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Dec 16, 2015 By Christopher Roberts Daddy

Actor/director/writer/artist James Franco and his former art school classmate Tim O’Keefe have teamed up as Daddy. The duo is putting out a film and album, Let Me Get What I Want, inspired by The Smiths (it’s due out in the spring via Kobalt/We Are Daddy). Now the duo has shared “You Are Mine,” which features The Smiths’ very own bassist, Andy Rourke. You can stream it below.

A press release promises that “Let Me Get What I Want is a concept album and film that tracks three characters as they weave through the dark ways of high school: love, death, and dreams.”

The press release also describes the film as such: “The accompanying film can be viewed as an hour-long film, or as individual music videos for all of the album’s songs. The film has no ‘beginning’ or ‘end’ point, it works like a loop (i.e. the ‘last’ video, or video 10, connects to the first video, video 1, seamlessly). The film stars Palo Alto High School students, and edited in a Lynchian style reminiscent of Twin Peaks.”

Franco commented on “You Are Mine” in a press release, saying: “High school is a time of longing for the unattainable. We dream big, but we’re still too young to make anything significant happen. At least I was too immature and sensitive to be the person I wanted to be. ‘You are mine’ is about one teenager dreaming about another, even though they’ll never be together.”

The lyrics to Let Me Get What I Want are based on Franco’s previously released poems that were inspired by Smiths lyrics. O’Keefe was also quoted in the press release, saying: “Transforming James’ poems to songs took on it’s own creative process which was a new direction for me. Because the words weren’t written by me, I had to take on the character of the individual whose perspective I was singing from. ‘You Are Mine’ like many of the songs on Let Me Get What I Want expresses experiences that were relatable to my own high school experience, and therefore I had a lot of my own emotions to pull from.”

(Via Rolling Stone)