Music Video Premiere: The City Is Hungover by Teenage Sequence

Photo by Corrine Cumming

We’re excited to be premiering the music video for TEENAGE SEQUENCE’s upcoming thought-provoking single ‘The City Is Hungover’ on WEIRDO today.

TEENAGE SEQUENCE is the latest project from British Asian songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dewan-Dean Soomary who we interview in our latest print issue, The Music Issue. Blending the snappy pop sensibility of indie disco with the bleak humour and biting social commentary of post-punk, TEENAGE SEQUENCE will get you dancing and make you think.

The video is in support of the new double A side single ‘All This Art/The City Is Hungover’. The first track ‘All This Art’ was released in June 2021 and this double A side release is available physically on cassette in two limited edition colours.

‘The City Is Hungover’ was shot in October in New York by one of Soomary’s oldest friends, Juliana Cerqueira Leite. “She remembered my terrible dancing skills from our time in the early 2000s London dance floors and demanded that I recreate them on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan in the most embarrassing ways possible!” Soomary says about the concept behind the 7:49-minute long video of him not taking himself seriously (more of this, please!). “I have to say, there is nothing quite like grooving your way across the Williamsburg Bridge at 6am while the sun comes up— I highly recommend it.” 

The video was shot on a budget and expertly edited together by Leite’s partner, Junae Andreazza. Making the most of what was available to them, Soomary says they “turned Juliana’s bathroom into a disco and meticulously planned our shots around the NYPD’s watchful eye.” Unsurprisingly, they ran into at least five other teams shooting music videos across the two days of filming!

‘The City Is Hungover’ is the first song Soomary finished for TEENAGE SEQUENCE that made him feel like the project finally made sense to him. “I wrote 'The City Is Hungover' one Saturday morning whilst out for a run. I was living in Hackney Wick and the streets were littered with NOS canisters and empty beer cans and I found it interesting that it felt like the whole place was hungover, even the inanimate stuff of the cityscape,” Soomary reflects. “Originally I wrote it from a pretty smug perspective and the lyrics came together quickly - too quickly in fact - which made me realise that in some way, shape or form I had been guilty of everything I mention in the song!”

The double A side single is out today (December 2 2021) on all digital streaming platforms and cassette via EVERYTHING SUCKS MUSIC in the UK & Europe and Get Better Records in the US. Give the video a watch and follow TEENAGE SEQUENCE on Instagram and Twitter for regular updates on what they’re up to!