"City Girl" is a song by the Irish alternative rock musician Kevin Shields. It is the second track from the soundtrack to the 2003 film Lost in Translation and was released as a standalone single in June 2003. Recorded during summer 2002 with Lost in Translations music co-ordinator Brian Reitzell, "City Girl" was among the first original material released by Shields since My Bloody Valentine's second studio album, Loveless (1991)—on which he was the main composer, musician and producer.
Produced by Shields, "City Girl" has been described as a mid-tempo garage-influenced alternative rock song and since its original release, critics have drawn comparisons between it and songs from Loveless. An accompanying music video for "City Girl" was directed by Sofia Coppola, the director of Lost in Translation. "City Girl" was well received upon its release, and its inclusion on the Lost in Translation soundtrack, and earned Shields nominations for a number of awards; these include a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Film Music, an Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) award for Best Music in a Film and an Online Film Critics Society award for Best Original Score.
Origin and recording
"City Girl" is one of four songs Kevin Shields composed for Sofia Coppola's 2003 film, Lost in Translation. Shields became involved with the film's original score after being contacted by the film's music co-ordinator Brian Reitzell in Tokyo, Japan. Reitzell and Shields began impromptu jam sessions in London, United Kingdom during summer 2002, where Shields composed "City Girl". The duo "adopted a late-night recording schedule" that consisted of them recording between midnight "and seven in the morning". According to Shields, "it was [their] productive time. It's basically as though the world's disappeared."
Describing the song's origins in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Shields said that the writing and recording of "City Girl" was "very simple, in the sense that it was just me teaching Brian the chord structure and Brian just jamming along to it." The duo recorded an instrumental rehearsal version of the song, after which Shields said there was "no point in rerecording it." He later wrote lyrics and recorded vocals for the song but emphasised that there was no need for "elaborations [or] overdubs." Shields described this method of recording as a "slapdash approach", noting that there was no "point in labouring over something … because you don't know what's going to work".
Music and lyrics
"City Girl" has been described as "mid-tempo, with an unusual repeating melody and a two-note chorus. The guitar is simple and rough, a bit garage-rock, bouncing over characteristically buried drums that seem an afterthought." Rolling Stone noted that the song—and other tracks Shields contributed to the Lost in Translation soundtrack—feature "My Bloody Valentines ethereal sensibility, but they are more fragile in their construction, without Shields' furious sheets of guitar."
Shields has referred to "City Girl"s composition as "average and vulnerable" and said of the lyrics: "It's kind corny words, like 'I love you' and 'you're beautiful' and the kind of corny, simple things that people tend to think when they actually get infatuated with somebody." According to Rolling Stone, the song's lyrics "aptly reflects the quiet nature of the film" and Shields has said that both he and Reitzell were "under the influence of the film" while Shields composed the song.
Music video
The music video for "City Girl" was directed by Lost in Translation director Sofia Coppola. The video was filmed in Tokyo, Japan—where Lost in Translation is based—and features the use of handheld cameras, production techniques such as jump cuts, and "blurry visuals" of the city. Coppola used footage from Lost in Translation that was not included in the final cut alongside selected sequences from the film to create the video.
Critic Geoff King said that the "City Girl" music video, like others Coppola directed around the same time period, "offer little else to go on for an auteurist account." He noted the contrast between Coppola's direction and overall quality in the "City Girl" video and her music video for "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" by The White Stripes, which was released the same year. The music video for "City Girl" was included as a bonus feature on the Lost in Translation DVD, released on 3 February 2004. A high definition version of the video was later included as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray release of the film, released on 7 December 2010.