“He had short shorts on, but it was like 28 degrees out,” Osborne, 57, remembers during a recent interview with PEOPLE. “He started unpacking his lunch and sat right next to me while he ate his lunch. And then he just started jamming with me.” He laughs, remembering. “It was an awesome New York moment.”
It’s one of many a random moment now featured in Osborne’s music video for his new single"Bewildered," both premiering exclusively on PEOPLE.
“It was the director’s idea,” he says of the premise of the video that spans four decades of civil unrest in the country while Osborne sits back and watches. “We started thinking, what if it was just a narrative? I’d just be standing somewhere sort of anonymously in crowds or in different situations.”
Indeed, while the world seems to change at a scary rate these days, it is “Bewildered” that reminds listeners that perhaps, not much has changed at all.
“I was baffled,” Osborne remembers of the backbone of the son, on which he serves as the sole writer. “I was like, that’s incredible. Forty years and nothing’s changed. It’s the duality of life. It’s love and fear. That’s what drivesallthese things. From there, I tried to puzzle that together with lyrics and make it make sense.”
And while “Bewildered” could have easily taken a depressing turn, Osborne says he worked hard to make sure thatdidn’thappen.
“I chiseled at that a little bit,” says Osborne, who co-wroteTim McGraw’s 2003 No. 1 hit “Watch the Wind Blow By.” “But you can’t point at anybody. There’s no one to blame here. This is what goes on. It will never cease to exist. This desire and this suffering — it’ll always be the same. Love and fear will drive us for all time. Even when it’s painful, can you get through it? Luckily, most of us do.”
Anders Osborne.Zack Smith
Zack Smith
Osborne knows that journey through pain firsthand, as the talented singer, blues guitarist and songwriter has been somewhat open about his past struggles with addiction. And while those days are behind him, Osborne says he still finds himself facing days where he feels he needs to check out a little bit. “I enter into this coma state probably twice a month,” he admits with a laugh. “I don’t want to feel or think about anything.”
“You don’t identify with everything all the time, and you don’t pick the fights all the time,” Osborne says. “And then the older we get, there’s just so much beauty that it starts to blossom in the tiniest of little moments all through the day. You just go, ‘Oh my God, look at the leaf that just fell.’ You see it and you stay in it, and it just delays you for two hours. And you go, ‘Holy crap, I’m changing.'”
“Sometimes when I’m out walking, I listen to my breath,” says Osborne, whose upcoming albumPicasso’’ Villawill release on April 26. “It is a phenomenal thing. It just does it without me being aware of it. It breathes and breathes and keeps the thing going. I mean, how is this possible?”
Osborne also finds serenity amongst the forests.
“I have a huge fascination with the meditative nature of trees,” he tells PEOPLE. “They can stand in one place and express themselves for anywhere from 60 to 2000 years. They just express themselves in one spot and take all the weathers — the freezes, the snow, the sun. When they are too dry, they sacrifice a limb and then they survive. The intelligence of it all is so gripping.”
It’s a peaceful place to be for Osborne.
“There’s something settling in being comfortable in my own skin and also being comfortable in the world,” he says. “Even when it’s uncomfortable, I’m OK. Yeah, I like that feeling.”
source: people.com
