Washington, D.C. based pop duo GEMS’ ‘Poison‘ was the perfect song to be featured on the Netflix series You this month — You, Season 2, Episode 2, “Just The Tip“. Considering it was played during the opening scene where we watch Will stalking Love.
GEMS’ ‘Poison’ is a stand-alone single the duo released in 2017 via Carpark Records.
GEMS itself is made up of singer and multi-instrumentalist Lindsay Pitts and multi-instrumentalist Clifford John Usher.
The pair has been together since their days as students at the University of Washington. They have seriously been creating music in the indie underground scene since 2010, but the majority of the duo’s releases have been confined to just the last few years.
GEMS’ music really took off, however, when the pair altered their musical direction from garage rock to electronic pop. Their debut studio album Kill The One You Love was released in 2015 after this change.
The two artists then took a break from releasing music until their beautifully reworked EP Medusa saw the light of day in 2018. Since then, GEMS has been working on and releasing more superb singles.
As for ‘Poison‘, Lindsay explained why the song was written in its YouTube notes this way:
Cliff and I started writing “Poison” before we ended our romantic relationship. It laid untouched for a good year before we stumbled across it again. At first, resurrecting it brought me back to a really painful time in my life and elicited some heartbreaking visceral memories. However, we ended up breathing light into something we had started during a time of isolation and darkness. Almost everything about it has changed, except for the line “there’s poison in your eyes”. The way that we look at one another has actually softened since we first started writing this song.
Listen to GEMS’ ‘Poison‘ from You, Season 2 in the audio video and in the Spotify player below to see what she means.
You can keep abreast of upcoming new music on the duo’s official website.
Related: The Jungle hit ‘Happy Man‘ was played on the second season of You