‘Check Your Phone’
Last week Pete Wentz started to tease something called ‘Check Your Phone’ with an act called Cheap Cuts.
The details of what this project actually was were left rather open ended, but now the collaboration has dropped.
Cheap Cuts are a duo working out of London, made up of Jonny Harris and critically acclaimed writer, producer and composer Jack Leonard.
‘Check Your Phone’ is their first single, which Pete appears on with a scathing and satirical spoken word piece, that he produced by reimagining the lyrics that the duo had already written, that details and analyses the world’s near addiction to those little pieces of technology we all hold in our hands.
Cheap Cuts had this to say about developing the song:
“The more we developed the song, translated it into different languages and then collaborated with Pete, we realised the whole world had got itself in a big anxious hurry without realising. It’s as if we all heard Baz Luhrmann’s Sunscreen at the end of the 90s, and decided to ignore every bit of advice in that song. To me, that’s what check your phone is about”
And Pete had this to say about what inspired him to write the lyrics that he did:
“It’s funny to have everything in the world in a device at the tip of my fingers and feel like it is swallowing me whole sometimes. Without a doubt, my phone has made touring, staying in touch and finding out random actors who voiced GI Joe characters from the 80s cartoon easier. But my addiction to it is complicated – the last thing I look to at night is its hazy blur, and it is the first text message that jolts me awake in the morning.
“To me this song is about the anxiety it gives me, but at the same time, the way I feel a bit lighter when I watch a video on it of raccoons walking around like people or whatever. It is messy and filled with complex, opposing perspectives that seem to contradict each other – just like us [Description: ��] .”
So without further ado, this is ‘Check Your Phone’: