Ilya Popenko lines up ‘Every Turn’ after July single ‘Alive or Dead’ — collaborative videos and digital singles
Ilya Popenko lines up 'Every Turn' after July single 'Alive or Dead' — collaborative videos and digital singles
New York songwriter and Mad Meg frontman Ilya Popenko has released the collaborative single and video “Every Turn”. The track features four guest vocalists with piano and string quartet, and follows his July 11, 2025 single “Alive or Dead” with French singer Freeda Lou.
“Every Turn” is described as a darkly comic, musical-theatre-leaning song built as a “laundry list” of self-undermining thoughts. It features Jason Laney (piano, vocals), Dan Veksler (vocals), Dolly Lewis (vocals), Kristy Talorico (vocals), and strings by Tom McCluskey and Jess Townsend.
The video contrasts two realities: a glossy, staged setting – Popenko miming at a white piano in a sun-lit loft – against cutaways to the singers in everyday, non-glamorous scenes. Actress Inga Khurieva lip-syncs the various vocal parts in different costumes. Popenko frames the release as an experiment: “I wanted to see if this song could survive on its own if I kicked it out of the house… I decided to completely remove myself from it—to see how it would hold up without my usual style of performing and arranging.”
Previous single and video: “Alive or Dead” (feat. Freeda Lou)
Issued July 11, 2025, “Alive or Dead” pairs Freeda Lou’s vocal with industrial-style drums, walking bass and Marc Ribot-style guitar. The black-and-white video shifts from minimalist portraits to layered collage imagery referencing medieval iconography.
“I started collaborating with other vocalists just to catch a break. The moment I heard Freeda, I knew she’d be an absolutely perfect fit for some of my songs,” Popenko notes.
About Ilya Popenko / Mad Meg
Ilya Popenko is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and photographer, and the frontman and principal songwriter of Mad Meg, a New York band he founded in 2011. The group self-describes its style as “Punk-Crooner-Noir.”
The band’s early distribution was independent, with the first full-length “Puberty Tales” arriving digitally in 2016/2017, followed by the live album “Live at Panevezys Correction House for Women in Lithuania” in 2019. The album “Who Deserves Balloons and Medals?” followed in 2022, with a run of singles (“Beyond Repair,” “Waiters,” “Cenotaph No. 8”) around that period.
Mad Meg has toured widely across Eastern Europe – nearly 30 cities – sharing stages with Emir Kusturica, Rasputina and Nogu Svelo!, and recording a live album in a Lithuanian women’s prison.
The live line-up consists of Ilya Popenko (vocals), Igor Reznik (bass), Jason Laney (keyboards), Dan Veksler (guitar) and Ruslan Baimurzin (drums).
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.
Since you’re here …
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading Side-Line Magazine than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can - and we refuse to add annoying advertising. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.
Side-Line’s independent journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we want to push the artists we like and who are equally fighting to survive.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as 5 US$, you can support Side-Line Magazine – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.
The donations are safely powered by Paypal.
