VIDEO PREMIERE: Paul Leary & Josh Freese Get Freaky on “Sugar Is The Gateway Drug”

Remember when music videos actually meant something? Yes, one time they were visual signifiers of the music and as vital as the songs themselves. Paul Leary probably remembers this well, as his musical resume reads from before the internet was a thing and it’s ideally why the Texan still makes rad videos.

Leary’s first solo album, The History of Dogs, was released way back in 1991 and now the follow-up Born Stupid arrived during the strange haze of early 2021. The Butthole Surfers guitarist waited 30 years to use his dark humor, creepy carnival vibes, and orchestrated sweeping sounds to address everything from mass consumption to the burning earth to your diet. Yet he takes his whimsical vibes to another level of musical madness that rivals Frank Zappa’s finest moments with the video for “Sugar is the Gateway Drug” off Born Stupid directed by none other than exceptional rock drummer Josh Freese (Devo, Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle, etc)/

“Sugar Is The Gateway Drug” was a track that grabbed my attention immediately. It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s weird. It’s scary. It’s colorful. It’s confusing. It’s blatant. Clocking in at just under a minute, you want to listen to it over and over. I told Paul I wanted to have a shot at making a video for it and he was happy to hear I was up for the task. I knew whatever I did it was going to reflect the mood of the song…colorful, weird, fun and of course, addictive,” says Freese.

Glide is premiering this “you gotta see it” short stunner below…

Leary shares his thoughts on the song and why he chose such a saccharine topic.. 

The only message that I am trying to convey is that sugar is a drug. Sugar is fermented and refined into alcohol, much like cocaine is refined into crack and opium is refined into heroin. For decades we were told that marijuana is the gateway drug.  Sugar is the real gateway drug. I am not trying to assert that sugar is as bad as heroin or cocaine.   But it is important to consider the consumption of sugar as a step in the direction of consuming those drugs.  And we should remember that sugar was instrumental in the development of man.

Freese delves even deeper into the sweet subject and the making of….

I enlisted my friend Tamar Levine (who actually gets paid to do this stuff for a living) and told her this would be the perfect thing for her and I to finally collaborate on. After tossing a few fairly involved ideas around we agreed it might be best to do something simple and straightforward. Shoot it at my house and cast my wife, kids and poodle to star in it (and Tamar and I of course.) No message or philosophical angle to it but rather “This sounds fun. This sounds crazy. Let get busy doing weird shit!” I like bright colors, I like music that you can’t quite figure out where it’s coming from, I like candy, I like addictive substances, I like pink poodles and I like to have fun. This was fun every step of the way. From recording the song with Paul all the way through shooting and editing the video. Hope you like watching it and that it brings you a little joy.

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