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Although it hasn’t been very long since the last time Madison Beer offered her fans a single, it feels as though years have already gone by in the period between now and the release of 2024’s “Make You Mine” and “15 Minutes.” That said, Beer more than likely had her reasons for wanting to release a particularly high-energy track amidst a climate that is decidedly, well, “high energy” in all the wrong ways. So yes, more than ever, something uplifting is appreciated. Even though, for those with body image issues, the video for “Yes Baby” might not be.
In the spirit of Charli XCX’s style of “working out” in the “360” video (that is, in “hot girl” attire with tights, heels and a glass of red wine in hand), Beer takes a similar approach to her fitness regimen (there are even a few moments later on where she, too, bounces up and down to make her tits jiggle à la Charli) by walking in “model strut” mode on the treadmill while wearing above-the-ankle white socks paired with black stiletto heels. Needless to say, her workout ensemble is meant to channel a certain “coquette” aesthetic.
So it is that Beer goes from the escape room of “15 Minutes” to the gym of her 80s-inspired dreams for “Yes Baby” (indeed, it seems many have been inspired yet again by the 80s lately). And while quite a few of Madison Beer’s music videos feature her in situations that either find her alone or with just one other person (e.g., “Home to Another One,” “Spinnin” and “15 Minutes”), “Yes Baby” stands out for the great number of other women in her midst who all seem to be “turned on” by exercising. Or maybe “animated” and “flushed” by it are the more euphemistic word choices.
The presence of all these women is perhaps meant to emphasize Beer’s insistence that the song is one “you want to blast with your friends.” A feeling that came to the fore after the creation of the music video, co-directed by Beer and (as usual) Aerin Moreno. Something Beer commented on by noting, “‘Yes Baby’ is really just a fun and flirty song. After I shot the music video, though, it took on a whole new energy…” That energy being one of a matriarchal good time.
And yet, clearly, everything about the song oozes sex (with a man)—in fact, the lyrics make it sound as though Beer is already in between the sheets on the verge of orgasm with the repetition of, “Yes, baby, yes, yes, baby, yes, yes, baby.” These two words being the phrase that makes up the majority of the song. Even though there are occasional verses of “poetry,” including the opening one that goes, “Speakin’ to me soft like silky sheets/Figures in the dark, two heartbeats/Basically a God, you pray to me/Whisper in the dark, you want me.”
Beer sings these words as intercut scenes of the various exercise options in this apparently multi-faceted gym are shown. Seeing her and her sistren in ballet attire at a barre in front of a mirror wall-outfitted dance room, Beer also adds, “It’s a look/It’s a touch/It’s a dangerous kind of crush/Say it once/Say it twice/Come and say it another time.” The “it” she wants to hear another time being, of course, “yes baby.”
As the beat drops (after building up for about the first minute of the song), co-producers Beer, Leroy Clampitt and Lostboy help to recall elements of Benny Benassi’s signature 2002 hit, “Satisfaction” (even lyrically speaking, with Beer repeating “yes” at times in the same way that “push” is repeated on “Satisfaction”). What’s more, the “Yes Baby” video also has a certain similarity to the one for “Satisfaction,” what with lots of women jumping around in a sexually charged manner even though they’re being featured in an “everyday” kind of setting (for the women in the “Satisfaction” video, that “everyday” setting involves the use of power tools).
As the video progresses, Beer finds herself in a few other new “workout” scenarios, including being perched on the balancing beam with her fellow workout enthusiasts in leotards as she does little to indicate much in the way of “strenuous” exercise. Perhaps proving, yet again, that half the reason that women truly enjoy going to the gym is for the additional wardrobe it allows them to don (hence, Kate Hudson starting a clothing line called Fabletics just for “activewear”). As for the mirror wall scenes in the dance studio, it has a certain Madonna in the “Hung Up” video cachet (along with Dua Lipa in the “Houdini” video, itself a nod to “Hung Up”). To be sure, it’s likely that the Queen of Pop herself wouldn’t mind sweating it out to this particular song on the dance floor or in the gym—the two primary venues that this song was made for (apart from, one supposes, the boudoir).
Incidentally, both locations are quite voyeuristic in nature, with everyone observing others—sizing them up (especially from a “physical beauty” standpoint). So it is that Beer’s lyrics, “Something in the way you’re watchin’ me/Talkin’ to me nice and slowly/Promise if you ask, you will receive/Come a little closer to me,” further amplify “Yes Baby” as a simultaneous club and gym banger. Both of these locations still struggling to make a full comeback since Covid.
But at least Beer is doing her part to remind listeners of what Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde once said, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t.” Hence, the reason why so many tradwives are fitness freaks. After all, you’d have to be to keep yourself from shooting some of the conservative husbands out there. So, in a sense, Beer is now picking up where Brooke Taylor-Windham (Ali Larter) left off with her own kind of “fitness empire.” One that is decidedly more, let’s say, “auto-erotic.”
This much is made even more apparent by the non sequitur concluding scenes of the video, which find Beer outside on a lawn as the sprinklers go off. Naturally, she lets them drench her, perhaps a less on-the-nose “metaphor” than a scene of her drenched in sweat would be. Both scenarios indicating that exercise (whether in the gym or in the bedroom) makes her wet. Though that definitely isn’t how most people feel, ergo the success of Ozempic.
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Genna Rivieccio
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