Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s “deep cut” reflects on most cared-for favorites

“Songs are like lovers,” Charlotte Rose Benjamin proposes in her newest single, “deep cut”. Languidly exploring how real love makes you feel from before they respond to the bitter end, it’s an honest portrayal of a relationship that makes no sense from the outside, but needs to be lived from the inside to be understood.

As Charlotte gently sings along in the music video, she trails off like she’s singing someone else’s song. It’s a visual homage to her inspiration: the lesser-known works of her favorite artists that don’t get the air time, but resonate differently for true fans.

“A lot of my favorite songs from bands that I really love are deep cuts,” she said in a statement, adding, “There’s something really intimate about the relationship between a listener and a deep cut. I had a relationship like that.”

“If it were a song it definitely wouldn’t have gotten a lot of radio play, but we loved each other in a very particular way that I felt most people wouldn’t understand.”

The intimate one-take video exposes a delicate moment of reflection on love. There’s self-deprecation in lines like, “I’m built like a strainer, a useless container” that temper the duets like “living is lonely with or without you.”

But with lines tinged with fear and hope, like “I don’t want to make this whole thing about me again,” she returns to the realistic aspect of a relationship—it is all those things. Sometimes you’re the butt of the joke and sometimes you lean on your partner, but as long as you’re in it together (like in the duets), it works.

Watch the official music video for “deep cut” below.

Ben McCoy

Ben is an advertising Madman who spends his days with words and music. When he’s not writing for his supper, he’s eating it at some of NYC’s most interesting restaurants.