Phoebe Bridgers has shared a new song, ‘On Video’, from the soundtrack to Primetime, the new A24 thriller starring Robert Pattinson.
The singer-songwriter wrote and performed the track specifically for the film, and it plays over the end titles of the film, which is released in the US today (September 25), before reaching UK cinemas on October 30.
‘On Video’ draws on elements of the original score for the film, composed by Ari Balouzian, and builds from a softer opening into heavier, distorted guitar textures before settling back down.
Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim and co-written by Oppenheim and Ajon Singh, is inspired by the rise of the controversial NBC series To Catch A Predator. Set in 2006, it stars Pattinson as journalist Chris Hansen, whose team posed as underage children online before confronting suspected sexual predators on camera.
Bridgers plays Del Harvey, one of the programme’s experienced decoys, marking her first substantial acting role in a feature film. Merritt Wever and Skyler Gisondo also star.
In NME’s four-star review of Primetime, Lou Thomas described Bridgers as “convincing despite only brief screen time”, while praising Pattinson’s portrayal of Hansen as “a queasy mix of oily and chilling”.
The review added that Oppenheim and Singh had turned the story into “a smartly acted and queasily effective drama”, concluding: “A tricky uncomfortable story, Primetime is unsettling but worth the effort.”
‘On Video’ arrives just over a month after Bridgers released her third solo album, ‘Lost Weekend’, her first since 2020’s ‘Punisher’. The record subsequently became her first solo Number One album in the UK, also topping the Vinyl Albums Chart and Record Store Chart.
NME gave ‘Lost Weekend’ five stars, writing: “The phrase “lost weekend” has become shorthand for a self-inflicted, time-bound escape from reality – see: the 1945 film of the same name that follows a struggling New York writer on a four-day bender, or John Lennon’s infamous tear across Los Angeles during his separation from Yoko Ono.”
“But Bridgers’ ‘Lost Weekend’ is the opposite of emotional evasion: more a reckoning with herself and the romantic and familial love and loss that have shaped her story and storytelling. It’s a feat that could only be achieved by a songwriter and musician self-assured in their penmanship and musicality, someone who may have started the journey of writing her third album feeling lost, but by the end wasn’t unmoored at all.”
Bridgers is currently on the North American leg of her ‘Lost Tour’, and recently began performing ‘On Video’ in the live set. She will head to the UK and Europe later this year, including dates in Dublin, Manchester and London. See all the information here.
She has also rescheduled a run of intimate UK shows for December after being hospitalised with appendicitis last month.
Elsewhere, Bridgers is set to provide a voiceover in Conor Oberst’s directorial debut, the short film Invention 13, which premieres at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles tomorrow (September 26).
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