Yellin Flaherty aka Zyles is the pop artist we should be watching out for. With a variety of influences that offers a rich background for his musicality, the singer-songwriter is working towards crafting songs that aim to breathe a new life into the pop world.
His name is a re-romanization of his Chinese name, Ye Zi Li, a result of his fascination with the place. Like his influences, Zyles music is “spatial”. With urbane pop being his focal point, the artist seems to talk about his life in the “city” as he tries of make sense of the events he encounters and understand emotions like “love” as a twenty-something.
Today, CelebMix premieres the music video for his single “Secretary”.
“In ‘Secretary,’ the narrator is trying to avoid temptation from the secretary, rather than embracing it,” says Zyles. “There is intended to be a healthy amount sexual tension in my songs, without the cliche depictions of sex, and a certain acknowledgement that this type of indulgence is not always in our best interest.”
With an exciting video for “Secretary”, Zyles is looking to expand beyond cliche depictions of love in the 21st century.
In the music video, the artist equates and compare the search for a secretary with the “marriage problem”. The tongue-in-cheek humour turns the idea of falling in love over its heel and shows the futility of “falling into” temptation. Talking about playing around the clichéd theme, Zyles explained talked about the inspiration behind the music video and said:
“The Secretary Problem, The Marriage Problem, This dilemma has many names. But the question is universal: How do we choose the best? The best hire. The best lover. I was inspired by a thought experiment from the math community around how to hire a secretary. And then by the psych community that demonstrated that we tend to have a trouble letting go, even when we know a better option is out there. In this song, I merged the secretary and marriage themes. The secretary is the lover. And she won’t let me sleep.”
“Secretary” is the second single to be released this year by Bay Area indie pop songwriter, Zyles. To celebrate the release of the video, Zyles will be performing tonight in Los Angeles at the Mint (10.30).
What do you think about the single? Share your thoughts via tweet @CelebMix.