Canadian artist Addi John unveils his new EP, Love & Misfortunes, a deeply personal collection about loss, family, change, and learning to move forward. Entirely produced, performed, and mixed by Addi himself, the seven-track project emerged from a period of upheaval and ultimately centres around a simple but hard-earned realization: everything changes, and that’s okay.
The larger record began taking shape after Addi lost his father three years ago. Within six months, his mother and brother had moved out of the country and his former band, Lost in Japan, had broken up. Faced with several major changes at once, he turned to music as a way of processing them, writing songs that explore where different members of his family found themselves following his father’s passing.
“I want people to feel as if they’re not alone and to have a sense of hope for the future,” Addi shares. “The hope I want them to see is that change can be scary but, in order for us to grow, we need to accept that everything changes.”
1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically?
I wrote this song after a wedding I was attending played a two door cinema club song called “What You Know”. It was as simple as, “hey I like this song, I want to make a song like that”. I chose to visualize it because I felt like it needed some kind of story to go with this song.
2.What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?
I always wanted to make an 80s-over-the-top montage video. The idea was what if we have someone trying to work out and get in shape to get in the flow like daniel from the Karate Kid (1984). The concept seemed like a really fun idea so I brought it to the director of the video (Josh Ford at Josh Ford Media) and he loved it and we went with it.
3.What was the process of making this video?
Josh had a connection with a local gym in Windsor, Ontario so we shot the majority of the scenes in the gym. Honestly, we were just walking around and looking at all the equipment at the gym and were trying to figure out the worst ways someone could interact with the equipment and then we shot that. The whole video took us probably 2 hours. We kept running into the washroom to add an insane amount of water to my face to make it look like I was sweating profusely. It was a lot of fun to make!
