YouTube/5SOS
5 Seconds of Summer are figuratively drowning. In their new video for “Easier,” their first taste of new music for what will hopefully be their fourth studio album, the quartet travels to a mysterious cavern where the lights are low, the flame is hot, and the water is rising. I hope that you like being anxious. “Easier” is dark and bleak fare that describes the helplessness one feels in ending a relationship. 5SOS are slowly sinking into the waters of despair.
“Easier” is a song about decisions. But these choices aren’t going to be around forever, they’re tapping their feet while 5SOS figure out what to do. In a toxic relationship, should you stay or leave? Work things out or call it quits and accept the loss? The quartet’s nostalgia-tinged pop-rock single kindles flames with its questions and pleading. It hurts to hear, but it’s beautiful to find euphoria in their sadness.
The song’s lack of light sucks out the brightness of any room that 5SOS enters, so for the “Easier” video, they bring candles to a cavern so small that in order to breathe, they have to take turns. There’s a lot of water here that threatens to swallow their heads whole, but they make it look sexy — low-light close-ups of wide-eyes and the band’s members slowly rising out of cave lakes like the cast of an evil version of Baywatch. 5SOS revealed to Rolling Stone that “Easier” was inspired by (and shares the “driving drum groove of”) Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer” and some similarities can also be found in some of the shots in both videos.
5SOS are heading out with The Chainsmokers for the World War Joy tour in September. Both groups collaborated on “Who Do You Love” and released a scorching (literally) video featuring fire-soaked drums from a fierce band face-off.
Watch the claustrophobic video for “Easier” up above.
Pop
Music
5 Seconds of Summer