Toronto-based singer, songwriter, and storyteller Elina Filice releases her joyful, life-affirming new single “Bury Me” today, a Canadiana-soaked punk-pop anthem that announces itself immediately as one of the most infectious and emotionally generous songs of her career. Co-produced by Filice and Kevin Brennan and released on her own Red Vine Records, the track is a love song built around a Molson Canadian t-shirt, a running joke, and the quietly astonishing realisation that you have built a life with someone you never want to give back. It is the kind of song that sneaks up on you, arriving as a laugh and staying as something much deeper and more lasting.
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The song began, as Filice tells it, with a very real dispute. An old t-shirt, stolen from a past love, became a years-long argument about who it truly belonged to, until one night her partner settled it with a line that stopped everything: if I die tonight, they’ll have to bury me in this shirt, and then you’re never gonna get it back. That line, and the whole ordinary extraordinary universe it opened up, became “Bury Me.” As Filice has described it, the song is about the seemingly ordinary artefacts that narrate our lives, the almost accidental life you build with someone you love, sharing your hopes, dreams, and fears. The chorus captures it with the kind of plainspoken clarity that great pop songs make look easy: “Bury me in this / Shirt that you got from The Beer Store / If I die tonight, you’re never gonna get it back.”
By the song’s second chorus the whole emotional architecture has shifted, the joke becoming a vow, the borrowed shirt becoming something sacred. “I never thought I’d love with my eyes so open wide,” Filice sings, before landing on the line that gives the whole song its true weight: “‘Cuz I gotta see what she looks like at 65.” It is the kind of lyric that earns its place by being entirely, unmistakably true. Produced alongside Brennan with drums by Erik Thorkildsen and bass by Michael Myszkowski, the track moves with the energy of a Pride anthem and the tenderness of something far more private, a song that is equal parts Canadiana singalong and queer love letter, and a strong contender for the gay song of the summer.
Filice has been building toward this moment across a body of work that has earned consistent critical acclaim on multiple continents. Growing up in Singapore before relocating to Canada for university and then to Dublin, where she founded Red Vine Records and performed professionally across Ireland and Europe, she developed a singular artistic voice rooted in blues and spoken word but restless enough to range across folk, hip-hop, pop, rock, and back again. Her 2020 singles ‘Thinking of You’ and ‘Lying’ earned widespread critical praise and landed on official Spotify Editorial playlists, with Hot Press declaring her one of the most thrilling talents on the Irish scene and Nialler9 praising her bright spoken-word style that heightens the jazz-blues pop song’s charm. Her cover of Chance the Rapper’s ‘First World Problems,’ which she rewrote entirely in her own voice, demonstrated a lyrical confidence and range that few artists at any stage of a career can match, and her sophomore E P, released in May 2021, deepened that reputation considerably further.
Now back in Toronto and operating at the full breadth of her considerable abilities, Filice is also the founder of Drop Rocket, a music marketing startup that has built genuine momentum as innovative project management software empowering independent artists to release music smarter and more effectively. That entrepreneurial drive is entirely of a piece with the artistic independence that has defined her career from the beginning, and “Bury Me” is its most fully realised musical expression yet. A fierce advocate for queer visibility who regards music as a powerful tool for the queer community, Filice arrives this Pride season with a song that earns its place in that tradition not through statement but through pure, irresistible feeling. Her single release show takes place June 2 alongside Maiasha as part of a Queer Music Pride kick-off event, tickets available at eventbrite.ca
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