Pandemic pop isn’t just a dystopian genre that focuses solely on au courant lyrics like, “Move bitch, you got coronavirus/I’ma chill at the crib ‘cause I’m safe here/I ain’t even ‘bout to drink a Corona beer,” but one that has bled into the entire enterprise of music video making as well. While the likes of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion seem more willing to take the old school approach so long as their film crew puts on the display of wearing masks (Taylor Swift, instead, opted for the most minimal amount of people possible to help her create the “Cardigan” video), Kesha, remaining ever-cautious, has continued the trend helmed by Charli XCX during her own slew of green screen-centric music videos created during the first lockdown in California as she worked on her How I’m Feeling Now record.
Of course, there have been other less glamorous versions of the “at-home” concept, including Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s cringeworthy “Stuck With U.” And, where the DIY has proven too much of a digression away from the glitzier production value of yore, artists like Billie Eilish (with “My Future”) and Dua Lipa (with “Hallucinate”) have opted for the animation route to sustain some level of the original dynamism that could be achieved with live action in a realm not pocked with a pandemic.
Kesha, always down to keep it real/trashy, goes full-tilt with her use of the green screen for her latest single from High Road. She explained the concept was inspired by her cat, noting on Twitter, “Mr. Peeps and I made a music video at home shot entirely on my phone for ‘Little Bit Of Love’… and he’s always toooo busy thinking about whatever the fk cats think about all day & will NOT CUDDLE ME. Psychedelic dreams ensue. Based on a real ass story.”
So it is that we open on Kesha tossing and turning in her boudoir, getting up to look longingly at her cat, all the way on the other side of the bed ignoring her. While she fantasizes about the two of them cuddling, Mr. Peeps is presented as daydreaming about fish. Many, many fish. Thus, Kesha adds to the background behind the “narrative,” “The story line is basically that I am dying for love from my one and only true love, soul mate.” That soul mate being Mr. Peeps, who is hard-pressed to give her an iota of affection–which can be especially difficult for a Pisces like Kesha.
Her dream vision of how things could be with Mr. Peeps if only he would open his heart fully to her escalates as she envisions a road trip getaway with a now humanized Peeps riding shotgun down the Pacific Coast Highway. Soon, that car has crashed, Thelma and Louise-style, and Kesha is underwater “wearing” a copper diving helmet as Mr. Peeps bops around contentedly.
All at once, they’re robbing a bank together, because who has more agility than a cat to help with such an endeavor (that’s why the thief in To Catch A Thief was nicknamed “The Cat”)? This is, ostensibly, so that they have money to travel to the likes of Paris, Venice and New York, all backdrops that appear in the video–because, apparently, even in an alternate universe where your cat is your soul mate and best friend come to life, you still need to come up with the funds to do shit with him. While the romance is on fleek for Paris and Venice, the duo instead takes more of a shine to destroying New York, treating its skyscrapers like little cat-scratching towers designed solely for them to play with. Indeed, New York’s frailty has never been more obvious, so perhaps Kesha was subconsciously engaging in beaming out some subliminal messaging via her decision to depict this destruction.
As the city goes up in flames, Kesha and Mr. Peeps transport themselves to the desert on giant hens (she told you it was psychedelic) before appearing as the heads of lions resting nonchalantly on a savanna and then blasting off into the galaxy so they can bat at Earth with their collective “paws.” In fact, that seems to be what someone “up there” is doing right now anyway in all their chaotic “tinkering with the system” glory. To the point of space being a setting, it certainly speaks to the not so latent hope within all of us that another planet might be able to serve as an exit strategy from this increasingly defunct one. But then, colonization isn’t really politically correct anymore, now is it? Also taking place in the solar system beyond our world, even Kylie Minogue’s latest video was just another higher budget version of the green screen trend that has been forced to take hold of the once far more involved art form since social distancing became an essential way of life. So now, all the painstakingness of it is wrapped up solely in the post-production endeavor of editing it into something “cool.”
And it surely must have been a hurdle for Kesha to get that final shot of the real Mr. Peeps–in all of his feline detachedness–actually being affectionate with her as she concludes with the primary line of the song, “I could use a little bit of love tonight.” As well as some acknowledgement for adding to the ever-increasing arsenal of musicians favoring a less corporeal approach to making videos for their songs. It certainly makes it easier to appear as though jet-setting is still a viable possibility, after all–for even pop stars don’t have the clout to cut through the red tape of traveling in the era of corona like Aureta does.
