As Beabadoobee commences a “new era” (as it is called now when an artist begins teasing their next album), she’s chosen to offer “All I Did Was Dream of You” featuring The Marías as her first single of 2026. And, to accompany the decidedly 90s grunge-sounding track, Beabadoobee enlisted the help of María Zardoya of The Marías to sing a verse. Before Zardoya’s lulling words materialize, however, Beabadoobee establishes a dreamy musical background that goes hand in hand with a title like this. As does the video, directed by Jake Erland and ABOVEGROUND.
Shot on location in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, Erland and ABOVEGROUND make the most of the snowy, stark-looking milieu for the purposes of creating a dream-like atmosphere. Or maybe nightmare is the better word, considering that the video commences with a car crash. One that’s shot from an inside-of-the-vehicle perspective before cutting to an exterior shot of the overturned car emitting pitch-black smoke. In the next instant, Beabadoobee, can be seen trudging through miles of snow (leaving many footprints in her wake) toward a “main area” sort of structure. As if she’s going to get help.
Meanwhile, within the city center, a screen shows Beabadoobee singing her song like she’s still in the middle of a snowy nowhere as various “townspeople” down below gather around to hear what she has to say. And what that entails is kicking off the song with the vocal tone of Sneaker Pimps’ Kelli Ali on “Six Underground” as Beabadoobee begins with an imploring, “Please” before explaining, “All I did was dream of you/Swimming in my mind again/Wanting to waste time again/Ease/Always so easy with you/I don’t have to think/Pour another drink.”
By the time she gets to this alcohol-friendly portion of the lyrics, Beabadoobee is shown inside a restaurant-bar as she observes the revelers around her, many of them couples. In the next instant, she’s in an abandoned-looking apartment, where she ends up sitting on a bed in a room that has a window with opened vertical blinds, allowing a crowd of people outside to observe her (the “fishbowl” motif perhaps foreshadows Beabadoobee going to a fish/meat market next). This only further adding to the surreal, almost eerie quality of the video. One that’s more in line with Zardoya’s verse, “Nightmares always feels like this/They swallow me/But I let go/Doesn’t feel like I can breathe/They follow me/But I let go/Yeah, I let go.”
However, one key reason the video might lack cohesion (or “sense” in general) to viewers is because Beabadoobee got her idea for it from Yorgos Lanthimos’ work. Namely, Bugonia. As she enthusiastically put it to Dazed, “My boyfriend [who just so happens to be Erland, making for a partnership that mirrors what FKA Twigs has been doing with Jordan Hemingway a.k.a. creating music videos that are right proper art pieces thanks to a heightened emotional connection] and I are fucking obsessed with Yorgos—and that last scene [in Bugonia] inspired the video.”
For those who have seen the movie and know its last scene, the concept of “All I Did Was Dream of You” doesn’t necessarily correlate. Unless what Beabadoobee is going for is a more “end of the world”/“last woman standing” type of idea. Which occasionally comes across in moments when she’s, say, lying inside of a meat display case languidly telling the object of her affection, “Stay/Stay or just leave/Stay or just leave me be.” In other words, don’t fuck with her heart (sometimes known as: “love me forever or not at all”).
In this regard, maybe Beabadoobee unwittingly wielded something like her “energy” to make the car crash at the beginning, feeling irritated/neglected by her lover (or potential ex-lover) to the point where her aura gave off enough frustration to make the vehicle, ergo the relationship, come to a literal crashing halt.
And as the video starts to draw to a close, the viewer is taken back to the car crash scene, with Beabadoobee waiting nearby as an ambulance and firetruck are shown, presumably there to “deal with the situation.” As she starts walking away from it all while various firemen are running toward the chaos, it’s evident she’s become numb to just about everything. Indeed, the song itself has a numbing effect on the listener (much the same as 90s grunge and trip hop [à la the aforementioned “Six Underground” by Sneaker Pimps]). Sort of like being frozen to death.
To that point, another scene of Beabadoobee sitting in a bedroom while it snows inside (think: what happens to Chet’s bedroom in Weird Science) reveals a kind of “calm before the storm” in that, soon after, Erland and ABOVEGROUND start to evoke the feeling of “all hell breaking loose” (intensified by the rapid editing style that follows). And perhaps this is where the Bugonia influence is most noticeable in that it feels like Beabadoobee is trying to channel the moment just after “Michelle” (Emma Stone) punctures the translucent dome that will kill off all human life on Earth. In Beabadoobee’s version of things, however, it appears as if there’s only (neglected) lovers left alive.
