Five reasons to be excited about Olympia’s new music video “Shoot to Forget”

Fresh from announcing three major international label and agency deals, Melbourne alt-pop artist Olympia is set to drop her brand new music video “Shoot To Forget” tomorrow, and we at the AU have your exclusive first look at the clip.

Get your first taste of it here:

If that taste doesn’t get you excited, here’s five facts you need to know about the clip to get you excited for its release:

1. The Director

Olympia worked with Director Leilani Croucher on the “Shoot to Forget” video. The acclaimed director has worked with everyone from Jack Ladder through to Polish Club on the music video front, and brands like Hyundai and Google. Here’s what Olympia had to say about working with Leilani.

“Leilani responded to the song with a complete vision. From the get go, it felt like Leilani innately understood the importance of the opposing emotions within the song – the cheeriness of the hook, with also a feeling of unease, regret and heart-break (I worry bout it). This duality is something that is a really important part of my writing, and I’m always interested in exploring visually.”

2. The Themes in the Video

Olympia explains the message behind the video, saying, “The video explores that notion of hiding from our feelings and who we really are. It’s something we all do; play a part, put on a face, show the world a version of ourselves that isolates us, and protects us from ourselves.”

“The video expresses this idea of hiding from reality and putting on a front for the world. A stylised and amplified love letter to all the parts we push down, all of the parts we hide away.”

3. The Characters in the Video

“The film is a performance piece, exploring the different characters and personality types that live inside Olympia, and us all. “Shoot To Forget” becomes a heightened portrayal of the characters and emotions that we often don’t want to see. It’s an abstraction of the Pop Star, and a look into the personas we all play.”

4. That love, and photography, inspired the song itself…

“The track draws on a range of ideas to explore the notion of cultural amnesia, of moving forward by forgetting, the song opening through the eyes of a photographer who ‘shoots to forget’. The song is about love. But the photographer plays a big part in demonstrating this idea.”

“I was initially thinking of the quote by John Berger ‘The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget’.”

“And you think about the compulsion we have to take photographs of everything. We all do it. Almost as if taking the image replaces the need to process what you’re seeing in the moment. Then one night you’re killing time at a bar, and you mass delete. Because another thing about this compulsion, if you don’t publish photos, they don’t really exist.”

Nan Goldin wrote, ‘I took pictures thinking that I thought it could save the person somehow. That I could keep people alive. But without the voice, without the body, without the smell, without the laugh, it doesn’t do much. Well, it keeps a memory, but then it becomes a memory of the picture at some point. It’s important to understand when I took the pictures I was not thinking of their later use of preserving memory because I was in the moment—I didn’t know what would be lost!

5. …and a damn fine hook. 

“The hook of the song was actually born out of frustration, but became a real turning point in the making of the album. That sense of play, duality of the serious and the irreverent.”

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Stay tuned to Olympia on Facebook to be the first to see the full clip tomorrow. She’ll also be taking part in the Don’t Kill Live Music Rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park tomorrow from 6pm. And don’t miss the artist on tour with Julia Jacklin through March.

Tue, March 05 – UOW UniBar | Wollongong, NSW
Wed, March 06 – ANU Bar & Refectory | Canberra, ACT
Sat, March 09 – The Triffid | Brisbane, QLD
Thu, March 14 – The Forum | Melbourne, VIC
Fri, March 15 – The Metro Theatre | Sydney, NSW
Sat, March 16 – Cambridge Hotel | Newcastle, NSW

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