Page 65 of Falls From Grace
“What do you mean, Brynn’s schedule?” Savannah asked, a sinking feeling in her chest.
“Well, of course, since you’re both singing on the track, we’re going to need you both in the video. And Jen wants things lined up so that her album launches six weeks after yours.”
Savannah stared at him.
“Her album?” she asked.
He nodded, looking pleased with himself.
“We signed her the second we could get hold of her,” he told her. Then he looked perturbed. “She didn’t tell you?”
Savannah felt dizzy. The primary feeling in her gut was all out pride. Brynn had a major record deal. She wasn’t going to waste her talent or force herself into med school. She was going straight to the big leagues, where she belonged. The next wave of feeling was grief that Brynn couldn’t tell her, that they couldn’t celebrate together the way this should be celebrated.
“Bryce,” she sighed. “I know you just said my business was my business, but you probably need to hear that Brynn and I don’t speak anymore. And that there is no way in hell that we’re going to make a music video together. If you try to insist on that, then I will fire the director myself and find someone to make some arthouse feature short film where no one has to lip sync to the camera and that’s my final word on the subject.”
“I see,” was all he said.
Which was how a month later, Savannah found herself swanning dramatically around wheat fields, gazing tearfully out car windows and lip synching into the wind at a cliff’s edge, with the knowledge that Brynn was being flown in to film the counterpart the following week so they’d appear in the same music video without ever having to cross paths at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Of all the things that had flabbergasted Brynn over the last year of her life, it was the Longing music video that almost broke her brain. She’d turned up as requested, submitted herself to the hair, makeup and wardrobe departments and been introduced to Hans, the director. Then she’d completed a bewildering process of being thrust into weird locations to sing along to the backing track of her own vocals, then was shoved in front of a green screen and assisted to emote and cry and rage, which luckily wasn’t very hard for her those days, considering her intense schedule and immense exhaustion as she battled to complete her album.
She’d been disorientated and uncomfortable, only hoping she hadn’t screwed it up too badly and that was the last she’d thought of it, until months later when Bella had called to give her the heads up that Savannah’s first single was landing, and congratulated her on a job well done. She struggled internally for the rest of the day before she finally lay on her bed, put on her headphones and listened for the first time to the fully mixed and engineered recording of Longing. She’d cried, burned, glowed and missed the hell out of Savannah, wishing she could call her. With a slight hit of weirdness - considering the nature of the song - she sent the Spotify track to her mom, and then she’d gone on with her life.
The real event came late that evening, in the form of a text from Lane that confusingly just read MOMMIES!!!! OH MY GOD followed by a link. Within seconds of clicking it, Brynn realized she’d entirely forgotten that the music video would exist at all. She didn’t have time to prepare herself before Savannah’s face appeared on screen.
The film was black and white, and there, posed in a short white dress, Savannah looked like the classic and timeless blonde beauty that she was. Her face looked wistful, sitting alone in an old school diner, an empty coffee cup beside her. She gazed out the window, her full lips parting over the opening lines to Longing. Then Brynn jolted as she saw herself on screen strolling past the same window dressed in black motorcycle boots and skintight black jeans, her real life leather jacket suddenly immortalized. The Brynn on screen paused to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear as the wind machine tousled her, the camera zeroing in on her face as her mouth moved to sing.
She had just about enough time to cringe with embarrassment when Savannah got to her feet and all but pressed herself against the window watching her go. The Brynn of real life fumbled with her phone, her jaw dropping as the video showed the two of them exchanging heated glances from their opposite seats at a bar before losing each other in the crowd, then inexplicably cutting to the pair of them arguing passionately in a car before Savannah cried prettily, looking out the window and Brynn stormed off through a field.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. Was this really what she thought it was? Was the video for Savannah’s first single actually portraying them as star-crossed lovers? All doubt was swept away by a shot of Savannah’s nude back, her tousled hair tumbling down her spine, sitting up in an artfully unmade bed, wearing understated lingerie with a black leather jacket strewn beside her, a closeup of her delicate fingers running over the sleeve.
The video had no real storyline, just the two of them gazing heatedly, fighting furiously or weeping stormily, Savannah in her white dress all heavy lidded with desire and Brynn in her black leather, moody and brooding. By the time the video ended, she was the very definition of head-fucked.
She was beyond angry. At no point had the plan for the video ever been clearly explained to her, and she would be damned if her sexuality was going to be used to boost record sales. She was also aggravatingly turned on, aching at the sight of Savannah performing a show of lust for her. Given that they’d never actually made love it was beyond Brynn’s ability to cope with the vision of an imaginary post-coital Savannah in bed, presumably after Brynn had had her way with her. It was all so outrageous she was almost at the point of breaking her hard and fast rule by texting Savannah to ask her what the hell she was playing at, when Noah called.
“Have you seen it?” she demanded instantly.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “About that. Coral just called me. She told me to tell you that Savannah didn’t know either. That they sold her a much vaguer version. That she’s furious and apologizes for not being more thorough in her vetting. She said that she’s normally a control freak about this kind of thing but that, I don’t know, I guess she’s been focused on other things. She said to tell you that Savannah’s going to try to fix it.”
“Oh,” Brynn said. It wasn’t a conversation with Savannah exactly, but it was an indirect communication from her and for a moment all she felt was relief that Savannah cared enough to get the message to her. It felt, after eight months of silence, almost like a thaw.
Autostraddle: Savannah Grace is queer! The gay internet explodes!
Country music superstar Savannah Grace sat down for a profile piece in the New York Times this week and confirmed a very publicly speculated on rumor.
“Traditionally I’m a very private person,” she told the Times. “I prefer to let my music say anything I have to say and I don’t think I owe it to anyone to share my personal life. But recent events have caused me to realize that’s not always the case. I think it’s important for me to share something that’s always been who I am: I don’t identify as heterosexual and I’ve always been attracted to people of all genders.”
Last week saw the release of Savannah’s first single since her divorce from longtime collaborator, Cole Corbin. The music video for Longing raised eyebrows and temperatures across the globe as the much crowned queen of country music Savannah Grace sang a sultry duet with broodingly attractive singer-songwriter Brynn Marshall. The two engaged in such intense eye-sex and mutual thirst that it induced a level of keyboard mashing by the queer community unseen since KStew was first spotted gal palling around town.
Accusations of queer-baiting were initially rife in the media, yet again misusing the term to place undue pressure on an individual celebrity to publicly explain their own sexuality. While it’s disappointing to see this process play out for the hundredth time, Savannah herself appeared philosophical about the experience.
“Listen,” she told the reporter for the Times, “if we’re honest, it’s about damn time. I’ve been in the public eye for well over a decade and there’s been many occasions that I’ve wanted to be out, that I’ve feared being out, that I’ve wondered whether I’d still have been awarded the accolades and given the radio play I’ve achieved if the fullness of my identity was known. And I hate that. At least now I’ll know that any success I have in the future will be as myself.”
She went on to describe the numerous constraints placed on country artists by the industry itself and the silencing impact of the overt misogyny, homophobia and racism that has, at times, seemed intractable.
“I love country music,” she told the Times. “It’s my heart and my soul. But do you think it’s a coincidence that I’m here, getting to tell the world I’m bisexual on the eve of an album release that’s not in the genre?”
