To help create even more anticipation for F1 (the soundtrack more than the movie), Tate McRae has become the latest musician to offer up a single from it. Titled “Just Keep Watching,” it marks the fourth song from the album to be unveiled (following Don Toliver and Doja Cat’s “Lose My Mind,” Rosé’s “Messy” and Myke Towers’ “Baja California”—with all three of these showcasing the eclectic selection on the soundtrack). Granted, a version of the track with Tyla featured on it had already leaked at the beginning of the year. The final product, produced by Ryan Tedder and Tyler Spry (both of whom also co-wrote with McRae), sounds fundamentally the same, with the lyrics and up-tempo rhythm still intact. And, if the title wasn’t enough of an indication that the single speaks to Juvenal’s old adage, “Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions—everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses,” then the frenetic, all-over-the-place (but also nowhere-at-all) video certainly is.
Directed by Bardia Zeinali (known for such visuals as LISA, RAYE and Doja Cat’s “Born Again,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please” and Ariana Grande’s “In My Head”), the video is in keeping with the motif of F1: cars. And the accoutrements thereof. Namely, tires. Stacks and stacks of them as McRae walks through the place (which is more of a non-place/liminal space) ready and willing to divert the masses’ attention toward her instead of anything else more pressing/alarming. Commencing with the verse, “I wanna let my hair down (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)/While I’m staring down your face/Wanna go ‘til lights out (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)/Take you right back to my place,” McRae strikes various poses while wearing a sheer black leotard, black tights and black heels. The look itself is part of the bread and circuses approach to entertaining the masses, serving up the eye candy expected of a “hot girl” to remind “mere mortal” women that they still have to strive to look a certain way, while also reminding men that they have another body to objectify/ogle.
In the next scene, McRae changes into another black ensemble (this time, she’s actually wearing pants) accessorized with sunglasses and heels as she takes to walking/jigging on the kind of “conveyor belt” that one usually associates with a treadmill. Paired with McRae’s bopping around on a moving floor, the all-white backdrop faintly recalls Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity” video (just as Ariana Grande’s “In My Head” did) as intercut shots of a racecar add to the spectacle. So, too, does the next shot of McRae in another “could be anywhere” room as she perches on a futuristic-looking exercise bike like she’s Beyoncé in the “Partition” video.
Surrounded by three TVs with footage of herself being reflected back to her in real time, the statement ultimately being made isn’t just about the way in which the proverbial masses keep watching, with willing and eager eyes, the “entertainers” who are just as keen to distract them, but also the ways in which we are constantly distracted by ourselves thanks to the collective narcissism that’s been furnished and further fortified by the digital age.
McRae takes her urging to “just keep watching” even more seriously in the following scene, wherein she appears in a getup that’s very similar to the iconic Mrs. Jones hooded white jumpsuit that Kylie Minogue wore for the “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” video—which, incidentally, also has some car-heavy moments. The cameras that surround and encircle McRae during this scene also give plenty of Britney Spears in “Hold It Against Me” energy.
It’s around this portion of the video that more scenes of the racecar are interjected into the frame, followed by the video actually being “opened up” into the outdoor setting of a massive racetrack in Las Vegas (where a large portion of the movie was shot during the Las Vegas Grand Prix). This method of “subliminal,” “fast cut” editing itself being an agent for the bread and circuses tactic. As the intercutting starts to ramp up, McRae fittingly repeats the chorus, “Goes like this, start with the track/Eyes on me, archin’ my back/Just like this, here for the night/You ain’t buyin’ in?/Just keep watchin’.” This effectively being the droning mantra sold to the public at a “Hulked out” level in the years since TikTok rose to prominence.
McRae accelerates the ADHD pacing of the video with a final sequence of her in, this time, a pink outfit (deviating from black or white hues, for once) as she struts and preens in front of another screen that also projects her onto it in real time (a.k.a. “live”). This happens while a camera attached to a track also follows her along, creating an amplified sensation of screen and technology overkill meets the “parlor walls” of Fahrenheit 451. And as a large group of racecar drivers sit on tiered benches doing just what she asked—watching—the overall visual effect is one that reiterates what Britney Spears said on, what else, “Circus”: “There’s only two types of people in the world/The ones that entertain, and the ones that observe.”
So while McRae’s intent behind the “sentiment” of the song might have been to flex (in addition to adding another “male pursuit” song to her oeuvre) in a Shania Twain “I’m gonna getcha, it’s a matter of time” sort of way, “Just Keep Watching” really just embodies what everyone has been doing with increased zombie-like flair. That is, watching the world burn around them on a screen in between watching things that also occasionally have a narrative.
But McRae doesn’t even need to tell us to keep watching. Of course we’ll maintain all of our focus on the things that don’t really matter. Because distraction has never been more valuable—more of a coping mechanism—to people than it is now. Hence, the likely success of F1 at the box office.
