Although some might have presumed her single, “All I Did Was Dream of You” featuring The Marías was going to be the lead from her forthcoming album, Pylon, as it turns out, Beabadoobee is going with a shorter, “harder” and more rock-tinged track called “Sun Has Set” (in fact, “All I Did Was Dream of You” isn’t even going to be featured on the album). But, more precisely than “rock,” “Sun Has Set” bears a certain shoegaze-meets-noise pop sound. Indeed, many of the musicians she’s listed as an influence on her work shine through on this particular song, including the likes of My Bloody Valentine, The Smashing Pumpkins, Mazzy Star and Pavement. So perhaps, in a way, that’s also how the music, co-produced by Beabadoobee, Gianluca Buccellati and Jason Vance Harris, ends up coming across a bit like what Olivia Rodrigo is doing on You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. Which is to say, she’s emulating her own more “rock”-oriented heroes like The Cure (specifically, Robert Smith).
As for the video, which begins focused on a scene of a spartan room, it’s once again directed by her boyfriend, Jake Erland. And, as if to punctuate the 90s vibe of the single, the room itself immediately establishes a kind of 90s-era moodiness/“I don’t give a fuck”-ness. From the electric kettle and cheap-looking TV and microwave (positioned right next to each other) to the speaker on the floor and the half-assed “decorative piece” that is a sun shape (because, you know, “Sun Has Set”) with a moon and star inside of it, it’s clear whoever inhabits this space if “of a different time.” And that’s right about the moment when Beabadoobee bursts in to deliver her surly opening lines, “Steal/Weigh it down/Tough loving/Don’t let go of the feelings too/Cold-hearted/Stay honest/Don’t be so fake and affected/Scared of rejection/Lacking direction.”
By this time, the TV has turned to blue static (yet another homage to the 90s) as Beabadoobee starts angrily tossing the clothes on her chair at the camera before she takes her angst out of the apartment and onto the exterior corridor of her apartment complex. It’s around the forty-three-second mark that the dynamic camerawork kicks it up a level by having Beabadoobee actually put her hands on the camera as she grabs it and shoves it to the pavement below. Rather than crashing and hitting the ground, however, the camera seems to bounce back—literally—and right itself just in time to capture Beabadoobee approaching a parked car with a golf club in hand and proceeding to smash the windows (and no, it’s not as “Beyoncé in the ‘Hold Up’ video” as what Gracie Abrams does in “Look at My Life,” since the latter uses a baseball bat to smash shit).
This being an appropriate time for her to sing her enraged chorus, “When I say, ‘We’ll never be friends’/I mean we’ll never pretend/Fuck that, you can never run back to me now/This sun has set/There’s so much we left unsaid/And so much that you don’t get/Fuck that, not worth thinking about to me now/This sun has set.” It’s during the chorus that it becomes more obvious there’s a Lauren Mayberry (of Chvrches) intonation to her voice (and, believe it or not, a dash of Lisa Loeb, to boot)—and yes, a Lauren Mayberry sort of rage. That is to say, “pleasantly delivered.”
As the next scene builds up, another very dynamic camera maneuver is used (making it look as if the camera is actually rolling over into the subsequent backdrop) to get the viewer into the latest landscape: an open road with a cop car driving down it. And who should get out of the back seat but Beabadoobee? This as she urges, “Just stay away/From me now/You’ll see how.” The camera then goes about taking the viewer away from the road and through a thicket that leads to a wide-open field where, once again, Beabadoobee miraculously pops up out of nowhere. As if it were physically possible for her to move as quickly as the camera keeps doing. No matter, perhaps she’s powered purely by her contempt for this ex of hers (not unlike Lily Allen writing West End Girl).
And as for the field setting she finds herself irritatedly walking around in, one would be remiss not to point out that one of the best music videos of the 90s also has some key moments in a field setting: Blind Melon’s “No Rain.” But, in contrast to “Bee Girl,” Beabadoobee Girl doesn’t dance about playfully in the field, so much as she sort of collapses in an “I’m giving up on this shit” manner, turning on her side so that her back is facing the camera when it concludes with a “midway” overhead shot of her. What’s more, the field setting definitely channels the one Charli XCX was lolling around in for the “Wink Wink” video (so that’s two other “pop stars” Beabadoobee is unwittingly visually vibing with of late: Gracie Abrams and Charli XCX).
Her resolute refusal to turn around and look at the camera anew is sure to remind the ex she’s been addressing that, once again, “Goodbye now/You’ll find there’s/Nothing you can say/Just stay away/From me now.” Because, you guessed it, the “sun has set” on both their relationship and her willingness to repair it. So it is that she shows the strength and resolve of a true 90s alt rock girl.
Genna Rivieccio
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