As the summer single competition heats up (“Playa Grande,” “Glad He’s Gone,” the entire Miley EP and, as Katy Perry would like to believe, “Never Really Over” all being recent contenders), Diplo and Herve Pagez featuring Charli XCX have thrown their hats into the ring as well with “Spicy.” A peak representation of the increasingly shortened attention span of the average music listener, the song is just two minutes, thirty-eight seconds and borrows its lyrics entirely from the Spice Girls’ breakout hit, “Wannabe.”
The video that accompanies it serves as a diner- and dolphin-fueled acid trip that also favors ripping off another woman in pop culture: Lisa Frank. With Diplo sitting at the interplanetary looking Spicy diner and demanding his cup to be refilled, Charli XCX messages him a trio of dolphin emojis. Dolphins also happen to be Diplo’s fellow patrons at the diner before he gets on his spaceship to meet up with Charli, who appears to be fetishizing more dolphins at some sort of intimate aquarium (in fact, the entire premise of this video smacks of one of the subplots in 2017’s much talked about–for a book, anyway–Made For Love).
Suddenly, Diplo and Charli are riding dolphins through the space sea together, then just as suddenly, they’re running side by side next to dolphins in a fish tank, Charli sporting her most overt workout wear as Diplo persists in wearing those unfortunate braids and a shitkicker button-front shirt. All at once, Charli is taking a sledgehammer to the tank. Is she releasing them for the purpose of good? Or her own selfish intent of wanting more of them to use as transportation and sports competition?
A screen with a dolphin that appears with the question, “Release Dolphins?” seems only to prove she and Diplo just like to use them for a ride–even if it was a dolphin itself that pressed the “Y” button. But at least the multi-colored Lisa Frank dolphins are allowed the luxury of dancing on “the stage” outside the diner with them in between providing their services. What any of this has to do with the once empowered lyrics of “Wannabe” is something perhaps only the dolphins can answer. Particularly the one serenading them on guitar back at the diner as Diplo, Charli and Herve are served by a Jetsons-inspired robot. Behold…the future?
