The progressive rock and groove band from Bengaluru, Ginny and the Bottle takes pride in celebrating diversity. After working on its own music for over a year, the band releases its new single, Aks, that's part of the upcoming album. The band dedicates this to their friends from the LGBTQ community. We speak to vocalist and bassist, Shalini Mohan about the themes of the song and the moving video.
Why did you choose this theme for the song?
Aks is dedicated to anyone who is struggling with their true self, who scream from the inside to break through all the judgement and hate while hoping for a day when being themselves doesn't feel like such a crime. From our side, this is personally dedicated to every member of the LGBTQ community. It's astonishing that people in this day and age, with all the information available around, choose to still believe that being gay (for example) is a perverted sexual choice. People blindly trust science to keep them safe behind the wheels of a car, but prefer to ignore the same science that tells us homosexuality is anything but a simple "choice". Everybody could use some acceptance - by giving and receiving it. For me, penning down the English lyrics was a way of venting some of my own personal struggles. I now believe life will always throw us challenges - it's how we play the hand that we're dealt with, that matters.
Tell us more about the video.
When I conceptualised the story, I had a generic person in mind from the community. However, we zeroed in on Prashant Priyadarshi as the protagonist. On meeting him for the first time, there was an immediate connection and Prashant could connect to the story deeply as well. His look in the video has been styled by Elton John, the stylist for Destello Clothing that was founded by Prashant.
The video has been directed by Mario Jerome, who also conceptualised the screenplay. While I penned down the English lyrics, Deevas Gupta wrote the Hindi Lyrics based on the English. We had a wonderful team working with us - Bhushan Bagadia (director of photography), Parabjeet Singh (executive producer), Krishnaprasad Raveendran (editor) and Kabeeshan Shanmuganathan (VFX).
For our first release, we couldn't have been happier as each one in the band personally connects with the song in some way or the other, and the song has everyone's signature on it. We cannot wait to release our album, which is coming up very, very soon.
Watch the video here: