Music Video Review: Bastille's "Fake It" Invokes a Surprising Reaction

Written by Maureen McGuirk

With the success of Bastille’s first album, Bad Blood, fans have been patiently awaiting the release of their sophomore album, Wild World, which came out September 9th. Tiding them over, the band has released three singles throughout the summer.

Fake It was released at the end of July with its video soon to follow. There is a narrative, but not one you’d initially expect from the lyrics. The song is a very passionately written dialogue seemingly about a long-lasting relationship that may be fading out.

“There’s no point reliving crimes to lose this…”

Yet the speaker wants to keep going. The song is more of a plea to not expect the relationship to be as it once was, but rather start clean and, if nothing else, fake it.

“Don’t turn over, turn over the page. We should rip it straight out…”

The music video takes an interesting spin on this song. The band is not featured. Instead, there is one character: a middle-aged, politician-type male at a podium, giving a speech over public broadcast (the speech being the lyrics of the song). It shows his calm, determined presence on camera, but also his ugly, cantankerous self on the other side. With the political climate of today, not only in the States, but in Great Britain where Bastille is from, it’s easy to determine the sources of inspiration for the character. Some fans seem disappointed with the lack of band members in the video, but honestly having them there would’ve been a distraction to the simplistic story.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I liked the choice. It seemed to have nothing to do with the picture I had in mind while listening to the song. But after a couple watches, I ended up truly responding to it. The video shows the duplicity of lyrics and how changing the protagonist and situation can completely alter the meaning of a song. Now these lyrics represent something more than the obvious love tale gone wrong: a politician asking citizens to forget the wrongs of his past and start anew, get along, or just fake it.

This video is a reminder to not limit lyrics to a single event or person; these words can come from the lips of anyone, anywhere.