It’s been thirteen years – is it safe to get nostalgic for Twilight? Tessa Violet certainly thinks so, and the music video for “Games” seems to back her up. The latest from alt-pop singer sees her and some friends recreating the Cullen family baseball game from the first Twilight film (with Tessa flawlessly nailing Ashley Greene’s ballet-kick pitch.) It all is going well, but who should appear, but lovelytheband, subbing in for the trio of wicked bloodsuckers from the film (with Jordan Greenwald even wearing Victoria’s white fur coat.) If that wasn’t wild enough, enter Peter “Carlile Cullen” Facinelli in an unexpected cameo, and it’s 2008 all over again,
“Twilight has just really been in the zeitgeist lately. I see it all over my ‘For You Page’ on TikTok, and it got me thinking,” Tessa tells HollywoodLife. “There are three people in lovely, and there are three baddies who enter the baseball scene in the movie. It just seemed like such a funny and off-the-wall idea. It made me think, ‘can we make a serious music video for this song that is so absurd?’ And to answer the second part, I really went into it being like, [laughs] ‘I think this is a great idea but is it going to work?’ it took everything coming together in that final moment with color, video effects, and Peter’s cameo and suddenly it was like YES – this freaking works.”
This collab came courtesy of Tessa and lovelytheband’s planned 2020 tour, which – like mostly everything – was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Games” originally comes from Tessa’s debut album, 2019’s Bad Ideas, and the rework would have been a special treat for fans who saw the tour live. While fans didn’t get to see the two acts perform this new rendition, they did get a phenomenal video that saw them all live out their sparkly vampire fantasies. So, win-win?
Both Tessa and lovelytheband will keep on winning as they continue their respective rises to the top of the music world. Since dropping Bad Ideas, Tessa has been crushing the music game – which is apropos, since her single “Crush” has more than 94 million streams on Spotify alone. In 2020, she also teamed with Cavetown (“Smoke Signals”), Misterwives (“Bored”), and Chloe Moriondo to rework her song “Words Ain’t Enough.” As for lovelytheband, 2020 saw the group release conversations with myself about you.