Safiyah Hernandez’s debut album Homesick is an accumulation of years of reflection which range from identity through a multi-culture lens, social justice, and loss. Taken from Hernandez’s debut, “Mars” and its visual companion are a great introduction to the artist’s outlook, voice, and the reality of the climate crisis.
“Mars” is an alternative slow burner that is filled with melodic beauty on the reflection of a somber state. The dreamy and melancholy ballad is an urgent cry for our actions to be recognized and for action to be taken regarding the pulse of Earth. Hernandez sagely arranges these moments for a grand reception on the alternative slow burner. The track’s narrative doesn’t necessarily attack, it ponders and leaves a listener sitting with the results. “While we use mass destruction as communication/They gave us no reply/Cause I don’t wanna live on Mars/I never wanted my fate written in the stars/How did the money make us all that cheap?,” asks Hernandez.
Featuring an accompanying visual animated by Joëlle Carreño, the assumption from where the character starts to where they end is a stark dosage of reality that needs to be understood.
“The lyrics behind Mars are fueled by my feelings on the climate crisis, the little effort by big corporations being put in to stop it, and all of the humans, animals, and ecosystems being severely affected by it,” shares Hernandez on a social media post. “I also took something from a documentary I watched, and it was talking about how if extraterrestrial life had ever seen how destructive we are to ourselves and our planet, they’d simply not see the point in interaction of any kind. I found this very interesting and telling of how we live and treat our planet. We were able to work with a very talented artist, Joëlle Carreño from Wild Honey Pie for this video. The video shows me living on what looks like Mars, but in the end you find out it was a destroyed version of Earth. I look SO COOL in outer space with my guitar.”
Safiyah Hernandez’s debut album is a mixture of indie rock, RnB/pop with Arabic tones. As a young Muslim woman of color, Hernandez is keen to represent her identity through her poetic lyrics and genre-bending sound.
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