Bella Figlia’s “New Form” Music Video Premiere

Jul 28

Written By Vivienne Schandelmeier-Gilgunn

Wick Monet hosted Elizabeth Harris, aka Bella Figlia, for the debut of her new music video “New Form” in collaboration with Sandy Loaf, featuring opening performances from Calluna and Pup Named Rosy. “New Form” is about evolving as a person and an artist while still paying homage to your past selves and respecting where you came from. To find out more, check out the rest of the blog for photos of the performances and a Q&A we did to finish the night!

What inspired “New Form”?

Elizabeth: “So basically, New Form is the start of my next era. I used to perform under the name fig, and then I changed my name to Bella Figlia, and Bella Figlia is Italian for beautiful daughter, it’s what my grandmother used to call me. I took on that name mostly for copyright, because there's another fig, but Figlia is spelled f i g l i a, so there's still a fig in there. Even if it's silent. So I wanted to do that, but this song was really inspired by taking on new shapes after just going through a lot of changes, and all of the percussive sounds in the song are actually spliced up audio files from my friend Mary, who's a metal worker at the Children's Museum, and she sent me a an audio file of her just playing around with these pieces of metal. I was like, okay, I'm using this, keep sending me files of you working with metal sounds. So I spliced those up, and those are all the sounds in the song. That's also where the lyric “anneal the piece of the metal you gave” comes from, because this concept of annealing is when you melt metal to take on new forms and new shapes, and that's where a lot of the inspiration comes from. This concept of taking something that is made of this material and melting it down, and it's still the same genetic makeup, but it's becoming something different. I really related to that with changing my artist name and just trying to make a new way for myself, because I knew I wanted to really dive into doing more electronic things and layering in different ways and layering different sounds and layering my voice so I was really excited to be able to create this song out of all of that.”

What was the creation process like?

Elizabeth: “I came to Sadie with this idea. I grew up super Catholic and religious, and I wanted to take imagery of a nun becoming a warrior, as you see in the video. There are a lot of slutty lesbian nun tropes, and I distinctly didn't want it to be that. I wanted it to be about this character that is going through a period of discernment and is trying to decide how they want to live their life and how they want to move forward with this huge decision. So I was like, we're going to the church, and I'm really grateful for Sadie, because not a lot of people would be down for that. Not a lot of people would be like, “Yeah, I'll meet you at Old Saint Pat's in the Strip, and we'll film you dressed as a full-fledged nun.” I wanted to be a nun, so it goes a little bit into my lore. I was a very devout Catholic, so much so that I was like, I could do this. Which is crazy to think about now, obviously, but it's still very much a part of me. And I think that when we think about taking on new forms and becoming different versions of ourselves, we're like, that person's dead. They don't exist anymore. But I wanted to have something that honored that person, and that's why, at the end of the video, I have the rosary still with the sword. So it's like these two things are still existing for me, they're still a part of me. It's like that part of me isn't the current reality, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't still hold some truth to me and my lived experience. Sadie really came through with all of the incredible direction and all the layering.”

Sadie: “I really liked your entire concept. It was really exciting to explore that together and get closer through it. I love how you found a wig that looks like your hair, and we were trying to chop it with the sword, but then we went forward with the scissors. I loved all your expressions through it and every phase, you're a different character, but exploring yourself through that, too, and from an outside perspective, which is really fun to be a part of. Also, with it being black and white, it feels like an old film or an old experience or past memory.”

What is the significance of the choice of costume in the video?

Elizabeth: “So for anyone who knew me before 2020, I used to have really long curly hair, and I tried to find a wig that looked very similar to my hair because, I mean, hair is really a wild thing. My relationship to my hair has been so interesting throughout this, so I wanted that to be part of the video, cutting off the hair. When I cut off my hair, I had such a liberating experience of being able to lean more into myself and my body and my art because I felt like I didn't have this thing weighing me down anymore. It was very definitive of my personhood and my personality, and the way that people saw me, in which, when you see images in art and in media and in the world, and you relate to them, how are you relating to them? Right? For me, it was like this person has long curly hair. That's me. And once I shaved my head, that wasn't me anymore. I had to find other examples and other images and things that made me feel like me without having such a deliberate, I look like this, so I relate to it, and being able to see things and connect with the spirit of them rather than the total outward appearance. So that was something that I wanted to be in the video, I wanted to show that, severing of that connection of that definitive experience of being so defined by how I looked because I had this hair. I wanted to be wearing a nightgown because I wanted it to be very much like a lesbian nun hallucination vibe, like what's going on? It's candlelit, it's dark. When we think of nighttime, it's a very discerning time of contemplation and thinking about, you know, what am I doing with my life? And that was kind of the vision behind the smock and the hair. Then I knew I wanted to be wearing armor, I knew I wanted it to be like a nun to warrior timeline. And we wanted to show that moment of discernment where I have the hammer and I'm building the armor and I'm creating it for myself, and I'm thinking, is this how I want it to look? How do I feel creating this for myself? And then finally, donning it at the end.”

What’s something that came out of or you gained during the creation process that you did not expect?

Elizabeth: “I think I'm being a lot more graceful with myself in terms of creating, mostly because I am really a lyric forward songwriter, and I love lyricism, but I'm trying to hone in on what parts of the music making make me feel excited and joyful, which is why I loved layering all of those elements and being able to figure out how to splice up those audio files of the metal sounds to be exactly what I wanted them to be. That has been the most exciting part of this, being able to understand that i’m honing all these new skills, which has been really cool. That and using my voice as an instrument has been really fun, which is kind of why I moved into this, because as somebody who has primarily performed behind a piano or a guitar, I was feeling restricted, and I wanted to use more of my voice. And so I'm like, I'm going to perform and layer all of these things so that I can be embodied so that I can be a performer, and interact with the audience and be more myself and lean more into my artistry so that I'm not kind of kept behind these instruments. The siren sound in the song wasn't supposed to be in the song, I was warming up before and I just did it and then I put it in because I thought it sounded cool. I thought it was a cool transition because it's like a sound spectrum, we're starting from one place and we're ending in another. So it was a cool way to just throw that in there, and that's not something that I normally would have done. I went to music school and did the whole conservatory thing and all that, and trying to break from those rigid rules has been really liberating.”

Has creating this video inspired other future creations or projects you may want to pursue?

Sadie: “We're going to be working on another video together that's going to be very euphoric and bright and really fun and sexy. It's such a cool opportunity to get to work with an artist twice. I get to make another music video that almost feels like another chapter, and I feel like this character is going to be completely different, which is really exciting, and trying to learn more about blocking and sort of a dialogue between characters, but in a music video, there isn't necessarily a dialogue. So it's going to be a lot about movement and love, and the feelings of falling in love, which will be really fun.”

Elizabeth: “So our next music video, we're actually starting production now, but I'm really excited because it's for “Oh How Sweet”, the second song that I performed, and this one I'm really excited because Sadie has a vision for it. I was just like, I want there to be me making out with someone, so you do the rest, and then that's what I want. I want it to be sexy and fun, and I'm making out with someone and maybe we're rolling around in some kind of goo. So that's what you can expect for that. Collaborating with Sadie has been really fun because I feel like it's unlocking different parts of me, and I am really grateful for that. I feel like she sees me and my vision, and I don't feel hesitant or afraid to express things. I feel very comfortable expressing things with Sadie, and so that allows me to then lean more into these other sides of myself that I may not usually feel comfortable with.”