NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Evan Stapleton, who performs under the name florid was selected by none other than Phoebe Bridgers as a featured song in the NPR Tiny Desk Contest.
In an NPR Tiny Desk podcast released on July 29, Bridgers introduces Stapleton and his song at just past the 14:00 mark. The song is “coup de grâce”. It is Stapleton’s third year entering the contest.
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“Uhhh, Wow” about summed it for Stapleton, who posted the news on his Facebook page.
“I wrote this after killing a firefly and feeling strangely broken by it, a real ‘how did I get her moment’,” he wrote in his submission. “Innocence and hope are also symbolically addressed.”
Bridgers identified with her experience killing a month on a camping trip as a child, which she described as “my intrusive thought”, something she thinks about all the time.
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Evan Stapleton
Hometown: New Rochelle, N.Y.
Pairs well with: Tuning out the noise for a quiet moment of reflection
Reverberating off the walls of an almost-hollow room, “coup de grâce” is beautifully chilling in its simplicity. In the video’s description, florid wrote that the song came to him after “killing a firefly and feeling strangely broken by it.” That description stuck with me long after the song’s closing bars faded off into the distance. Inspiration can come from the most unexpected places, and florid pulls us into his musings with such heartbreaking honesty. These lyrics have a knack for gripping onto you where you’re already tender, but it was the final lines that broke me: “Brutal as I’ve been / I forget every moment I live the world spins / The world spins and I am spinning with it.” —Pilar Fitzgerald
The NPR Tiny Desk Contest
Before we announce this year’s Tiny Desk Contest winner, we’re asking our judges to share their favorite entries in a weekly livestreamed series. In this episode, Phoebe Bridgers shares her picks.
Every year, we ask unsigned artists to send us their songs. These artists invite us into their communities and spaces — their buildings and basements and backyards — and share the music they’ve been working so hard on. Getting to be among the first people to hear a great new song feels like being let in on the best secret. And through the Tiny Desk Contest, we get to share those coveted secrets with the world. We’re thrilled to announce that the Tiny Desk Contest is back for 2021!
Since we started the Tiny Desk Contest in 2014, we’ve gotten to discover new music (and new desks) from tens of thousands of artists from across the country. Our winners have gone on to do remarkable things — winning Grammy awards, playing sold-out tours around the world and signing to major labels — and we can’t wait to celebrate even more great music this year.
This year’s panel of judges is phenomenal: Linda Diaz, our talented 2020 winner, will be part of our lineup — plus fellow extraordinary Tiny Desk alums Tobe Nwigwe and Phoebe Bridgers. Joining me from NPR Music is Tiny Desk producer Bobby Carter, and I’ll also be joined by some friends from NPR Member stations: Jewly Hight, editorial director at WNXP in Nashville, and John Morrison, host of Culture Cypher Radio at WXPN in Philadelphia.
