Just Another Day in Florida: Camila Cabello’s “I LUV IT” Video

After the Cubano-infused stylings of Camila Cabello’s third album, Familia, it seems the singer has decided to pivot to what is now being branded by Rolling Stone as “hyperpop,” complemented by a look that’s awash in what Paper magazine (whose current cover she appears on) calls “edgier, blonder, more lo-fi, yet hyper-femme.” The word of the moment to describe her look and sound, clearly, is hyper (though another phrase that could characterize it is simply: “Tumblr circa 2012” or even “Spring Breakers chic” [in truth, “I LUV IT” could have fit in easily on that soundtrack]). 

Considering Cabello’s well-known propensity for anxiety and OCD, it’s fair to say that being, well, fraught isn’t exactly a “persona.” Nor is being a “Miami mami.” After all, Cabello moved to Miami with her mother when she was six years old. Having strayed away from it for a while in favor of L.A., Cabello’s return to the city to record the album undoubtedly had an influence on it (in addition to working with one of Rosalía’s go-to producers, El Guincho). 

So, apparently, did the music itself have an influence on how she would evolve her look. Per Cabello, “Six months [into recording], we had a couple songs and [I realized], ‘Oh, this is a character.’ It became a persona that I was tapping into, which was me, but definitely a hyper-femme version of me.” There’s that word, hyper, again. And it would seem, in contrast to Lana Del Rey (among the musical inspirations for the album—case in point, lyrics like, “Kiss me hard” and “Seein’ stars, oh my god”), that Cabello doesn’t think “persona” is a dirty word, especially in the current pop culture landscape of everyone striving for “authenticity.”  So it was that Cabello asked herself the questions of this “character,” “What are the color palettes of the world this character inhabits? What’s her hair? What’s photography like there?” 

If the video for her Charli XCX-esque first single “I LUV IT” featuring Playboi Carti is any indication, the “photography” is straight out of any ordinary, batshit day in Florida. As for the Charli XCX similarities, complete with XCX’s big break arising out of a feature on Icona Pop’s 2012 hit, “I Love It,” Paper was also sure to point out that initial reactions to “I LUV IT” “drew immediate comparisons to Charli XCX… The lo-fi iPhone aesthetic, the cyborgian sonics and then a video by Charli mimicking Cabello’s while singing her similar-sounding song, ‘I Got It,’ fueled this dialogue. But Cabello reposted Charli’s video, showing it’s all love between them. ‘I love Charli and I love Charli’s music, so I think [comparing us is] a huge compliment. Charli loves me, so everybody can fuck off.’” (And besides, Cabello is sampling Gucci Mane’s 2009 single, “Lemonade,” with a dash of Rihanna’s “Cockiness [Love It]” here, not Charli XCX.)

In fact, the entire attitude of the song and video is “fuck off,” with equal parts “fuck it.” To help convey that is director Nicolás Méndez (also known as CANADA, the name under which he directed Rosalía and Travis Scott’s “TKN”), who opens on the image of a man holding a bow in his hand. Indeed, bow and arrow imagery has been trending for a while now, starting with FKA Twigs’ “meta angel” video from early 2022 and continuing into 2024 with Shakira and Cardi B’s “Puntería” video, during which the former is an archer taking aim at her centaur mark—even though the song itself is from Shakira’s perspective of being shot at. That’s the role Cabello is about to embody after Méndez cuts to an exterior shot of a cop car outside the house as the ultra Miami-fonted title card for “I LUV IT” appears onscreen. We then see a police officer hacking away at a tree with an ax before a quick cut to Cabello shoving a piece of cake in her mouth at her kitchen table (unless she’s broken into the place) and then spitting a mouth guard out in the next quickly-cut-to scene. 

We’re soon rejoined with the man who had the bow, now in a hospital walking away from a vending machine and toward Cabello, seated in the waiting area with an arrow through her chest. To quote the Shakira lyrics (translated to English) of “Puntería,” “You have good aim/You know where to give me, so that I am surrendered, surrendered…/You throw darts at me, they go straight to the heart.” Cabello seems pretty blasé about that shot to the heart though, as she is in most of the other scenarios that befall her during what appears to be just another day in Florida. Whether this is wrestling with another woman, sitting calmly in her house while some dude in a motorcycle barrels through it, lying on top of a crashed car while someone takes a picture of the horror (presumably for their social media), running from a trio of drug-sniffing type dogs or turning out to be the reason why a cop is chopping down a tree (spoiler: she’s “caught” in it like a cat), all of these scenarios are “peak Florida,” in addition to matching the chaotic energy of the song. 

And, of course, what would an ode to Florida be without a requisite convenience store sequence? This being where Playboi Carti makes his entrée to sing his verse on the track as Cabello delights in a Push-Pop in between bopping around blindfolded with some backup dancers (the choreo is decidedly tribal—we’re talking “invoke the spirits” shit). Perhaps a metaphor for how we’re all flying blind, particularly in matters of love. Or maybe it’s just another more literal inspiration from the type of “average” goings-on in the Sunshine State. 

So is chillin’ in the hospital waiting room with an arrow in your chest, which is how Méndez chooses to conclude the video: with a “well, whatever” Cabello still vaguely hoping for some medical attention for her strange (in any other state) injury. And yes, perhaps being struck hard enough by love to feel anything anymore is very strange indeed in the present era. So no wonder Cabello sounds like she’s been injected with a jolt of adrenaline, Mia Wallace-style, when she chants frenetically, “I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it/I love it, I love it, I love it.” Though not many people can say that about Florida anymore.