Written By Guest Blogger Olivia Coleman
Brother and sister dance hall duo, Wild Belle, released a surprising video for their unrequited love song, Keep You, last week. Through a playfully literal lens, we watch songstress Natalie prepare breakfast for her philandering ‘little man,’ depicted as a ten year old boy. He storms out of the house and the reggae beat drops, leaving Natalie to coo lyrics of longing from her Jamaican door-frame.
As director Melina Matrsoukass’s retro color palette bleeds into Elliot Bergman’s jazzy saxophone riffs, coy sleuth Natalie steps out to spy on the object of her affection and we’re left to wonder what exactly, is going on.
Matrsoukass is known for provocative storytelling (Rihanna’s We Found Love), stark colors, soft lighting and creative expression of her Jamaican roots (Solange’s Losing You). When asked about the meaning of Keep You, she told Rolling Stone,”It’s a story about unrequited love and how with age, we don’t necessarily mature… As a child, all we want is love and attention and that story never grows old, it just takes a different form as we age. So it’s not so much about ‘all men are boys,’ but just [that] all of us are forever young. Old habits never die.”
