- Agency: Ways & Means
- Client: Olivia Rodrigo
- Category: Video Design — Videos With Amazing Background Music
- Location: Los Angeles, California, United States
- Project Brief: Create an evocative music video for “the cure” using intimate cinematography, atmospheric lighting, and metaphorical imagery to reflect emotional vulnerability.
A music video for a song this raw could just point the camera at the singer and let the lyrics do the work. Ways & Means goes further for Olivia Rodrigo's "the cure," building a retro hospital world where the song's medical metaphors turn into props you can see.
The set makes the lyrics literal. Rodrigo lies in a candy-pink ward tangled in red yarn, framed as veins running off to trays of stitched hearts, so "toxins in my bloodstream" becomes a picture instead of just a line.
The craft pieces carry the theme without a word, and this is one of those videos with amazing background music where the images only deepen the song. A hand-embroidered "the cure" title stitched in red thread and an X-ray held up to reveal a beating heart tie the handmade look straight to the song's ache.
The retro palette does the rest of the emotional work. Faded mint tiles, vintage nurse uniforms, and soft period lighting keep the mood tender and a little unsettling, which matches a song about realizing no one else can fix what hurts.
