Now eight years since Loud Like Love, Placebo revealed details of their eighth album, Never Let Me Go, out March 25, 2022, with the release of the second single “Surrounded By Spies.”
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Following up their first single “Beautiful James,” celebrating love in its many forms, the starker electronic drips of “Surrounded By Spies” approach the unwelcome eyes surveying without permission and inspired by frontman Brian Molko’s discovery that he had spying neighbors.
“I began writing the lyrics when I discovered my neighbors were spying on me on behalf of parties with a nefarious agenda,” said Molko of the track, which made him think about the dangers of losing privacy. “I then began to ponder the countless ways in which our privacy has been eroded and stolen since the introduction of worldwide CCTV cameras that now employ racist facial recognition technologies; the rise of the internet and the cellphone, which has turned practically every user into a paparazzo and spectators in their own lives, and how we have mostly all offered up personal information to enormous multinationals whose sole intent is to exploit us.”
Using William S. Burroughs’ famous cut-up technique, using cut-up pieces of written words, rearranged to create a new text, Molko pieced together the fragments of “Surrounded By Spies.”
“It’s a true story told through a lens of paranoia, complete disgust for modern society’s values, and the deification of surveillance capitalism,” adds Molko. “The narrator is at the end of their tether, hopeless and afraid, completely at odds with our newfound progress and the god of money.”
To accompany the release of Never Let Me Go, the band has also shared UK and Ireland tour dates for 2022.
