Maria Smith (vocals, guitar) and Victor Thell (vocals, guitar, production) make up the Swedish pop/folk duo that is Smith & Thell. The pair met as young teenagers at a local music event in their hometown of Helsingborg in Southern Sweden. With a deep passion for music, they teamed up and in 2015 released their debut single “Statue” which was performed on the Swedish television program SVT Moraeus. Listeners immediately fell in love and in the same year they won the award for Rookie Artist/Band Of The Year at the Denniz Pop Awards. Although their career was blowing up nationally, the band’s first major international breakthrough came in the fall of 2018 with the release of their single “Forgive Me Friend”. Hitting #1 on the Swedish Pop charts and topping the U.S. Alternative radio charts, fans were lining up to hear this new sound, 85 million times to be exact. Since then, they have become one of the most sought after songwriter / producer duos in the world, garnering over 3.5 billion streams to date on songs they’ve performed, written and produced. As a multi-platinum band, Smith & Thell have released two albums including 2 consecutive #1s (and 4 consecutive Top 5 singles) while playing shows alongside bands including Young The Giant, The Head and The Heart, and Fitz and the Tantrums.
On February 11th, the pop/folk duo released their newest single ‘Planet Mars’. Smith says, “Planet Mars is a song about really wanting a relationship to work, but realizing you’ve grown apart to the point where the distance between you is galaxies. About having the desire to communicate with the one you’ve loved so much, but feeling like your words keep getting lost in translation. It’s about wanting to change who you are just to make it work. A dystopian love song about being alone in the great blank space, wishing you could travel to each other’s strange planets one more time.” They say this song is different from previous releases because “This is a piano ballad, stripped down to only piano, vocals and some percussion. Smith & Thell’s prior tracks have all been full blown production with a lot of energy.”
Simultaneously, they released a professional lyric video for the song, allowing for a full sensory experience into the track’s more intimate meaning. When watching the lyric video, it is apparent that it takes huge inspiration from the single cover which features a black and white image of Maria and Victor sitting on a bench staring up at a bright and colorful planet. This picture as well as other monochromatic images of the duo are featured throughout the music video behind a subtle film noise overlay that pairs nicely with the piano composition. I love how the only color we see in the video is that of the planets and other galactic visuals. The colors are bright and neon which really jump out at you against the black background, just as it is on the single cover. This brand cohesiveness holds a lot of power and really allows for a more impactful song or album release. On top of that, it helps your lyric videos stand out amongst the sea of fan made videos, bringing more traffic to the artist’s officially verified release and channel. This song features a lot of vocal peaks and valleys with a few pace changes and the creative transitioning between vignettes really captures that energy.
Up next for Smith & Thell they say, “More new music out later in the year, as well as MANY gigs and festivals. A lot of shows have been postponed the last 2 years and the band are super eager to finally go on the road and meet their audience.” You can check out the live performance video for ‘Planet Mars’ here and/or catch them at their next performance in London, England at Lafayette on February 27th.
Check out the lyric video for Smith & Thell’s ‘Planet Mars‘ on YouTube here: