Ari Dayan looks hopeful into the mirror while putting on her lipstick while hearing a different version of herself announce, like the pilot of an airplane, that it looks like nothing but clear blue skies ahead. But there’s something surreal about the song like any time anyone looks too happy all the time and forcing it. And the song is a series of send-ups of social media presentation of success and wellness including a blue check mark to indicate that you’re somehow for real and legitimate when it takes little more than to verify your identity. When Dayan sings about how there’s no way she won’t get emotional today because when she looks into the mirror she says “I love you, I love everything about you…from your head to your shoes.” This projection of always being in a good mood and being in the most fun place doing only things that affirm one’s awesomeness in a superlative life is always basically a sham whenever you see it in social media or even before social media was a thing. The desperation to seem virtuous and well-adjusted even when things aren’t going so well. The moments when the song is upbeat and triumphantly melodic it’s like we know Dayan is going to pull the rug out from under this facade any time and in the last moments of the video it’s no more accessible hyper pop time as Dayan stares into the camera, the glorious music having ended almost abruptly and she looks miserable. She smears her makeup—the mascara and the lipstick until her natural self cuts through the veneer of a warped, heyday of MTV version of oneself as a pop star to reveal the anxiety and seething disappointment and disillusionment. And then to close out the song we see a shot of Dayan in the pink outfit from the beginning but just her mid-section and not the face because that just seems to reduce the person to the object of facile desire and not the human with problems and issues to work through in ways that don’t have the fairytale ending because real life is always a work in progress. Watch “Love” on YouTube and follow Ari Dayan at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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