Clean Bandit’s new single “Rockabye” is is ridiculously catchy. I’ve been listening to it for six hours and still going strong. It’s got a powerful beat, somewhat like Sia’s “Cheap Thrills,” and the natural feeling of the strings mixed with the more stoic electronics, a Clean Bandit classic, makes the song really interesting. It’s irresistible. Which is why the music video is so disappointing.
The song’s lyrics are dedicated “to all the single moms out there,” as Sean Paul says in the intro, and the rest of the song follows suit. It tells a basic story about a mother who works into the night so that her six-year-old son can have a better life than her.
The music video takes its own interpretation.
In the video, the mother is a stripper, and a large part of the video is watching her pole dance. There is something beautiful to the dance, as she is clearly well-trained and skilled. It would feels something like the backup dancers to “Shia LaBeouf Live,” but you can’t break the persistent feeling that this video is not about the actress’s fluid dance skills but rather about the male gaze.
She herself is afflicted — in the video, after her shift ends, she is seen departing from the bar in a thick overcoat she clings tightly to herself. The audience is supposed to understand that she only does the pole dancing to support her child, but whenever it is depicted, she is depicted with not shame, but a sense of power. These are conflicting. There should be nothing against a woman feeling powerful about herself, nor a problem depicting the damaging effects that the male gaze casts onto society, but this video tries too hard to do both, and ultimately fails.
The video almost seems to make commentary about the presence of the male gaze — Sean Paul’s rapping portion in the video is, in part, projected onto the older white men watching the mother in the video, perhaps saying that even though they are individuals, to her, they are all the same presence. But ultimately the audience feels uncomfortable because this comparison also connects the audience watching the video with the men, which no matter how true, is very unpleasant.
The band’s presence within the video is not much better. Anne-Marie, the main vocalist, has rather revealing attire, while Sean Paul might as well be prepared for winter, his long-sleeved jacket, pants and hat covering nearly his entire body. Once again, there is that conflict — the mother character is supposed to be only doing this to support her child, yet Anne-Marie’s clothing is not much better. Since she is the main vocalist, we could infer that she is doing this as her own choice, but it follows too many music videos featuring the women in revealing outfits right next to fully-clothed men for that argument to have as much weight. Regardless of Anne-Marie’s intention, this video only follows the hundreds of others that hope to expand their male audience at the expense of their female one.
All of this is a shame because the song is so good. It’s easily the catchiest song I’ve heard in the past three months, and it’s a shame that Clean Bandit’s gorgeous beats and Anne-Marie’s voice and Sean Paul’s rapping have to be forever tied to such a disappointing video.