Slayyyter has released “Hey Boyyy” with a self-directed video that takes an unlikely couple from Hollywood to Paris. Her date is a skeleton, and the clip sends them on a romantic outing on the Seine. The single previews her forthcoming album, wor$t man in america, and puts a rush of electronic pop behind lyrics about the vulnerability that comes with a sudden attraction.
Slayyyter gives herself a romantic lead who can barely do anything for the camera. In the video for “Hey Boyyy,” a skeleton takes the place usually reserved for a lover with a knowing look and a good coat. They get an outing in Paris, including time on the Seine, and the singer plays her side of the encounter with enough conviction for the whole thing to work.
She directed the video herself, shooting in Hollywood and Paris. The two settings give the relationship the kind of itinerary a pop video might normally use to make a new romance look enviable. Hollywood has its own associations with staging a fantasy. Paris, especially from the river, comes with so many familiar images of romance that a viewer can recognize the idea before any of the details have registered. The skeleton takes up its place in both.
The decision to stick with that partner changes the way the singer's performance reads. The words address someone she can imagine a real connection with, and the camera offers an object that can't look back. Slayyyter carries the joke in the space between the two. There is an element of recognition in it for anyone who has ever supplied most of the emotion to a relationship that exists chiefly in their head.
At the same time, the video treats the outing as a date. The Seine sequence has the appeal that a ride along the river would have in any other clip. The setting gets to be pretty, and the scene has enough time to register as its own little excursion. Taking the idea seriously for that long is part of what makes the choice of companion funny.
The track sounds eager to get on with the encounter. A firm electronic beat keeps moving under a vocal that lets the excitement show. The emphasis in “Hey Boyyy” is on the initial spark, with the singer already aware of how much she wants the person on the other side of it to answer. The arrangement lets that eagerness come through even when the video turns the object of her attention into a prop.
The new release had a life in front of an audience before the finished video arrived. Slayyyter played it for people at Wor$t Girl in Nyyyc, a pop-up show at Market Hotel in Bushwick. That was a chance to hear the song in a room built around the energy of the crowd. The official clip gives that same recording a story, and invites listeners who heard about the preview to associate it with a very different set of images.
“Hey Boyyy” follows “Brand New Chanel$,” “Crank 2” and “I Think He's Got a Girl” in the run-up to wor$t man in america. Those releases have come with videos that extend the ideas in the songs. Slayyyter has been directing those pieces herself, and “Hey Boyyy” uses that control to make the person singing and the person creating the joke visibly the same. She gets to choose when the fantasy should look good and when the camera should remind us who is sitting next to her.
The album is scheduled for December 4. By releasing this track in advance, she has given the project a lighter and more openly romantic point of entry. The softness is there in what the singer wants out of the encounter. It sits alongside the speed of the production and the deadpan idea behind the clip, which can each pull a listener's attention in a different direction.
The title is written as a drawn-out greeting, which works as a small introduction to that mix of eagerness and nerves. The video turns the greeting into a long trip. A conventional casting choice would allow the audience to look for evidence that the other person feels the same way. Slayyyter has chosen a lead who can leave that question hanging through an entire scene.
That makes the romantic scenery especially useful to the director. The places are recognizable enough to supply a story of their own, so a date can appear to be going smoothly even when half the couple is incapable of giving an answer. The sequence on the Seine is where the different elements of the idea have the clearest room to play together. Slayyyter has a song that allows a strong feeling to come through in a few words and a video that lets that feeling carry her from one city to another. The person beside her can go along for the ride, and the rest is in the way she sings to him.
