Julia Michaels is a master at making pop that’s quietly devastating, and her new video for “17” is no exception.
In it, Michaels takes us to a bedroom in the clouds, where doodles decorate the walls and her boyfriend is there to flash his megawatt smile and play with her hair. It’s a total teenage dream, — but not for long. In the beginning, Michaels catches her guy cozying up to another girl in bed, and the dream slowly unravels, as her hair begins to fall out and she loses a tooth.
All that imagery is accentuated by Michaels’s lyrics about reclaiming her youthful, naive vigor and returning to the days when relationships were simple and not bound by expectations or experience. “So can we stay in this dream like we are 17? / Makin’ love and gettin’ high, oh my, you and me,” she proposes on the chorus. “Where we never get angry or bitter or lonely / Can we stay in this dream like we are 17?”
Check out the video below to see the story unfold — and look out for that great Truman Show reference when she wanders through a door to a cloudy dreamscape.
The “17” video comes after Michaels’s powerful visual for “Body,” in which she peeled back layers of clothing as a form of therapy while singing about learning to love herself. Both tracks are from her EP Inner Monologue Part 2, released back in June.
