, engineering and mixing.

🎬 𝗧𝗢𝗢 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗬 𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗦 – 𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟 𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗢
🎵 http://bit.ly/2EWek89 🎵

Photo credit: Screenshots from the video, edit by Silke

The lyrics raise the question of whether these new social network sites are actually bringing people closer together or making people more distant from each other. ”Too many friends” is based on a real event that happened in Brian's life (see quotes below). It had driven him to the thoughts of what a friendship really means these days: “This song is about alienation, false promises that are carried through the social networks. It is responsible for solidarity but also for the new form of loneliness” (Rock & Pop Czech Republic, November 2013).

Placebo shot the official music clip with filmmaker Saman Kesh in Los Angeles. American author Bret Easton Ellis (“American Psycho”, “Less than zero”) provides a voiceover as a narrator. Brian said that he felt it was “very appropriate, considering how much Bret tweets and how active he is on social media. It fitted in really well (Diffuser, October 2013). The video presents a “detective case” regarding a series of events occuring during a pool party.

🎬 𝗠𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗢
👀 http://bit.ly/2WS7pa5

Photo credit: Joseph Llaned

📌 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗧 𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗡 𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗦 📌
The American author, screenwriter and director was born on March 7th 1964. He is most (in)famous for “American Psycho“, which was said to be one of the most disturbing books ever written when it was published in 1991. It became cult, especially after its movie adaption in 2000.
Ellis' first novel “Less than zero“ was released in 1985. It is a story about disaffected, rich teenagers in Los Angeles. One of the its main characters, a heroin addict named Julian, was supposedly the inspiration for the Placebo song “Julien“.
Other controversal novels by Ellis are “The rules of attraction“ and “Lunar Park“. His latest work “Imperial bedroom“ is a sequel to his first book “Less than zero“.


📌 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗙𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗢 𝗖𝗟𝗜𝗣 📌
📢 ”We didn’t actually meet Bret Easton Ellis because of the way these things work, as everyone is really busy and I think he’s really busy with his new film called The Canyon. The director lives in LA, and Bret Easton lives in New York and we live in London. So we flew to LA to film the video with Saman Keshavarz the director, and while we were there, he brought up the idea of having Bret Easton narrate the video and we loved the idea. But by that time we were on the way back from LA to London, so we never got to meet him but we were very happy to have him on it.”
(Bandwagon, August 2013)

📌 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗢𝗡 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗧 𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗡 𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗦 📌
📢 “We felt that it was very appropriate, considering how much he tweets and how active he is on social media. It fitted in really well. But also, for me, I was very excited about the fact that he would be involved with Placebo in any way. When I was a teenager, I read his first two books, “The Rules Of Attraction“ and “Less Than Zero.“ They had a big impact on me. He sort of captured a kind of lost-at-sea nihilism that was present in the ‘80s. Just from a fan’s point of view, it was a very attractive project for me. I am genuinely a fan.“
(Diffuser, October 2013)

Photo credit: Joseph Llanes

📌 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦 𝗢𝗡 “𝗧𝗢𝗢 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗬 𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗦“ 📌
📢 "'Too many friends' is most definitely not a rallying cry against social media. It is a small story about social alienation. I do worry, however, that technology is fast replacing religion as the opium of the people. But we cannot blame the technology itself – people are the problem. After all, guns don't kill people, but people do.”
(Brian, BK, August 22nd 2013)

📢 ”I think musically that song is a bit of a celebration of our love of big anthemic eighties pop, like ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. We kind of went all out there musically for that track. And I think in terms of lyrical subject, it definitely touches upon the effect of technology and on the way that we interact. It’s a phenomenon that’s occurring right now and we’re just asking a few questions like, ‘is it actually bringing people closer together? Creating a lot of cyber friends – what does that actually mean? Does it mean that you have more friends or does it mean you’re creating some kind of virtual existence?’”
(Stefan, Hunger, August 8th 2013)

📢 ”I don’t remember what I was googling but one day my computer started to attack me with links as I was some kind of a very active member of a community of gays, fetishists or what else. „Wow, my computer thinks I’m gay!“ I was thinking. And immediately I thought that it could be an awesome slogan for Placebo. Our relationships with technology have come to a very personal level... That exact week, few of my friends – to sort it out, not I, for me the social networks are still an unknown – were trying to refuse the ‚friend requests‘ of people who were trying to be the friends with them on the Internet. Simply they have had too many of them already. And I asked „How can you have that many friends?“ And I had started to count how many friends do I have. I mean the real friends, and I can say that there wasn’t any number close to 500 or 1000. It had driven me to the thoughts of what a friendship really means these days and how much the perception of the interpersonal relationships has changed. This song is about alienation, false promises that are carried through the social networks. It is responsible for solidarity but also for the new form of loneliness.”
(Brian, Rock & Pop Czech Republic, November 2013)

📢 “'Too many friends' is based on real events. One day I was at my computer – and I don't know what I typed into Google… what dodgy porn I was watching… and all of sudden my computer started advertising to me. Like, you know, I was a gay man into the fetish thing. And I remember saying to myself, 'My computer thinks I'm gay today' – what a ridiculous line to start a song. (laughs)
(Brian, The Music, September 2013)

📢 ''Some friends had said they'd stopped accepting friends on social networks because they had too many. And I thought, how is it possible to have too many friends, and how many do I have in the real world and what is the nature of friendship today now that people spend so much time communicating with people that they've never met in cyberspace? So I put the two ideas together and that was how I came up with the song.''
(Brian, Bangkok Post, August 18th 2013)

📢 ”I was aware of the fact that it would probably polarize opinions quite a bit. I’ve never shyed away from doing that in the past. At the time, I thought, “Do I have the courage to do this?,” because it is so brazen that people are either gonna love it, get it or hate it. Do I still have the courage to do that, almost 20 years down the line? At the end of the day, I feel that to a great degree, fortune favors the brave, and I mustered up the courage to just go for it.”
(Brian, Pure Volume, September 12th 2013)

Post by Silke