Video: The Vaccines – “Alone Star”

Directed by Santiago Arriaga and Mariana Arriaga. From Back In Love City, due September 10.

This is a pretty cool song, but the video is great. A bored couple checks into a dreary motel where a magic vending machine transforms the drab and depressing world into an ecstatic disco party. Perhaps a metaphor for what we were all hoping the Covid vaccines would be? I mean, the band is called the Vaccines after all.

Justin Young says, “We wanted the ‘Alone Star’ video to be one of hope, capturing the moment when you realise all is not lost. Anyone that has driven through the desert to Las Vegas will know about the roadside casinos that start popping up and lighting the freeways as you arrive into Nevada. This motel is exactly the same sort of institution, existing in the shadows of Love City where feelings of all kinds can be found if you look hard enough. Mexico is one of our favourite places in the world and an intensely characterful place, literally metres away from where we recorded this song, so it felt like the perfect location for our protagonists to find what they were looking for…”

Remember just a few months ago when we all thought that once we were fully vaccinated we’d be able to start living life again, going to shows, and hanging out with sweaty strangers? If there’s one thing the past couple of years has shown us, it’s that optimism is very rarely warranted.

Had they released this single six months ago they probably would’ve gotten a lot more random google referrals as desperately hopeful people searched for available vaccines. And this video would’ve made a much bigger impact. Unfortunately, now it’s just a reminder of how naive we were to think that the world wasn’t completely doomed.