In honor of releasing her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, Olivia Rodrigo also unveiled the video for the record’s third single, “stupid song,” on the same day. And it’s a track, that despite its title, has plenty of weighty, intelligent things to say on the subject of l’amour. Most notably, that even trying to bother with expressing how love feels (and makes one feel) is a fool’s errand. Which is why the best way Rodrigo can sum it up is, “I want you more than any stupid song could every say.”
So perhaps that’s also why trying to better explain it with a visual is both even more “inane” and also an earnest attempt to better elucidate her fundamentally indescribable (in words) emotions (for, yes, two conflicting things can be true at once). And to give her an assist with that is director Mitch Ryan (a favorite of Addison Rae [see: “High Fashion” and “Headphones On”], Charli XCX [see: “party 4 u” and “House”] and Rosalía [see: “Hentai,” “Delirio de grandeza” and Despechá]). With whom Rodrigo also collaborated on the video for “Obsessed.” Except, this time around, rather than attending an “Exes Annual Ball,” Rodrigo takes to the streets of New York City with a coterie of ballerinas in tow (this coming at a time when Timothée Chalamet’s snarky, bro-ish comments about opera and ballet are still fresh in people’s minds). Those ballerinas being: Tiler Peck, Kennedy Targosz, Lauren Collett, India Bradley, Kayla Mak, Kloe Walker, Rommie Tomasini and Grace Scheffel.
However, to start, we see her coming up the stairs of a garden apartment (because of course Rodrigo could afford to live in one) and onto the sidewalk. Sporting a dark blue hoodie with a longer white shirt(?) underneath it (paired with what can only be described as “Edward Scissorhands boots”), Rodrigo is the very picture of “stealth wealth” as the lyrics, “New York City’s never looked so blue/My friends are smoking blunts in the bathroom/They say that honest love is a cage that makes you feel free” play over the scene. Then, in the next cut, Ryan offers a POV shot from the perspective of a cat walking through a bodega—almost as if to indicate that, somehow Rodrigo has turned into one herself (but no, there’s no “magical bent” to this narrative). These moments are intercut with shots of ballerina feet doing their dance on a crosswalk near Central Park.
Ryan then goes back to the scene of Rodrigo walking down the street alone, with one of the ballerinas soon casually entering the frame. Soon joined by another, and then another and another. The overall effect and shot style being somewhat reminiscent of the sort of work that Petra Collins does (especially in the “girlier” scenarios). Alas, Rodrigo already “used” her for the “drop dead” video. Though maybe Ryan took a few pointers (no ballet slipper pun intended) from it. Particularly with the mise-en-scène of the ballerinas dancing around her as if it’s totally normal, with Rodrigo not even registering their presence in these moments. The metaphor ostensibly being that love—and falling in love—is a delicate dance. And a precarious one at that.
Talking of precarity, at the one-minute-twelve-second mark of the video (right as the musical transition into “part two” of the song mimics the piano sound in “drivers license”), Rodrigo is suddenly very determined to protect the ballerinas when they all get to a crosswalk. Accordingly, she blocks them with her arms to prevent them from crossing.
When the verse, “Walking through the park with my head high/Past the college girls and the drunk guys/And if there is a god, he’s the bond between us two” comes on, that’s when Rodrigo actually starts to mouth the words to the lyrics (whereas, previously, they were merely playing over the scenes like a soundtrack). This done in front of a tree in the park that she rests her head against (and presumably a tree she would carve her initials into with those of her beloved—making it “OR + LP = <3”). Intercut shots of the ballerinas running through the grass amplify the intensity of Rodrigo’s conveyed emotions, both visually and lyrically.
At around the one-minute-forty-three-second mark, Ryan returns to a blocking shot he favored in “Obsessed,” with Rodrigo being surrounded by a circle of ballerinas as she stands at the center of them (something that also happens in “Obsessed” when some of the exes encircle her as well, tossing out a few ballerina-style moves of their own). This done in the middle of the road, as if suddenly throwing caution to the wind after she tried to be so careful in her protection of the ballerinas (and herself) when stopping them at the crosswalk before.
But the outside shots are merely “preparation” for the brief flickers of the interior that was hinted at with the cat POV at the beginning of the video. That interior being, what else, a bodega. And since Rodrigo, like Taylor Swift before her, has made a whole “thing” about living in New York now, it makes sense that she would place herself in another “quintessential” NYC setting. Not only that, but further accent her “New Yorkness” by sporting a Blondie t-shirt while she sings in the various aisles of what appears to be an unusually large bodega space. Particularly when Rodrigo posts up at a grand piano and plays her song as one of the cats listens while sitting on the music rack. The number of cats, like the number of ballerinas, is also sure to quickly escalate by the next shot of Rodrigo at the piano (perhaps a subtle reference to Rodrigo wishing she could just be “okay” with being a cat lady instead of wanting a heteronormative, monogamous relationship).
And as the song’s chorus reaches its final crescendo, Ryan concludes with the image of Rodrigo standing alone in the grass of the park as a “sad, single” sprinkler splashes both against her face, and then, above her like a rainbow. Indeed, it’s the perfect encapsulation of the phrase “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.” For while getting “cooled off” on a hot day (despite what Rodrigo’s sweatshirt might suggest about the weather) should be a theoretically “happy” occurrence, it will ultimately leave her uncomfortably damp as she continues to walk the streets in her wet clothes. Like love itself, this conundrum of pleasure mixing with pain is undeniable—and perhaps unavoidable.
[…] Love is a Delicate Dance in Olivia Rodrigo’s “Stupid Song” Video […]