“There’s going to be other videos along with it. It’s all tied in together,” the musician recently told Rolling Stone about his forthcoming EP Boy
The melancholic tone of Luke Hemmings‘ latest solo single “Shakes” culminates in an emotional downpour in the song’s newly-released music video.
Directed by George Gallardo, the “Shakes” video was filmed in Bogota, Colombia with cinematic influences at the core of the shoot. Like when Hemmings recreates moments of solitude from Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. He’s alone in hotel rooms that overlook the vast city, but also surrounded by people in airports and elevators.
The video captures what Hemmings recently described to Rolling Stone as the “existential, childlike wonder” of Boy, his forthcoming EP out April 26. As the first single, “Shakes” sets the scene with subtle reminders of his youth: tiny animal toys neatly arranged in a circle, a young child wondrously gazing up at the sky, small hands wrapped around a PlayStation 2 controller.
Hemmings gets lost in memory and melancholy throughout the video before — at one particular mid-point — the camera captures a shift back to reality. It’s subtle, just a swift movement of his eyes that notes a newfound presence in the moment. But it’s all part of a larger visual narrative Hemmings will weave throughout Boy.
“There’s going to be other videos along with it. It’s all tied in together,” Hemmings shared in the exclusive interview. He pursued a similar goal with his first solo album outside of 5 Seconds of Summer, 2021’s When Facing the Things We Turn Away From. “I tried to do that on the first album and we did a good job, but I think on this one it feels like you’re getting lost in it a bit,” he explained. “It feels like more of an all-encompassing world, and I really was striving for that.”
While carving out the visual direction for Boy — a process Hemmings says began before the songs themselves were complete — the musician found himself drawn to the imagery of films like Lost in Translation and Win Wenders’ Paris, Texas. “Even before the songs were fully finished, we had a good idea of what they felt like and I made a big deck of my references,” Hemmings added. “Things where, obviously, I’m the protagonist, but the background is also a star in it. The landscape is very much a part of it.”