Tinashe Too Easy Ariana Grande Petal

As Tinashe continues to prepare the world for the release of her sixth album, Popstar, it’s worth noting that even Ariana Grande seems to be on the same wavelength as the Californian by way of Kentucky. For, upon releasing her controversial (more because of her weight than all the bloodshed) video for “Petal” (the second single from the album of the same name), one could easily see certain parallels to the video for the first single Tinashe released from Popstar, “Too Easy.”

Directed by Onda, the frenetic energy of the song, co-produced by Kimj and Zack Sekoff, is matched by the fast-paced nature of the narrative. Accordingly, within fourteen seconds, the viewer is made privy to Tinashe’s unfortunate fate: being hit with a stage light (sort of like what happens to Olivia Rodrigo in the video for “vampire”—except, you know, this “hit” truly is fatal). Yet, despite Tinashe’s demise, she lies there with a smile permanently plastered to her face. Which is essentially what everyone still wants out of a pop star anyway, no matter how they’re really feeling. Hence, maybe the only way to “give the people what they want,” for most pop stars, is by being dead (to be sure, it’s no secret that a singer’s stock skyrockets in the wake of their death, especially if it happens “before their time”). Because they’re so much more “moldable” when that happens, n’est-ce pas?

But regardless of whether a pop star dies or not, there’s always a “new girl” (or boy) waiting in the wings to replace the “old model.” And, speaking of old models, it’s a Motorola-esque “brick” flip phone that Tinashe’s handler/overseer/whatever-you-want-to-call-her uses to summon someone to clear away the “debris” of this dead girl. Onda then cuts to a shot of a billboard looming above a brick wall that reads: “Pop Star Auditions 555-TOO-EASY.” Similarly, during the opening to Grande’s “Petal” video (after a shot of a dandelion growing out of a blank Hollywood star of the Walk of Fame), there’s a close-up on her holding a flyer that reads: “Wanted! Stars Audition Today T.V. & Film Industry Major Studios are calling for new faces who follow direction and have a good personality.” Below that is the logo for “FAME INC.,” the company that’s “hiring.” As if stars can be pulled out of thin air like any average job candidate.

But the same belief is at play in “Too Easy,” when Onda pans down from the billboard and reveals a slew of girls waiting in line to audition for, well, being the next Tinashe, as it were. And as the Black Eyed Peas/Fergie-esque beat continues to thump (in fact, the song in general is very much giving “Fergalicious”), Tinashe sings, “I got a question, is you down to pop or what?/Turn the track up, I don’t think this shit is loud enough.” This said around the moment when all of the “casting agents” appraising the options look decidedly unimpressed and unsatisfied. Just as they also do every time Grande keeps coming in with a new “style” that’s meant to finally somehow cater to whatever it is they actually do want.

Alas, the only thing they seem to want is to literally manufacture the pop star of their mind’s eye, as shown when an MRI-like machine effectively “generates” a new Tinashe, complete with the unique Popstar “star” logo glinting in her eye as the job is completed. From that moment on, this Tinashe operates at the highest level of efficiency, having no trouble with endorsement deals (namely, EOS, a product that Tinashe’s idol and one-time collaborator, Britney Spears, was also endorsing years ago in the video for “Hold It Against Me”), doing her own “stunts” against the backdrop of a Hollywood green screen (one that, incidentally, shows her driving a white Jeep Wrangler [Cher Horowitz-style] past the Hollywood sign) and doing the kind of choreo that the 2000s normalized with the same level of ease that was shown in said decade.

And another thing the 2000s normalized was an unhealthy kind of thinness, contributing to the body image issues that made many a female celebrity go off the rails. But it was Spears who came to serve as the “mascot” for that global issue of the decade. To be sure, it’s a wonder that Spears did manage to come out the other side—though many would argue she hasn’t, an overt husk of her former self. Grande, too, has been dissected as someone susceptible to such a fate if she keeps going down a path of self-destruction when it comes to her body. Yet, like Spears before her, Grande wishes only to take a chainsaw to the proverbial peanut gallery (a fantasy fulfilled in “Petal”) that keeps picking apart everything that’s supposedly “wrong” with her. Though, in Spears’ iconic scenarios, that “chainsaw” was both a hair trimmer and a green umbrella.

Tinashe, in her own way, also alludes to the manner in which Spears was treated during her 00s heyday (and not just because she’s dressed similarly for most of the video) as scenes of various “handlers”/people involved in her career (to however marginal a degree) count the cash they’re making off Tinashe’s back. It’s right after this scene that the viewer finds themselves returned to the instant just before the stage light falls on Tinashe’s head. So it was that the moments shown in between were but a “flashback” to what led to this in the first place. And yet, one imagines that the “cell phone lady” who called in the cavalry to collect the corpse will rinse and repeat every time something like this happens. In this regard, there’s a bit of a Josie and the Pussycats vibe to it as well…in the sense of conveying the message that every pop star is replaceable.

However, by and large, the video for “Too Easy” acts as something of a “flipside” to “Petal.” For while the latter is “dark” in its goriness, the former is dark in more heavily hammering the point that no one is “iconic” enough to be safe from being taken out with tomorrow’s trash (literally, in the “Too Easy” video). Just ask pretty much any of the pop stars that emerged in the 2000s. Even though, at the time, they, too, would have claimed, “I can’t help that I/Make it look so easy.” But behind the scenes, a far more complicated story is always at play. As Grande, too, would be hard-pressed to deny.