A cinematic wonderland wrapped around a potent message, Jazzie Young’s “fake love” music video is as bountiful of a visual feast as the actual cornucopia at the start of the video. Directed by Shelby Lee Parks, “fake love” is a brilliant companion to the moving, dark synth, atmospheric ballad released earlier this year. Jazzie, flanked by two similarly dressed ‘ladies-in-waiting,’ engages in a well-crafted pantomime, a choreography rife with symbolism rooted to the female experience. Writhing bodies, forbidden fruit, ornate corsets – the video haunts a unique visual space of Autumn de Wilde’s Emma by way of Anna Biller’s The Love Witch. If there’s an unsettling danger in ‘fake love,’ it’s only the threat of three women in full control of their fate and bodies, something many might find terrifying.
“My song ‘fake love’ is about emotional and sexual freedom and my experience as a female coming into that power,” Jazzie tells HollywoodLife. “So, when I was thinking about the visuals for the song, I wanted to make sure that they really embodied that essence. The director, hairstylist, makeup artists, set designer, dancers, choreographer, and assistant director were all women. It was the most balanced set experience I’ve ever had.”
“There was just a serious feeling of synchronicity,” she adds, “and that’s what I feel like 2021 is shaping up to be— a year of female voices embodying all of the aspects of our multifaceted existence, not just the designated topics society has historically preapproved for women as ‘acceptable.’ I’m very excited to be a part of that growing storyline.”
Jazzie first emerged as a “one-to-watch” in 2019 with her debut single, the piano-driven “If You Love Me.” In 2020, she followed that up with a pair of tracks, “lost” and “spaghetti stains.” A California native who has seen life beyond the Golden State – she spent her formative years in Hawaii and her teenage years in South Carolina before heading back home to the West Coast – Jazzie has grown up around music, learning classical piano and violin as a youth. As the daughter of Jesse Colin Young of the 1960s folk-group the Youngbloods (“Get Together”), she was exposed to different types and genres of music, all while developing a grand understanding of what makes a song work. Citing Lana Del Rey, The Killers, Lykke Li, and Fleetwood Mac as some of her influences, Jazzie Young is paving her own path with a sound and a songwriting style that is truly her own. Nothing ‘fake’ about that.