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If 2020 was a Hot Girl Summer and last year was a Sad Girl Summer, with all the years in between being branded everything from Feral Girl to Tomato Girl Summers, then 2024 is looking like being very much an Angry Girl Summer.
With increasingly divisive elections taking place on either side of the Atlantic, a cost of living crisis that disproportionately affects women and the continuing attacks on women's rights, it’s understandable that hotness might take a back seat to passion and rage this summer.
If you needed any more signs then look no further than the return of Simeon Hammond Dallas, the Angry Girl Summer poster child with her first single since her Make It Romantic EP in 2022.
Produced by Fred Abbot, best known as lead guitarist and keyboard player in the disbanded Noah And The Whale, ‘Do I Die’ finds Simeon Hammond Dallas in a quietly reflective mood as she looks back on the past two years and tries to make sense of all the complexities that come with trying to make something of your time on earth.
“Maybe I’m deluded, am I fooling anyone? Tell me what the truth is, do I die before I’m done?” she sings as the country tinged sun-drenched soft pop production lifts the song up and sends it soaring out of the speakers, bringing to mind Dreams era Fleetwood Mac or the classy country power pop of Cam.
“I wrote most of ‘Do I Die’ in an Uber in Nashville, on my way to the airport after spending two weeks there for Americanafest,” Simeon Hammond Dallas explains. “I had the first line of the first verse rolling around in my head a few weeks before the trip and I kept it as a little voice note in my phone, something I’d get back to later. The chorus came to me in the back of the car after experiencing Music City for the first time and meeting so many writers, musicians, and performers. I was just reflecting on how crazy it is that everyone is chasing this same dream and trying to make it happen for themselves the best way that they can.”
“Then that original verse came back around and I ended up writing the first verse into the chorus in the airport. Once I got back to London I finished it up and then went into the studio with Fred Abbott to produce it fully.”
Directed by Simeon Hammond Dallas, the video is like a cross between Sliding Doors and the Spider-man pointing at Spider-man meme, as the singer splits off to follow two separate paths towards fulfillment.
“The music video features two different versions of myself trying to find answers in two different ways, and they ultimately come to meet each other in a field, where they find another version of themselves,” she tells us about the video. “I wanted to portray the journey of looking for answers, which is something I think we all do, but I liked the idea of the truth that you’rel ooking for ultimately just being your most embodied self. It felt natural to depict that version of me playing guitar in a pretty dress."
The video for ‘Do I Die’ is premiering exclusively on Holler below.
Simeon Hammond Dallas was born and raised in Camden Town in London, and grew up listening to her parent’s eclectic record collection that spanned artists from The Cranberries to Ella Fitzgerald. Her own music traverses genres and draws on a broad palette of lived experiences to create songs that take her listeners on a rom-com rollercoaster through stories of love, loss and liberation.
After finishing 2023 with a bang by showcasing in Nashville at AmericanaFest and co-headlining Bush Hall in London with Song Suffragettes, she began 2024 by opening for Grammy-winner Allison Russell and made her Country2Country and BBC Radio 2 live debuts.
‘Do I Die’ is available now.
