Paul Cherry
  • Courtesy of Paul Cherry’s Facebook page
  • Paul Cherry

Local label-slash-collective FeelTrip is gearing up to release a handful of albums leading up to the end of the year, and today it offered up the debut single from Chicago pop-rock wiz Paul Cherry, “Everybody’s Burning Out.” Visual artist Weston Getto Allen put together a bizarre, lo-fi, slightly NSFW video for Cherry’s irresistible, buoyant number, which shows a day in the life of a freewheeling, drug-addled musician as he stumbles through LA; the whole video is made up of point-of-view shots so you can see the dude send texts, pop pills, and get beat up from his perspective.

YouTube video

“Everybody’s Burning Out” will appear on Cherry’s album On Top, which FeelTrip will release in December. Although it’s Cherry’s first official single it’s not the first song he’s released publicly, and he’s been uploading tracks to Soundcloud for close to a year. Fans of Olive Garden—or at least those who follow the restaurant chain on Twitter—might recognize Cherry’s music. A couple months ago he made “Breadstick Ballad,” a heart-on-sleeve love number made in tribute to Olive Garden. We’re not all fans of the faux-Italian spot, but that doesn’t matter to Cherry, who delivers lines such as “I’ll feed you endless love if you eat this endless lunch” with unwavering earnestness.

“Breadstick Ballad” is the result of a Twitter back-and-forth between Cherry and whoever runs the Olive Garden account. The tune is a fascinating and actually great musical result of one man prodding companies on social media and Olive Garden’s OK grasp of the language of “weird corporate Twitter.” Take a peek at the blossoming, emoji-filled Internet relationship between Cherry and Olive Garden below.


Yes, Olive Garden did favorite that last tweet.

Leor Galil

Twitter: @imLeor