Music Insights
VIDEO VIEWS BY JC: CHARLI XCX – BLAME IT ON YOUR LOVE FEAT. LIZZO
In the future, an interview is being conducted. “Can you tell me what love is?” an unassuming voice asks off camera. Two shy blondes with arms draped around one another stand in matching white t-shirts and body modifications. “Love is hard to describe,” one states, staring at the other searchingly. “I don’t know,” the other laughs. “I evolved in 2023,” repeat the subjects, staring into the lens.
Charli XCX reimagines the theory of evolution in the Blame It On Your Love music video. Although she’s been a complimentary match for tours alongside Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, she has retained an edge she crafted in the early 2010’s at underground warehouse events and parties. Her avant-pop brand is memorable for producing the 2013/14 hits I Love It and Fancy with Icona Pop and Iggy Azalea, but she’s since released two albums that further pushed exploration into other genres and avenues. Her third album, the self-titled upcoming September release Charli has been teased for some time. The single for Blame It On Your Love was released in May, but the video made a timely entrance last week for Pride Month 2019.
The music video is quick to immerse you in a sci-fi world that feels oddly immediate. The couple in the opening scene are revealed to be Karl and Annika, dubbed mysteriously as “Fertility Nymphs”. Charli shares screen time with cutaways to the Nymphs and other futuristic couples as they paw each other in supermarkets and enjoy romantic picnics, among less wholesome activities. Whether they are sporting elf ears as a fashion statement or if the body mods are intended to insinuate a natural physical metamorphosis brought on by ecological changes remains ambiguous- but hints within the video provide evidence to the latter. “Intimacy Revivalists” play alongside “K9 Filterheads,” each sporting an individual aesthetic that is in turns ghastly and alluring. Lizzo pops in for a cameo donning her own elf ears for an always welcome hit of sassy self-love, driving the message fully home. Charli clears up any remaining confusion with her take on this strange but familiar universe: “Modern love to me, is limitless,” she announces.“ And cute as f**k.