Keli Holiday has returned this week with a brand new single, “Love Was a Stranger.”
Written off the back of his debut album, Capital Fiction, the new track marks the beginning of a new chapter for the solo project of Peking Duk’s Adam Hyde, which sonically leans into Australian country and rock.
“This is an expression in response to my experiences since releasing Capital Fiction. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautifully stupid,” Holiday said.
“It is about masculinity, sure, but ultimately it represents the fact that we fear the unknown, and today it feels like love is a stranger more than ever. Hate seems to be the default gear online. If we all got to know what we are longing for a little better, I think we’d find ourselves smiling at the sky instead of chasing dopamine on a screen. It’s about meeting everything thrown at you with love.
“It ain’t easy and it ain’t complete, but the journey itself is something to share through the vessel of a song that feels like cruising down a highway at 3am with the desert wind in your hair.”
Check out the official music video below, directed by Isaac Brown.
“To me, the song is about owning who you are in the face of judgment,” Brown said. “We wanted to take that idea and make it physical, so Keli finds himself in this strange little world where people are literally taking aim at a target made in his image. The guns become a fairly direct metaphor for being targeted for the man you are and the artist you choose to be. There’s something interesting in the tension between being yourself and the pressure to make yourself more palatable to other people. Even with a target on his back, Keli meets that hostility with love rather than fear.”
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The release comes after Hyde achieved a rare feat this year, with both Capital Fiction and Peking Duk’s Paradise debuting at No. 1 on the ARIA Australian Albums chart, making him just the second local artist in history to score two top albums in a single calendar year across different projects.
