Premiere: ARB injects fang-toothed bite with new song, ‘Call Me Petty’
The New York singer-songwriter confronts her anger and pain.
Anger can consume us until there’s nothing left. In one of his teachings, The Dalai Lama spoke on inner contentment. “In order to be happy, we must first possess inner contentment — and inner contentment doesn’t come from having all we want, but rather from wanting and appreciating all we have,” he said. It can be hard to be human and navigate a world hellbent on destruction, and even intimate, presumed healthy encounters can bludgeon us unconscious. New York singer-songwriter ARB (real name Alyssa Rallo Bennett) picks the barbs from her still-throbbing wounds with her new song “Call Me Petty,” premiering today, in which she confronts her rage to come to enlightenment and peace. But the journey to such an end is a brutal one.
“Call me petty / Call me small / Call me… ugly / I’ve heard them all,” she sings, getting the blistered feelings out of the way right from the start. “Not gonna judge it / I’m gonna love it.” She turns her mental state over, where the misery seems to course and swell in her veins, and lets it all ooze from her body. “I’m gonna take it / Not going to fake it,” she resolves. She allows herself to feel whatever she’s feeling – as draining as it all might be – and through such an act, she can find herself again. “[This song] came out of a very real, very dark moment that was hurtful and tough to live with,” she writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “Turning this experience on its head and writing the song helped me find humor, ownership, and relief from it’s effects. The lyrics kind of poured out, and the chords I was hearing in my head followed.
Alongside producer Kevin Kendrick, who “egged me on a lot about the ‘vile’ words being a play on Kurt Weill, followed by the ‘Three Penny Opera” references,” she says, Bennett swims in a foamy sea of electric guitars that ring out as a rally to push her onward through the terrain. She further explains, “This led me to the antithesis of Mack the Knife – one of my hero’s, the Dali Llama. I was kind of ecstatic to weave him organically into the song as at least an aspiration of where I’d like to be. When we recorded it at Steve Kellner’s studio in Westwood, we shot some studio footage which will become part of a music video I’m directing in a very kitschy and perfectly ‘petty’ consignment shop that I can’t wait to share in the new year.”
Bennett – also a member of the band, JAMAAD – works extensively as a a film director and serves as executive director and co-founder of Stonestreet Studios. Her most accomplished project to-date is 2018’s ReRun feature, written by Stonestreet co-founder and executive director Gary O. Bennett and starring Christopher Lloyd, who plays George Benson, an older gentlemen haunted by lost love.
Listen below:
