Toronto’s Fast Romantics could be considered ambitious with their upcoming album Happiness + Euphoria, and the two-part single series they’ve released for the project. Earlier this year, the group dropped a music video for part one, “Euphoria”, which featured an assortment of almost-stock footage like clips of people experiencing a joyful reaction from something read off their phone. The imagery worked well with the track’s euphoric message, even if the zealous reactions of people in the clips bordered on parody.
Recently, the band dropped the second part, “Happiness”. About the song, group co-founder Matthew Angus has said;
“I’m not really sure where ‘Happiness’ came from. I must have been in some kind of trance. I wrote it a long time ago and it always traveled with us as we recorded other material, waiting for the right record to be on. We’d play it live sometimes. It would evolve and shift in meaning. But whatever the state I was in when I wrote it, I know it meant a lot to me. It might sound like gibberish or like a paradox or something to everyone else. But to me it feels like an anthem for the first half of my life. An ode to the things I thought would make me happy when I was a kid, and at the same time, an oddly optimistic eulogy for how little those things actually turned out to matter, and what might really matter in its place. That’s really all I can say about it. The truth is it’s more of a bundle of feelings than a pile of thoughts.”
The video opens in a similar way to “Euphoria”, with a stock footage-esque shot of a man expressing happiness. But things then take a turn as the camera pans around to show us the behind the scenes of the clip being shot, with Angus in the director’s chair. “Happiness. I want to live forever till there’s nothing left. I want to be that pounding feeling in your chest” Angus sings, while maintaining a dead-eyed, professional demeanor. The video proceeds to juxtapose the fake-happiness caught on screen with the crew’s clear misery. It’s a fantasy versus reality scenario.
“Happiness, I know they’re gonna come and take my friends away. And everybody I love is going to die someday.” The evolution of the lyrics continue to reflect this idea of the happiness we see and often put on as a facade, even as we’re truly suffering from fear, anxiety and other negative emotions. It’s a powerful continuation of what “Euphoria” starts, and worth watching. View the video above, and stream the track below.