Oliver Tree has fit into numerous guises since his 2020 debut, Ugly Is Beautiful. There’s the bowl-cut topped Turbo, a gaudy, social media influencer donning JNCO jeans. Shawney Bravo is a blonde mullet fringe-wearing cowboy who helped Tree mark his second album, Cowboy Tears. For his forthcoming album, Alone in the Crowd, Tree introduced the tortured fashionista Cornelius Cummings.
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Rocking a black bob in a Keith Haring-inspired magenta suit, Cummings is the center of Tree’s hip-hop bent single “Fairweather Friends,’ off his third album,7u Alone in the Crowd, out September 29.
I got fairweather friends in my G-Class Benz / Some stay, some go, some days it depends / I ain’t seen you since way back then sings Tree of his capricious colleagues.
‘Alone in the Crowd’ serves to reflect both the light and the darkness of human nature within popular culture, while holding a mirror up to us all and embracing the absurdity of it all, exploring themes of loneliness, disconnect, and the human experience,” reads a descriptor of the album.
Tree, who directs and stars in all his video caricatures under his Olivetree Productions, is a satirical and sentimental songwriter, who isn’t afraid to bare the asinine behaviors within the modern social media-driven culture, despite his four billion global streams, more than one billion YouTube views, and nearly 15 million TikTok devotees.
Earlier in 2023, Tree released a collaborative single, “Here W Go Again” with DJ and producer David Guetta, along with Alone in the Crowd singles “Bounce,” “One and Only,” and “Essence,” with the latter track featuring electronic duo Super Computer.
“I’ve been trying to make my music flop from the beginning,” quipped Tree in 2022 of his continuously changing persona and genres. “Why do you think I look this way? If I tried to look good, I would’ve been a hell of a lot more successful. If I wasn’t so annoying, I’d be a superstar. But instead, I’m on the Z-List. I’m riding down with the real low bottom-of-the-barrel stuff because I’m on my way out.”
Photo: “Fairweather Friends” / YouTube
