Multi-hyphenate James Franco and his art school buddy Tim O’Keefe — who together form the band Daddy — unleashed a trippy new music video Tuesday. It’s called “This Charming Man” and will be included in the band’s upcoming The Smiths-inspired album, “Let Me Get What I Want.”
One could argue Daddy’s rendition doesn’t much resemble The Smiths’ identically titled classic pop song, but one would be missing the point. Franco said his version based upon a poem he wrote in college, which is itself based upon the song Morrissey made famous.
“We took a 10-poem sequence called ‘The Best of the Smiths: Side A and Side B,’” Franco told Vice, which premiered the video Tuesday.
He said, “I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry). The Smiths’ songs provided inspiration for the poems, lending tone and situation. Once I had the sequence, Tim and I took the material one step further and turned the poems inspired by songs, back into songs of their own.”
Herbert White directed the band’s psychedelic video, which opens on a painted created by Franco himself, and is heavy on colorful, complex and sometimes confusing imagery.
Daddy’s “Let Me Get What I Want” features work from The Smith’s original bassist Andy Rourke and will be available in 2015.
Watch the video for “This Charming Man” above.