Kevin Bronson on February 14th, 2022

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Not boxes of chocolates, these new singles from Johanna Samuels and Guyville …

JOHANNA SAMUELS, “Valentine’s Day Is Stupid”

Johanna Samuels had us at “Excelsior!,” the title of the album she released last May. Today she’s back, deadpan as ever, with a tongue-in-cheek candy heart, “Valentine’s Day Is Stupid.” Here’s how the song happened: “Over the course of 2020 and 2021 I wrote over 35 songs. Much of it had to do with a community of fellow musicians I fell into started by my dear friend Steven Van Betten called ‘School of Song.’” Samuels says. “One of the things I love about the rhythm of writing that consistently is that I was forced to free myself from ego a little bit in the creative process. I wrote ‘Valentine’s Day is Stupid’ on Valentine’s Day 2021 —  the past three of which had been remarkably shitty. I often criticize myself to a compulsive extent and I promised myself that I could be silly and thoughtless on that particular day. It wrote itself in about 10 minutes and I ended up with one of my jauntier and sillier songs. I ate a ton of Reese’s. It was the best Valentine’s Day I’d had in years.”

GUYVILLE, “Should Have Never Dated”

Indie-rock duo Guyville (Kat Hamilton and Emily Hulslander), who debuted last fall with the single “Nothing,” air some relationship regrets in their new single “Should Have Never Dated.” One of them: Mixing business and pleasure. “We had both had bad experiences of dating music collaborators and bandmates,” Hamilton says. “We both talked about how we wished we had kept those relationships platonic. This camaraderie is really the basis of our musical partnership. It was really fun for me to bring my queer experience to the track. It was a cool way to highlight the ways Emily and I had similar problems in mixing work with pleasure, regardless of the gender of our lovers.”