Although the video itself has yet to arrive, Kim Petras has provided us with a “visualizer” (the latest trend that seems somehow superfluous when people just want a “right proper” video) for her latest single following “Malibu,” “Future Starts Now.” Written during lockdown, Petras was one of many L.A.-based musicians to “use the time” to her advantage in terms of wielding the creative process.
Like many who prefer not look at reality (why else does one become a pop star?), Petras chose to see light in the darkest hour (though the hours only seem to be getting darker by the day), therefore trying to spin the signal of a new demise in humanity as an opportunity to say, “Don’t give up, the future starts now.” She then provides the somewhat conflicting advice, “Worry ’bout it in the morning/Take it to another level.” Sure, yeah. We’ll do that. It all smacks of the hooey guidance one is given at “team meetings” in a corporate setting. Vague platitudes that can’t really be implemented, they just “sound good” to say for encouragement/morale purposes.
To add to the dichotomy of a song touting that the future is starting now, Petras relies on old cliches of Paris in her visualizer, complete with macarons, baguettes and croissants raining down from the sky. One punctuated by, bien sûr, the Eiffel Tower, bedecked with a giant, ultra “girly” pink bow at the top. It’s almost as though Petras is trolling Emily in Paris at this rate. Or so we would like to believe of her sense of irony. Yet we know she doesn’t really have one if she could employ, like Doja Cat on Planet Her, Dr. Luke as one of her producers for the single (alongside Aaron Joseph and Vaughn Oliver). What about that, exactly, screams that the future is starting now? Unless we’re talking about how it’s starting for Dr. Luke (and men in entertainment like him), whose accusations of being an abuser seem to have conveniently fallen by the wayside after “enough time” has passed so that the supposed “sistren” of a fellow pop star (Kesha) feel “comfortable” enough to work with him again.
But maybe Petras views her collaboration with Dr. Luke as something like the lyrics she touts in the form of, “I know you can take the pressure/Turn it into something better/So take the pain and make it pleasure.” The pain, that is, of a song losing its integrity (particularly on the part of a female pop star) when it bears the post-2014 Dr. Luke stamp (even if that name is changed to something else, like Kasz or Tyson Trax).
Playing up the visuals of the Steven Klein photoshoot (the mark of a true star) that spawned the “theme” (a.k.a. an excuse to go all stereotypical on the City of Light), Petras makes a beeline for all the tried-and-true symbols basic bitches like to associate with Paris. This includes red lipstick, giant floating cheese wedges, a little dog fit for Paris Hilton’s Louis Vuitton purse, the exterior of a generic café, a glass of red wine and Versailles-like interiors promoting the decadence of the past that the present (or so-called “future”) can no longer sustain. If we’re going to be quite honest with ourselves. But of course, we’re not going to be. Petras’ frothy “little number” (which actually owes a lot of sonic debt to French duo Daft Punk) is indicative of that much. Of how we’d prefer to remain comatose in the “dream.” The one that allows us to think that “hope” is enough. Or at least, hopefulness.
With that “plucky” attitude, ironically, it seems we’re all sealing our fate toward a certain doom. And unfortunately, our tendency to dive further into the pit of nostalgia (like the image of Paris of being this certain way that it really hasn’t been since Audrey Hepburn’s heyday) as solace will only “blindside” us all the more when an even greater smackdown/reckoning arrives. But sure, we can keep swearing up and down that the future starts now even as everything ceases to exist. Most especially Parisian cliches.
