Enter the trippy fever dream of the pop sensation as she addresses her demons in an unflinchingly honest new track and music video.
A party with no end in sight. A flickering bathroom stall. Another night, another stranger. A rapturous high that suddenly burns to hellish lows. Wake up. Repeat. We all know the cycle well – deliciously intoxicating and self-destructive – and taking us down her neon-flecked fever dream of realisation is pop sensation Baby Queen with her single “These Drugs”.
Since the release of “Medicine”, Bella Latham’s explosive debut EP, the South Africa-born, London-based newcomer has been honing her fusion of saccharine vocals, upbeat pop melodies and cuttingly dark observations of modern life. And “These Drugs” soars into life with a glimmering pop arrangement telling the story of self-loathing, battles with mental health and repetitive “self-harm” disguised as a good time. Honest, unflinching, signature Baby Queen.
And the music video is like a head-swirling trip down the rabbit hole – if the rabbit hole was an underground club replete with pink furry walls, bathrooms adorned with dolls’ heads, huge fluorescent shrooms and nightmarish punters in bunny suits.
“The idea for the music video came from the first line of the song, which is one of my favourite lyrics I’ve ever written: ‘I don’t wanna do drugs anymore / If you saw me through the eyes of a bathroom stall, your skin would crawl’,” explains Baby Queen. “I became really obsessed with the idea of only ever seeing somebody through the eyes of different bathroom stalls. I think if somebody were to watch actual footage of me in every London bathroom stall I’ve ever been in, they would see some of the most euphoric moments of my life, as well as some of the darkest – and I really wanted to re-create that.
“I came up with this idea to build four completely different bathroom stalls with different energies and narratives, and to just allow the actions to happen naturally inside each one. I’m really proud of this video, because it was directed by my genius of a creative director at Polydor Semera Khan and my amazing creative commissioner Saorla Houston. I really believe in them and think they’re incredible, so one night I said ‘guys why don’t you just do it? Why don’t we just do this together?’ It’s the best shoot I’ve ever been on the set of.”
