“Everything Is Coming up Roses” for the London-based post-punk band World News with the release of their latest single, out now via their own label, Pie & Mash. The song, drenched in comforting nostalgia, was originally written by frontman Alex Evans during a period of seclusion during the COVID-19 lockdown, and recently recorded with producer Tommy Bosustow (Muse, Taylor Swift) at RAK Studios in central London.
With the understanding that one needs to experience the lows to appreciate the highs, “Everything Is Coming up Roses” fluctuates between wistful observations and cautious optimism as Alex struggles to maintain a positive outlook despite disappointment.
“Sometimes it can be uncomfortable revisiting older songs. I’m in a completely different headspace, and analyzing some of the lyrics now, it can be quite depressing,” he said.
Pushing and pulling between the past and present, finding hope in sorrow, and laughing in the face of misfortune are all themes Alex explores in this song, but it can be hard to tell at times if he’s being sincere.
“You’re getting crap thrown at you in life, but you’re told that everything is fine when it’s clearly not,” he said. “The line ‘everything is coming up roses’ initially came from a heartfelt place, but I’ve felt its meaning change over time.”
“Everything Is Coming up Roses” continued to take on new meaning for the band as they shot the dizzying and surrealistic music video for the song. As bassist Rory Evans explained, “our first idea was to have a tree being planted that represented the good things in life, and then it was supposed to be threatened and chopped down by the bad. You can still kind of see that in there, but we started to feel it was a surface-level interpretation of the song. Although we captured some interesting footage, it felt more meaningful to frame the story around characters lost in a dreamlike state, which also led us to a deeper understanding of the song itself.
In this imagined world, there is no fixed location, no clear goals; the characters drift, doing things without knowing why. That sense of aimlessness for us creates an eerie mundanity that reflects the feeling of being stuck, of not moving forward in our own lives. Are things actually coming up roses? Have we tapped into some sort of toxic optimism?”
