Irish alt rock artist Tadgh Billy King’s (pronounced like “Tiger” without the “er”) earliest memories are of literally living above a beloved New York City music venue, The Local 269, his parent’s owned and operated. During that formative time, he soaked in the rock, punk, jazz, and pop that soundtracked the bar’s existence.
This melting pot of sounds would be a template for his own unbound musical explorations where he often explored the music of the Ramones, Green Day, and Nirvana, alongside studying classical vocal and guitar techniques.
The self-reflective and introspective post punk and alt goth “mirror” is at once ethereal and chaotic, brash and sweet. Filled with chilling guitar ambience, goth-y, thick baritone vocals, and crushing walls of sound, it all leads up to a viscerally anthemic, gazy, wild, final chorus.
The music video reflects the darker, more gothic style of the song. He plays with angles and mirrors to symbolize his internal examination and self-reflection.
We got a chance to speak with Tadgh about the music video for “mirror”:
Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically in this way.
Mirror is a song about self reflection. Its me taking a second to examine myself and take stock. At the time of writing it I was looking at where I’d come from, where I am now and how I’ve changed as a person over the last few years. I wanted the video to take the song further in this direction. With the visuals, I wanted to really lean into the goth rock-y style of the music and the introspective meaning behind the lyrics. I wanted to keep everything looking as dark and moody as possible to match the moodiness of the song.
What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?
I’ve always really liked when artists are able to tell a larger story over a few different music videos. Even if its just a small easter egg or connection between their videos, I always appreciate it. I’m trying something like that with these videos and mirror, like “sit and wait,” is one piece of a larger story that will become clearer as more videos of mine come out.
I wanted this video to feel like a weird dream. I wanted to go a little deeper with this idea of self reflection and examination. This is where the visuals of me with my reflection come in. I wanted it to feel like I was stuck in this liminal space and by filming it on black it allowed me to play around with angles and have me really “examine” myself. I’ve also always been interested in playing around with the idea of reality and how dreams can sometimes feel so real it can sometimes really take a second to discern what’s a genuine memory of something that happened in real life and what’s a memory of a dream.
What was the process of making this video?
There were two main shoots for this video. The first shoot was done in a rehearsal studio here in Dublin that has these big floor to ceiling windows. We hung up some black material and filmed me standing next to the mirror at different angles singing the song and a few takes of me playing some of the guitar parts. Then the second shoot was me in the car. I chose some visually interesting locations around Dublin for me to get in and out of the car and then drove around the city shooting me from the back seat looking into the rearview mirror and the front seat.
I really wanted to play with what was real and what was the dream to try and give a sense that by the end of the video, when I get out of the car, its hard to tell if I’m still dreaming or not. Most of that came down to the editing process. This is the part of the process where I was really able to experiment with the different “mirror-on-black” angles and what meaning and feeling they give depending on the orientation. The car shots were pretty easy to edit, I could visualise what I wanted for them from the beginning of planning the video and was really pleased with how they turned out lighting-wise as that was just a complete luck of the draw.
It was a fun video to make. There will be another one for my next single “breathe out” that will come soon after the single is released on the 21st of July.
Connect with Tadgh Billy King via:
Website // Instagram // Facebook // Twitter // YouTube // TikTok // Spotify
Modern Mystery 
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