DEBBY FRIDAY recently released her well-received and deservedly so album GOOD LUCK, the artist’s full-length is now available in Canada via Arts & Crafts and Sub Pop everywhere else. Today, she is also sharing the official video for “WHAT A MAN”, directed by Kevan Funk and DEBBY FRIDAY. DEBBY FRIDAY has extended her international headlining tour dates, and festival appearances supporting GOOD LUCK. Touring resumes next month and now runs through September including stops in Vancouver and Quebec City.

In a statement for the video, DEBBY FRIDAY offers this:

“The ‘WHAT A MAN’ music video is loosely based on the famous essay, Ways of Seeing, by English art critic John Berger as well as paintings by the Italian Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi (in particular, her iconic work “Judith Slaying Holofernes”). GOOD LUCK features “SO HARD TO TELL”, “I GOT IT”, “WHAT A MAN”, and “HOT LOVE”, was co-produced by DEBBY FRIDAY and Graham Walsh (METZ, Holy Fuck) at Candle Recording Studio in Toronto, and mastered by Heba Kadry in New York.

In 1972, Berger released “Ways of Seeing” as both a television series via the BBC and a book. Both the series and the text function as image-based explorations of the depiction of women in Western art and culture. This work has been massively influential in cultural theory, as it introduced the concept of “the male gaze”.

Gentileschi is distinctive for being one of the only female professional artists of her era. Her paintings draw from myths and Biblical stories and almost always feature women as protagonists and equals to men. Arguably her most famous work, Judith Slaying Holofernes, is thought to be a self-portrait that depicts her as Judith slaying a Holofernes who resembles Agostino Tassi, a man who raped her when she was 17.

Both the essay and the paintings served as frameworks for the video. The same way that Gentileschi painted herself into images of other women is the same way I feel that every woman can see ourselves in much of Gentileschi’s story and her work. To be a woman and an artist in this world is to be, in a way, a shapeshifter. You take on the shape of whatever and whoever is looking at you – whether that be a camera, a phone, a lover, a thief, a killer. Always and all at once, you are a spectacle, a flower, a treasure, a ditch, a bitch, a miracle.

“When I look at Artemisia’s paintings, I feel myself transported and transformed into the emotional field of Judith, of Jael, of Susanna. Her hand is my hand, her sword is my sword, her pain is my pain. I have always identified with women who were wild and brazen – survivors, people who exist and persist despite. I have always looked up to women who were willing to be ‘bad’ in the name of living thoroughly.”

Her upcoming short film ‘GOOD LUCK’ is a pseudo-autobiographical tale, largely drawn from FRIDAY’s own life and experiences growing up as a zillenial anti-heroine. A surrealist reflection on the tumultuous whirlwind that is the end of adolescence and the emotionality of youth, ‘GOOD LUCK’ is co-directed by FRIDAY and Nathan De Paz Habib (Chino Amobi’s Eroica, and The Bicycle).

DEBBY FRIDAY 2023 Tour Dates

Wed. Apr. 12 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
Thu. Apr. 13 – Seattle, WA – Barboza
Fri. Apr. 14 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
Sat. Apr. 15 – Vancouver, BC – Cobalt
Wed. Apr. 19 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right
Thu. Apr. 20 – Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle
Tue. May 02 – Bristol, UK – Crofters Rights
Wed. May 03 – London, UK – Corsica Studios w/ Grove
Fri. May 05 – Krems, AT – Donau Festival
Sat. May 06 Brussels, BE – Botanique (La Rotonde)
Tue. May 09 – Paris, FR – La Hasard Ludique
Wed. May 10 – Lisbon, PT – ZDB
Thu. May 11 – Leeds, UK – Headrow House
Fri. May 12 – Manchester, UK – The White Hotel
Thu. Jun. 08 – Melbourne, AU – Rising (Max Watts) w/ Desire Marea
Mon. Jun. 12 – Sydney, AU – Vivid Wavyland Metro Theatre
Sat. Jul. 08 – Québec City, QC – Festival d’été de Québec (FEQ)
Sun. Sep. 03 – Seattle, WA – Bumbershoot

Purchase GOOD LUCK by Debby Friday HERE