Videos

DAN MANGAN shares video for new love song “”Fool For Waiting””

• 27th Apr 2018

Today, Vancouver songsmith Dan Mangan has shared a video for new single “Fool for Waiting” and with it has opened up about his mother coming out when he was a teenager.

Having been somewhat quiet since 2015’s full band album, ‘Club Meds’, under the moniker Dan Mangan + Blacksmith, this new track finds him returning to the arresting and thought-provoking simplicity of his solo work, with a new album in the works for this Autumn via City Slang.

Mangan says the video isn’t “meant to be revolutionary or shocking. It’s meant to subtly convey how far we’ve come as a society in the last several decades.”

While the video holds a mirror to society as a whole, it also strikes a personal chord with Mangan himself. He explains, “When I was fifteen, my mom took me out for dinner and informed me that our good family friend Liz would be moving in. I was raised in a very open-minded household and had never for a moment considered myself homophobic, but I completely freaked out. I was terrified of being the kid in high school with the ‘gay mom’. I stopped inviting people over. It took ages to tell my closest friends – to which (of course) they responded, ‘Obviously, we figured it out. Who cares?’. My mom’s partner, whom she has since married and is still with, has become such a crucial part of my life that it’s pretty much impossible to imagine our family without her. Love is love, and sexuality is not binary. World goings-on are currently worrisome, and we have a long way to go, but we are moving forward. This video celebrates these steps forward amidst the chaos. It’s about celebrating the normalisation of a more diverse understanding of love.”

“Fool For Waiting” is about “finding someone who makes you feel less crazy, or at least someone who finds your craziness endearing because it’s real and honest,” says Mangan. “And that real, imperfect love is not always as fantastical or magical as a wild romance, but that it’s worth waiting for.”

Produced by Simone Felice (Lumineers, Bat For Lashes) and engineered/mixed by Ryan Hewitt (Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers), the song’s vocals, piano, and drums were recorded live off the floor as a duo with Mangan and Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley, St. Vincent). “The take feels a bit imperfect in a nice way,” says Mangan. “There’s a moment at the end where I chuckled on the line ‘Oh, and they tell me’. Simone liked it because he couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying. And ain’t that just life…”

Over the course of 10 years, Dan Mangan has gone from a bearded 20-something troubadour playing coffee shop open mics to earning top ten radio hits, scoring Hollywood films, and winning multiple JUNO Awards. “Fool For Waiting” follows up 2016’s homespun EP Unmake and 2015’s collaborative art-rock album ‘Club Meds’. In 2012 Mangan won two JUNO Awards for his sophomore LP, Oh Fortune, and his 2010 debut album, ‘Nice, Nice, Very Nice’, was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.

Later this year, Dan Mangan will release his fifth studio album.