Icon of the Scandi music scene, Agnes, just dropped her music video for her latest single release: Balenciaga Covered Eyes. Watch it here
Agnes is a once in-a-generation talent. Bursting onto the scene via everyone's TV screens in 2005 as the winner of Swedish Idol at only 17, she quickly became a household name. With her single 'Release Me' in 2008, she reached the top of dance and pop charts across the globe – and the world was forever changed.
Now, five albums and millions of streams later, Agnes is back with her single 'Balenciaga Covered Eyes'. She has now released the much-awaited music video to accompany her new hit.
Set against the backdrop of a surrealist runway, Agnes struts and dances beneath the glare of phantom paparazzi in what appears to be an empty room.
Or is it? In a Lynchian twist, the front-row seats flicker with ghostly replicas of Agnes herself. She is at once performer and spectator. “We wanted to play with the gaze, the outside gaze directed at us, but also the gaze we turn on ourselves” she explains.
Directed in collaboration with Fredrik Hvass of the collective Swim Club, the video was conceived as “a world that felt surreal, precise, and quietly intense – a space where identity and power could be explored without relying on a clear narrative,” Hvass says.
Photo: Fredrik Vhass
Photo: Fredrik Hvass
The song itself is almost like two songs in one, beginning with a sultry, melancholic power-anthem chorus that then surprisingly cuts into an up-tempo, house beat. The song is a classic example of "crying in the club" – Scandinavian melancholia disguised in catchy, up-tempo melodies – a method coined and perfected by ABBA and the key to the Scandinavian music phenomenon at large.
'Balenciaga Covered Eyes' is a modern retelling of Madonna's Vogue or Corona's Rhythm of the Night, sure to set dance floors ablaze this summer. "We wanted to highligt and visualise all those conflicting emotions we have inside of us, working and being there at the same time. How contradictions coexist within us," Agnes says, "It’s about identity, sexuality, control and letting go."
Photo: Fredrik Hvass
Photo: Fredrik Hvass
"Yeah it's fashion week... in Paris," Agnes sings in one of the catchiest parts of the song (second verse). It is safe to say that Balenciaga Covered Eyes is our new favorite fashion anthem, and the music video is our newest mood-board obsession.