SKE English
My favorite moment in recent music-video history—the past six weeks or so, give or take—has got to be the first beat drop in singer Lolo Zouaï’s Moi (see above, ca. 00:20); following the familiar melodrama of an almost Eurovision-like prelude, Lolo throws out her arms—like an ecstatic vulture, flapping its wings to swoop down upon some freshly minted (urm) corpse—and, face twisted into a pretzel of raw feels, launches into an improvized (I assume) and indulgent dance routine. The fact that all of this takes place within the confines of a rather spare, rather Drakish (Hotline Bling) three-dimensional polygon, adds an element of surreal idealism to the spectacle: We’re all dancing on our own, but some of us are wearing large hoop earrings, Doc Martins, and extra-terrestrial camouflage.
It’s marvelous.
The first time I saw the video—which was also the first time that I heard the song—I felt as if that moment spoke to something larger, something that should be familiar to anyone leading a modern human existence (or, a responsible canine existence, for that matter, too), i.e. the moment when mundane reality shatters into something beautiful: e.g. when the door to one’s office slams shut on a Friday afternoon—and the banal landscape of tedious employment gives way to a dream-world of possibility and freedom. (Not that one doesn’t habitually squander that freedom, but that’s another story).
From this moment on, every minor triumph in my otherwise less-than-triumphant life shall be punctuated by an impression of Lolo Zouaï’s swaggering vulture flap.
The song is good, but it’s the video that really underscores the song’s quality. All hail Lolo Zouaï: from her signature hoops to her upbeat personality (see interview below).
You can listen to Moi on Lolo Zouaï’s High Highs to Low Lows, released last April 19th.