“Many years ago, I had short fling with a girl living in NYC,” recalls singer and songwriter Benjamin Cartel, on the origin of today’s quiet gem of a song and video. “We both attended different colleges. And we were both young and impressionable.
“After a few months, I broke it off with her in a subway station,” Cartel continues. “As I was saying goodbye, a beggar in the subway was rattling a paper cup full of change singing ‘love makes the world go ‘round.’ He was singing and begging extremely close to where we were talking. It seemed so surreal. It felt like the man wanted to interrupt us and take us out of our breakup.
“I would have started to laugh, but I was too full of emotions at the time,” he said. “The absurdity of that moment, and song of the homeless man never left me. I was moved to write a song about the breakup. What happened in real life and what occurs in the video are two different stories. In this video, [director] Matt Clements and I enjoyed the idea of having two different versions of a breakup in one short video.
“When you ‘trace your tracks,’ as the song says, who broke up with who? Which story is the true story?”
Cartel’s new album, Gothenburg, is being readied for release with the backing of a Pledge Music crowd funding campaign.
He performs tonight at HiFi Bar on Avenue A in NYC.
