Tag: Carley Sunn

“How Many Horses Do You Have?” finds Carley Sunn dipping into a glimmering, bass and synth driven 80s-era synth pop/new wave post-punk sound, like maybe the songwriter was taking in a lot of The Sound’s middle era, Sparks and early Wall of Voodoo. Maybe Sunn was into Echoes period The Rapture too or Les Savy Fav. What gives the song an interesting dichotomy is like all of those bands there’s the bright, melodic atmospheric element paired with an emotional intensity to the vocals. The story of the song is about a power tripping hypocrite who seems to have taken all his manufactured success symbols of proof for his validity as an authority figure. “How many damsels have you saved? How many pirates have you killed?” the vocalist asks in mockery of the faux heroics and the title of the song taking that dig even further. One only imagines the exact inspiration behind the song but we’ve all been in situations where someone in our lives seems to have so much power over us for a while, always entirely too long, and they seem to get a thrill out of their ability to control us and manipulate us thinking we don’t see through them and that their power will last forever when it never does. Listen to “How Many Horses Do You Have?” on Spotify and follow Carley Sunn on Instagram.