Dove Cameron Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Music Videos (Boyfriend, Breakfast, Sand & More)

Hey guys, I'm Dove Cameron,

and today I will be breaking down

some of my most iconic music video looks.

[upbeat music]

♪ I could be a better boyfriend than him ♪

Boyfriend, 2022, directed by Lauren Sick,

off of my debut album Alchemical: Volume 1.

This one also came together really fast,

'cause this song blew up completely unexpectedly.

And so Columbia was like,

You have to make a video yesterday.

I basically sent like a mood board

to a couple different directors,

and I was like, I want snakes.

I want a tunnel, like a car in a tunnel.

I want a woman who is going to be my energetic equal.

It was really, really, really important to me

that we got someone who was like,

star energy in their own right,

and that like, you would write this song about.

And Char was just like, walked in,

and she literally like, I think she literally sat down,

she's like, I'm a [bloop] star.

And I was like, yeah, you are.

I was like, sheesh, let me buy you a coffee.

♪ I could be such a gentleman ♪

And my makeup artist that day was like,

it's so [bloop] dark in there.

Like, we need to bring some kind of shine.

So it does look, it ended up looking super Euphoria.

That was her idea.

And so we were just finding this balance

between like grungy, not grungy,

and then like the wet hair was for,

specifically for like the greased skin, and the snake.

And so we just wanted to go with this very like steamy,

like I think they even put like a grease film

across the front of the lens.

And so we just wanted it to feel very like,

like animal, steamy,

like something very sensual, and touchable about that.

So this was Lauren's idea.

This was not my idea.

I wanted a club setting,

but she was like, I wanna cover the men's faces in masks,

and have them like, moshing.

And at first I was like, is that gonna look okay?

And you can see,

what started happening was because they couldn't see,

they were hitting my body, over and over and over again,

and she kept being like, cut, stop, you're hitting her.

And I was like, no, no, no, no.

I think we keep it.

How it translated was that they didn't give a [bloop]

about my personal space, and like, there was no awareness

while me and Char see each other, lock eyes,

and we have this kind of cat-like, snake-like weaving,

where it's like, I see you, I'm on my way.

And like this lithe thing, like cats.

Ended up translating really well.

♪ I eat boys like you for breakfast ♪

Breakfast, 2022, directed by Lauren Dunn

off of my debut album, Alchemical: Volume One.

I had shot a music video for Breakfast already,

that was a very different music video,

and it was very pop girl.

And I was in like a red latex suit.

It was at the same time

that Roe v. Wade was being overturned.

I was just so debilitatingly affected,

trying to do everything I could to be involved

with helping educate people

on what was going on with Roe v. Wade,

and how they could vote.

It was like all I could think about,

and then it was like watching myself in a fucking pop video

where I was like,

♪ I eat boys ♪

Like, I just wanted to, I was like, there's no,

what is this?

And so my label was like, okay well,

if this isn't the video you wanna make,

what video do you wanna make?

We came up with this treatment

where we wanted to sort of reverse the roles,

bring in as many women, as much diversity,

brought in this incredible trans actor to play the doctor.

It's my favorite music video

I've ever, ever, ever, ever done.

It took a village.

All of the wardrobe was rented from a studio,

and we didn't try them on beforehand.

We just got there, and it was all of these men's suits.

I was just like, I wanna be in men's suits,

and then I wanna be in the exact opposite.

I wanted it to feel as as much like a movie as possible,

and not like a pop video.

You see the person's face,

and then also I wanted it to be different

than the 1950s look, which was the red lip,

and the starker cat eye.

And then lastly, she's in a position of power,

as the male character, or as women would be

if the roles were reversed.

She doesn't need to dress up for anybody.

I still hear people tell me

how much this video resonated with them,

and that's like, what's better than that?

♪ If you go down ♪

We Go Down Together, 2023, me and Khalid,

directed by Audrey Ellis Fox.

We just wanted something really beautiful,

and something that felt very like,

sort of industrial and cold,

but then also romantic and dark,

and just sort of following the energy of the song.

'Cause you know, it's a beautiful song,

but it's very pared back.

We created this beautiful platform,

and like all of these rocks,

but then we introduced this silhouetted shot here.

Like, it's very industrial.

Like, it's just straight out of a photo shoot, you know?

So I thought it was a really interesting

kind of creative, and just left it,

left room for the vocals,

left room for the emotion of the song,

and the performance of that,

and like this kind of like strange movement

that the camera's doing, as well as what we are doing,

and this very languid thing, like no real concept,

just like emotional, beautiful, intimate.

This dress was something that I gravitated towards

because it felt distressed,

and it felt like it had lived a life.

And I loved the raw edges,

but it was still romantic, and also cold.

I wanted the makeup and the dress

to match this kind of melancholic thing,

especially 'cause the set was so muted,

but we needed to bring some color.

It was also really challenging for a while,

having that red hair, and finding any makeup

that went with it.

Like, I don't know how these girls are doing it.

They must just like always be,

it must just always be black makeup.

'Cause I had such a hard time

matching any colors with that hair.

But we wanted to bring out the color in the dress.

We wanted something that felt a little experimental.

I was like, I want flecks of gold.

I was impulsive.

And then we diffused it, like below the eye,

which I thought was really fun.

Honestly, I never plan anything,

which is probably pretty bad.

But like I always rock up on set,

and I'm like, what if it's this?

[Dove laughs]

We all, then I have to figure out a way to make it happen.

♪ You have more pieces of me than ♪

This is Sand off of my album, Alchemical: Part one,

directed by Anastasia Delmark.

And my original idea for the music video treatment,

I wanted to see like, two shadowy figures

in like a wide shot, in the desert,

like doing this couple's dance.

My team told me we couldn't literally

bring a piano to the desert,

and we ended up going with something a bit more intimate.

I wanted to kind of create this like,

sort of post-apocalyptic aftermath,

after the storm,

of the ending of this relationship kind of vibe.

But I wanted it to be, you know,

cinematic and like, nice to look at.

And all of my music videos, it's really important to me

that they feel like tiny films.

This dress came outta nowhere.

It was like this very sort of like last minute,

Venus in the clam shell super femme-y,

more of who I used to be, which is like,

what the time that the song is set in, anyway.

And I just wanted it to feel very vulnerable,

very skin-like, very almost nude,

and yeah, hyper femme,

because that's kind of who I was

when I was with the person that the song is about.

My makeup was done by my incredible makeup artist,

and like truly one of my best friends,

his name was Kale Teter.

We wanted it to feel like it

was sort of lived in, and we wanted to still see the skin,

see the lips, see the cheeks,

but as well, bring that kind of element of like,

there had to be some kind of grit to it,

because the environment was so gritty.

Same thing with the hair.

Like, we wanted to leave the hair really wild,

and we had this crazy wind machine,

where the first time it turned on Josh and I,

we had to stop the dance, 'cause we were like,

streaming tears, like eyelashes flying off.

It was so, so wild.

And so, we just wanted the hair to feel very windswept,

and all of that.

And I'm really happy with how it ended up looking.

I'm truly not a dancer.

I like can dance,

but I'm not, it's not my like, number one.

I've had to learn.

But having a really good partner like Josh,

like he was doing so much of that work.

Like, everybody was like, whoa, nice backbend,

and I'm like, he's, he's holding me.

Like, he was really doing,

he was doing most of the work, and he's so, so lovely.

I was really happy with it.

It's very, yeah, lyrical and romantic.

Thank you, Allure.

I hope you enjoyed me breaking down

my favorite music video looks,

and I hope to see you again soon.

[Dove smooches]

[pleasant music]