Video Premiere: The Shondes' “Everything Good”

Much of, perhaps even most of, the work of being an activist is hard. People struggling to make the world better make it their life’s work to grapple on a daily basis with the ways things go wrong, and how, hopefully, those wrongs might be fixed. The work is never done, and it’s often done in the face of great resistance. It’s usually assumed that activist work is hard way more often than it’s easy And yet: sometimes, the act of being completely bowled over, head-over-heels in love, and unafraid to shout it from the rooftops, is a downright radical act. In their latest single and video, the sweet “Everything Good,” Brooklyn feminist rock band The Shondes turn loving into an act of revolution. 

The Shondes’ vocalist and lead songwriter, Louisa Rachel Solomon, wrote “Everything Good” from a place of being “completely in love, and completely, viscerally in touch with all it had taken to get there.” That’s a relatively rare angle to take in a love song (with at least one flawless and notable exception) – the angle where the love one feels is made sweeter precisely because it has come at the other side of great pain. But that’s always been The Shondes’ MO. “If there’s one consistent theme throughout the many years this band has been writing songs, it’s affirmation of life,” says Solomon. “Whether we are writing about heartbreak, betrayal, abuse, abandonment, depression, suicide, or yeah, being completely in love, we are writing about the struggle to be as fully alive as we can. And it is always our hope that we are helping other people do the same.” 

“Everything Good” appears on The Shondes’ new album Brighton, out now on Exotic Fever Records.