Video Premiere: LIJO - 'Push Me'
Electro pop/ art rock artist LIJO debuts her engrossing music video for ‘Push Me’ on When The Horn Blows which explores the concept of longing for connection and the longing to feel through interpretive dance.
’Push Me’ is the sensational first single taken from LIJO’s upcoming two-part release 'My Every Part', the follow-up to 'My Inner Parts’ which was released in spring 2019.
Where was the video for ‘Push Me’ filmed?
It was filmed on quite a special location in Utrecht: in and around a big air dock that, so I’ve been told, used to be the place where they kept and maintained the Dutch royal train carriage. This is why a pair of rails still run through the building and why there are ladders to climb up to the places where they used to clean the trains from above. This provided us with the chance to film from above as well.
How does the video connect with the song?
In my head, the story of the song takes place in a cold, soulless place. Factory-like, maybe even a laboratory. And in the song, I am cold too. Almost non-human; my every part is made out of glass. It’s lifeless but very fragile too. Yet I want to be pushed; I want to feel, I want motion, even if it means it’ll break me. I need something to free me from this situation against all cost. We chose dance to visualise this because I love dance and I felt movements could perfectly translate the longing for motion. The song has a feverish vibe that I feel connects great with the shots Doron (Tempert, videographer) managed to grasp and the colours he emphasised.
Could you tell us about the ideas/ themes/ imagery used?
The doll in a box is a character that I used before, in my debut video 'Sometimes I Want Rain'. It visualised a flawed perfection back then, and being stuck in a role. I think it still comes down to that; being stuck in something that looks perfect, but lacks depth. I wrote the first version of ‘Push Me’ years ago, but only recently I realised it is about superficiality and the longing for profound connections, especially these days. Giordana (Pangrazzi, the dancer/choreographer) represents the subconscious longing to drag yourself out of the comfort of staying at the surface - with other people and with yourself. That can be scary, it might partly break you, and it sometimes seems so hard to do; still I feel like, for me, it’s a necessity.
I’m super happy to finally have worked together with Giordana as she is one of my oldest friends and I’ve always been touched whenever I saw her dance. I love how she brings fire and urgency to the part. She literally drags the soulless doll out in the open and into life, screaming at her to wake up before disappearing. That might actually be my favourite part; she’s gone in the end, leaving you wondering; was she real? The first shot being the same as the last adds up to this idea - it could all be a fever dream, a loop.
Do you have any behind the scenes stories you can share with us?
Giordana is an amazing dancer. I am not. Being flung and swung took quite a toll on my body and as a clumsy human being, I couldn’t get through the day without tripping and bumping into walls and doors. I felt fifty years older the days after. But it was very worth it!
Special thanks to Sascha Meijer as producer and Cassandra Snepvangers as the queen of make-up .
What do you hope people take away from watching the video?
I hope people don’t notice how clumsy I actually am. Kidding!
The messages in my songs and in my videos somehow always change for me. It’s like you write something and then read it back and think, “aha! This is what I meant”. A good friend of mine once told me what he thought one of my songs meant, and I fell silent, thinking… “that wasn’t exactly what I meant when I wrote it, but I feel that so much more that it’ll be the meaning from now on". I love that kind of thing! It means that there’s enough space for different people to place meaning for themselves. And that opens doors to connect with people. Which is what I feel right now this song and this video are about. The longing for connection and the longing to feel. I’d rather feel broken to pieces than to not feel anything at all.
I hope that people recognise the importance of true connections and real feelings, the good and the bad ones, in a world where everything can be auto-tuned and photoshopped.
’Push Me’ is out now via a self-founded label Mind:The:Gap.
Premiere by Karla Harris