Video: SOAK, ‘Everybody Loves You’

Ilana Tel-Oren on December 19th, 2018

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Northern Irish indie-folk singer-songwriter SOAK (Birdie Monds-Watson) will soon be returning to the U.S., recently announcing tour dates in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in early February. After tours with Tegan and Sara and CHVRCHES and advocating for LGBT rights, the 22-year old returned to writing material for the follow-up to her debut album, 2015’s “Before We Forgot How to Dream,” which was nominated for the Mercury Prize.

She shares a glimpse of it with her latest single, “Everybody Loves You.” With her sweet, waif-like vocals front and center, it begins, “Everybody wants you / Not me today / ‘Cause I’m done / Everybody loves you / Not me, no way / I don’t work that way / ‘Cause I was built from concrete / ‘Cause I don’t hurt no more / ‘Cause I’ve been gettin’ no sleep / What’s it all for?” She pushes away others and, even more likely, her love for herself. The song unfolds further with a hip hop beat above orchestration before falling away at the two-minute point to SOAK soaring high until she finally lands at peace with herself: “Everybody loves you / And I do, too.”

Directed by Joe Wilson, the song’s video depicts the singer being teased and ridiculed by other teenagers, not being served at a food takeout shop, and a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly just like SOAK herself does as she comes to accept her own love for another. The song is “… about extreme denial. … I suppose in this case, as a way of self-protection (and avoiding vulnerability). The lift at the end of the song… represents the almost comedic/foolish acceptance of my own feelings. A 360 turn of events in which I then so desperately want all that I had rejected and pushed away. A consistent theme of my younger self.”

||| Watch: The video for “Everybody Loves You”