As the fourth single from her candid and confessional album, Locket, “Bad Enough” might just be Madison Beer’s most emotional offering from the record. Accordingly, the accompanying video (co-directed by Beer and Aerin Moreno as per usual) doesn’t pull any punches on conveying such sobering, unvarnished sentiments as, “My friends all say my standards are too low/But it’s not bad enough to let my baby/Go, go, go, go.”
During the opening scene, Beer’s arms are extended upward as she stands in front of white bars, making it immediately clear that she’s being bound to some as-of-yet unseen source. Her eyes, during these first few seconds, are closed as the white cursive font (worthy of a romance novel cover) displays the song’s title. Then, slowly blinking them open, it’s as if she realizes (/remembers) the situation she’s in. And, although seemingly initially surprised, Beer also appears to recall that it’s actually she who technically put herself in this position, singing from the get-go, “Taken but it’s holding me back/And I feel kind of bad about that/But I don’t wanna be alone/No, I don’t wanna be alone.”
After this verse (and once the camera has panned fully back to reveal Beer’s decidedly “Bridgerton-meets-Little House on the Prairie-core” ensemble [baby blue and ruffle-trimmed]), the “man” she’s in a relationship with makes his way onto the scene. Only he isn’t quite a man, but rather, you guessed it, a beast, of sorts (though, in truth, he looks more like one of those cavemen in a Geico commercial).
Once he approaches her and kind of sniffs her to perhaps make sure she’s still “under his spell,” he then sits down and smokes a cigarette as Beer continues to lyrically self-flagellate, “I know that it seems easy/That I like that he needs me.” Observing her as she starts to have some further revelations, like that she can untie herself at any time—and then does just that—The Beast isn’t so quick to let his Beauty get away. Which is why, in the following scene, Beer is running down the streets of L.A. while being chased by him. And yet, it doesn’t take her long to stop in her tracks and let him catch up. Almost as if she’s too racked with guilt to just “abandon”/“jettison” him like that. And, besides, as she keeps telling herself (and presumably everyone else) throughout the song, “It’s not bad enough to let my baby go.” “Bad enough” referring to such truly “deal-breaking” relationship issues as domestic abuse or infidelity.
To this point, according to Beer, her inspiration behind the song came not from her ex, Nick Austin, but from hearing others speak on wanting to leave a relationship, but not feeling there was a truly “legitimate” reason to do so (ergo, being comfortable in their discomfort). So it was that she said, “I’ve literally heard people say, ‘I wish he would cheat on me, or I wish he would do something to give me a reason to break up with him.’ I wasn’t, I’m not speaking for myself [though the lady doth protest too much here], but I’ve heard that be said before. And so, conceptually, I was like, ‘How can we drill that?’ And really think about what that means is like knowing that something is not good, but it’s not quite bad enough.” That is, bad enough to risk the “wilds” of singledom and trying to find someone new, let alone potentially better (an even taller order than new).
Alas, no sooner has Beer taken her beast (not prince) back than she almost immediately remembers why she tried to ditch him in the first place. For there he is in the next moment uncouthly eating from the trash on the street while Beer is sitting there looking all poised and cute in her form-fitting polka-dot dress (another costume change being, of course, essential). It’s in the next instant that (in yet another maneuver similar to Ariana Grande, who adores a film reference in her videos) The Shining undertones of the video enter the mix, with a pair of red-headed twins approaching The Beast to give him a look that’s even more judgmental than Beer’s.
In response to the would-be Grady twins, he flashes his claws and growls, sending them running and screaming as Beer scolds him for being so rude and embarrassing (answering the presently perennial question, “Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?”). In fact, it’s as if Beer is only forced to “notice” how bad he (de facto, the relationship) actually is when they’re in public together and she has to bear witness to his unseemly interactions. Sometimes so unseemly that the result is a bloodbath (again, The Shining is at play). One that Beer watches unfold while they’re at the laundromat together and The Beast lashes out at an ordinary man just for “having the gall” to accidentally bump into him when they’re walking past one another.
Initially shocked and horrified as the blood spatters onto her face and body, in the next cut, Beer is calmly and resignedly—as if in a daze—walking through the laundromat with her empty laundry cart. In this moment, too, she looks a lot like a “freshly fed” Jennifer Check (but then, she already made that reference in the video for “make you mine”). However, it’s not Beer that’s out for blood in this scenario, just her beast of a boyfriend, who really does seem hellbent on making things bad enough to make her want to let him go. Including flirting with another girl at the laundromat.
So it is that Beer finally is pushed to her breaking point…à la Jack Torrance. For the ultimate The Shining reference she gives occurs as the video comes to a close, and she’s searching for her own “Danny,” as it were, so that she can take an axe to him and this now very much “bad enough” dynamic. Except, just when the viewer thinks she might truly “end” him (therefore, it), she takes one glance at his cowering expression and lowers the axe. This prompting the kind of look from her beast that says, “I knew you could never leave me.”
Hence, Beer chooses to conclude the narrative on a note that seems designed to evoke little sympathy for the person in the relationship who can’t bring themselves to leave simply because they’re not being smacked around or cheated on. Because such is the low bar that’s been set for choosing to decide what constitutes a “good enough” relationship.
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