Released 9 March 2016 Genre Electronic
dance Label Rough Trade | Format Digital download Length 4:10 Writer(s) Anohni
Ross Birchard | |
"Drone Bomb Me" is a song by Anohni, the lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons. It is the first track and second single from her debut solo studio album, Hopelessness, and was released digitally on 9 March 2016 on Rough Trade Records.
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Background and release
The song was premiered on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show, where Annie named it her "Hottest Record in the World" for 9 March 2016. On the subject of the song's meaning, Anohni said:
Music video
The music video for "Drone Bomb Me" was released on 9 March 2016 and features English model Naomi Campbell. The video was directed by Nabil Elderkin and art-directed by Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci. Writing for Rolling Stone, Brittany Spanos described video, "The clip stars supermodel Naomi Campbell, who spends most of the video sitting in a chair lip-synching to the electronic track. Her face is covered in tears as she delivers the song, and interspersed between those moments, male dancers are menacingly contorting their bodies and an upright Campbell is posing seductively."
Critical reception
"Drone Bomb Me" received very positive reviews from contemporary music critics. The song was chosen upon release as Pitchfork Media's "Best New Track". Nina Mashurova stated that, "As with "4 Degrees," which personified the hypocrisy behind climate change, ANOHNI is not letting anyone off the hook. 'Blow me from the mountain and into the sea,' she croons over a major synth drop. Her voice, and the production by Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, are both darkly seductive, implicating the listener as they trace the war all the way home to the body. Writing in the language of unrequited love with pleas like 'I want to be the apple of your eye' and 'let me be the one that you choose tonight,' ANOHNI turns the abstracted, faceless nature of drone warfare into something chillingly intimate." Rolling Stone named "Drone Bomb Me" one of the 30 best songs of the first half of 2016: "Anohni has made one of the year's most challenging and exhilarating LPs with Hopelessness, using avant-club-pop to explore the dark side of American politics and foreign policy the way others singers might explore doomed romance. On this incredible ballad, she plays a young Afghani girl whose parents have been killed by a U.S. drone strike, praying for the same fate herself like a tragic supplicant." Billboard ranked "Drone Bomb Me" at number 79 on their on their "Billboard's 100 Best Pop Songs of 2016: Critics' Picks" list, commenting “You know that thing where you're so guilty about your implicit culpability in a military–industrial complex that indiscriminately kills innocent people by remote that you almost wish you yourself were dead? No? Well, you will after listening to Anohni's shimmering, gorgeous electro-pop masterpiece, which finds brand-new levels of beauty in socio-political awareness.” Pitchfork listed "Drone Bomb Me" on their ranking of the 100 best songs of 2016 at number 6. In the annual Village Voice's Pazz & Jop mass critics poll of the year's best in music in 2016, "Drone Bomb Me" was ranked at number 15, tied with Beyoncé's "Sorry" and Drake's "One Dance".