Emma Ayzenberg – I Will Pretend
Emma Ayzenberg is back with “I Will Pretend”, the second single from her debut album Child of Saturn, due September 18. It follows Another Spring (W26), which leaned on a flower metaphor to talk about releasing someone you loved. This one is a different animal entirely: brighter, more direct, and built around a story that turned out to be almost too literal for comfort.
The song is about psyching herself up for a hard conversation with a friend, and Ayzenberg says it’s one of the more upbeat, straightforward cuts on the record. “The lyrics are really literal, plus Carly went absolutely wild on the guitar part,” she says, referring to co-producer Carly Bond of Meernaa. What I didn’t expect is how far the video pushed that literalness. Shot at Switzer Falls with Alex LaLiberte, who directed, shot, edited, and colored the whole thing himself, it restages the exact moment the song came from: Ayzenberg was about to have that hard conversation when her tire blew out for real, mid-drive. Life interrupted the metaphor before she’d even finished writing it.
The lyrics track that interruption almost note for note: a flat tire on the freeway, a wait for AAA, and a narrator turning her anger inward rather than at the person across from her. “It’s not me that you need, it’s anyone” is the song’s most direct admission, and the closing refrain, that she’ll keep pretending to be friends because she doesn’t know how not to, sits somewhere between resignation and self-protection. It’s a tighter, punchier song than “Another Spring”, and it wears the tension well.
