Ariana Grande and the Return of the Narrative Music Video

Reported by Harper's Bazaar.

Something is happening in pop music that has nothing to do with the music itself — and it's genuinely exciting. After years of artists prioritizing hyperstimulating, vibe-forward visuals (think: saturated landscapes, exaggerated textures, maximalist fashion moments with minimal plot), the narrative music video is staging a real comeback. Not a nostalgia trip. A full-on renaissance.

According to Harper's Bazaar, the through-line stretches back further than you might think. When MTV debuted in 1981, it aired The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" — and in doing so, transformed music listening into something synesthetic. Michael Jackson pushed the format to its ceiling with 1983's "Thriller," a 13-minute short film that proved a song could anchor an entire cinematic experience. Directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry later bent the format toward surrealism and dream logic. Beyoncé formalized the long-form narrative with Lemonade in 2016 — 12 songs, 65 minutes, one cohesive film. The precedent has always been there. Artists just stopped reaching for it for a while.

The New Class Is Here

Harry Styles apparently reignited the charge in January with "Aperture," a five-plus-minute action video off Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. directed by Aube Perrie — part hotel-room thriller, part Dirty Dancing homage, with a Nolan-esque cyclical structure that loops Styles back to where he started, waiting by a phone. Then Olivia Rodrigo dropped "the cure," a whimsical medical fable following a nurse (Rodrigo) frantically trying to reverse a disease that turns hearts gray — only to be infected herself — before the camera pulls out to reveal her as a tiny figure in a diorama, which the real Rodrigo promptly stomps. As closing images go, it's devastatingly good. Most recently, Ariana Grande released "Hate That I Made You Love Me," the lead single from her upcoming eighth album Petal, starring Justin Long in a horror-inflected revenge fantasy that borrows its title-card aesthetic directly from 1958's The Thing That Couldn't Die. Grande haunts Long's character as a ghost, sets him on fire, and greets him at a diner surrounded by a room full of Grandes — Being John Malkovich-style — before ultimately burying him. It is unhinged. It is brilliant.

The momentum isn't slowing. Madonna is preparing what's being described as "a sexy thriller, a dance delusion, an epic fever dream" — a short film spanning six chapters, built from samples across six tracks on her forthcoming Confessions II. Given her history with long-form narrative videos and the persistent rumor that "Take a Bow" functioned as an unofficial Evita audition tape, no one should be surprised she's arriving fully prepared to outdo everyone.

What's clear is that the artists willing to build a world around their music — not just a mood — are the ones commanding real cultural real estate right now, and audiences, attention spans be damned, are showing up for every minute of it.

Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.