There are few absolute truths in pop music. Two of them, however, are featured in this particular production: One is that all pop crafted by a Tove is objectively good. The other is that a bridal aesthetic is never a bad idea, thanks to the Creator of Life & Music herself, Her Holy Madgesty Ciccone.
In this case, we’ve got a Tove cavorting around as a runaway bride – all the ingredients for a good pop time.
Swedish sensation Tove Styrke, who was just announced as an opener on Lorde‘s Melodrama Tour, is back with a Joanna Nordahl-directed video for her latest single, “Mistakes.” (It’s about making mistakes, in case anyone was unclear.)
“The song is about embracing your wrongs, letting go of yourself and not be perfect. The bride to me is a nice image of ‘perfection’ and it was fun to put a twist on that…it’s more like she’s running back to herself rather than running away,” she explains.
Tove plays a convincingly anxious bride-to-be, who very early on decides: “Mmm…fuck this shit.” She then promptly runs to the sea as anyone would. But, as it turns out, she’s not the only one having second thoughts about committing to an eternally binding contract with another human being.
And, in case there was any doubt in this world that everything comes down to Britney Spears, the Living Legend herself helped to inspire this idea: “In the early stages of making this video Tove told me about the track and how it to her represented this feeling of breaking something that’s perfect, something you might even consider perfect yourself, just to reach a sense of freedom,” says the director.
“Basically messing up on purpose to feel in control of your life. With this in mind I wanted to move away from a typical love story and we ended up speaking about religious symbolism, the Madonna-Whore complex, femininity, 90s rom-coms, Britney Spears and the well behaved, wholesome Bride as a traditional representation of the ‘perfect woman’.”
Go on and shatter those typical tales of domesticity and find your own version of bliss, queen.
