Video: Z Berg, ‘To Forget You’

Kevin Bronson on June 25th, 2020

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Z Berg has been a constant presence in L.A. circles since she fronted the retro-pop quartet the Like from 2002-2011, which was followed by her exploits in the pop ensembles JJAMZ and Phases and, most recently, her work as keyboardist-singer in Palm Springsteen.

On Wednesday, she announced that her debut solo album, “Get Z to A Nunnery,” will be out July 10. Rather than the commercial-leaning pop of the last two groups she fronted, Berg sounds very much the French chanteuse. (She has been known to favor berets over the years, after all.)

And speaking of France, the dreamy new single “To Forget You” has quite a backstory there.

“‘To Forget You” is the only song I’ve ever written in the very middle of a feeling,” Berg explains. “Writing, for me, usually occurs in retrospect. As if I must wait for the waves to calm before I can see my reflection in the water. But ‘To Forget You’ I wrote in the very thick of it. I had fallen madly, hopelessly in love in, and with, Paris, and I got home to Los Angeles and I sat on my couch and I remember thinking … ‘I will absolutely, physically die if I can not see this person again immediately.’ And I wrote the song in that very moment, sitting on the couch, utterly blinded and engulfed by infatuation and regret and the sheer physical pain of presumed love. As is often the case, I later realized it was not so much love as a perfect storm of timing, infatuation and Paris itself. But for that one moment, it was a love like no other. And I forever have the feeling captured, as if I bottled it up and can drink it any time I want.”

The video for the song, which Berg made with Lauren Rothery, was shot on a Super 8 camera at various locales across the City of Lights. “We joked constantly that we were making intimacy porn, and also Paris porn, and a bit of nostalgia porn,” Berg says. “We wondered, ‘What do your memories of falling in love look like?’ Little frozen frames of tiny, often silent, often nonsensical, shared moments. Flashes of toes curled, absurd faces made, tears falling and the dizzying silliness you share in a world that can only hold the two of you in it …

“The irony of releasing a video about intimacy while so many of us (including myself) are trapped in isolation is not lost on me. Through the lens of the current moment, this video feels almost like one of those cloying, interactive, POV porn games — minus the sex. It’s just a little bit of love POV. Just me, vulnerable and stupid and real and and high on happiness. So happy I could capture such a moment before the gates closed and locked me in my bedroom. So let me be your quarantine girlfriend, gazing at you longingly from the screen, reminding you I love you and you’re not alone out there.”

As for the album, several L.A. luminaries guest, including Blake Mills, Phoebe Bridgers and Madison Cunningham, along with strings arranged by Patrick Warren. Ethan Gruska, who along with Z Berg’s producer father Tony co-produced Bridgers’ two albums, produced “Nunnery,” which includes the singles released in 2018, including the holiday song with Ryan Ross, “the Bad List.”

||| Watch: The video for “To Forget You”