Peter Doherty has always had a gift for the unpredictable, and in his new solo single, “The Day The Baron Died,” he detours the tightrope between tragic and tongue-in-cheek with vintage and poetic charm. It’s our first look at his upcoming LP “Felt Better Alive, out by May 16 through Strap Originals, and it promises the return of a songwriter as sharp as ever if a touch more theatrical.
The track is an odd little jazz ghost wandering a dream, held down by a deceptively silly, catchy melody that burrows into your brain after the first listen. Doherty himself describes it as a weird jazz number, and he’s not wrong, but the lingering quality of the song comes from an underlying twisted sense of humor and emotional ambivalence.
Doherty tips his hat to “Instant Karma” but also turns the lens inward, sketching out an open-ended and playfully cryptic character portrait of “The Baron.” The video that goes with it only increases its mystery. Filmed between Peter’s house and the dramatic cliffs of Étretat in Normandy, the visuals balance gothic and theatrical. Directed by Thad & Numa and starring Peter himself as The Baron, alongside Katia deVidas Doherty as The Lady, it’s half art-house cinema, half fever dream, and all very Doherty.
What’s most striking is how the song doesn’t lean toward the grand. It shrugs into being, worn-in and loose as if it has been around for decades. That’s Peter Doherty at peak melodic, rambling chaos, making you laugh one moment and ache the next. If “The Day The Baron Died” indicates the trajectory that Felt Better Alive is charting, then 2025 may well be the year that Doherty jogs our memory about why his music still cuts through the noise because he is flawed, funny, and fascinating.
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