McKenna Grace is back with a new single and music video titled “Ugly Crier,” continuing her thread of penning emotive anthems devoted to uncovering all the ways we are our own worst enemies. It’s her first single of the new year as well for the rising artist, whose past tracks like “Self Dysmorphia” and “Post Party Trauma” serve as cautionary tales against constant internal self-laceration and loneliness. A debut EP might be somewhere in the future but for now, Grace has left us with another emotionally brutalizing song in the form of “Ugly Crier.”
Written about a horrendously awkward night out at a Hollywood party, the song uses Grace’s feelings of being morbidly out of place to catapult into a far more severe fear of being discovered as a fraud. “I know a girl who never got into choir,” she sings at the song’s beginning, drawn back to the prior moments in her life that made her feel less capable than she actually was. But dispelling the vicious voices that come out of the woodwork is easier said than done (“I’m so mediocre, I don’t measure up to no one”). Though it helps to have a blistering pop bop to soundtrack the whole downward spiral to.
The music video for “Ugly Crier,” co-directed by Grace and Gus Black, plays out the ways the artist felt inadequate (and severely underdressed) at the party. Opening with a shot of her being worked on by multiple make-up artists, the video then cuts to her at home wielding a pink megaphone and a green teddy bear sweater facing down a mirror (which later has “Waste of Space” scrawled on it in lipstick).
It then jumps again to a scene in which she’s being handed what looks like a jar of glitter labeled “My Potential!” Though the best bits are undoubtedly the frog puppet and clown costume later that she ends the video wearing, a funny but still scathing reminder of the way we all believe ourselves to be the fools.
Grace said via Instagram about the song: “I wrote this after I went to a party and felt super out of place. Everyone was dressed up in suits and cocktail dresses, and I showed up in my Taylor Swift cardigan with a Slimer purse (last slide is a picture of that night). I cried in the taxi on the way home (post party trauma) and ended up writing a ton of songs over the next couple weeks about the feeling of not being good enough no matter what I do or how hard I try. I’m an advocate of always loving yourself, but sometimes it’s def easier said than done.”
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Words by Steven Ward
Watch the music video for “Ugly Crier” the new single from McKenna Grace below!
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