While the snow and ice has mostly melted from sidewalks across campus, beabadoobee has brought one more winter anthem to this season’s charts with her first original song since 2024. Released last Thursday, the British-Filipina singer’s new single, “All I Did Was Dream of You (feat. The Marías),” and its accompanying music video transport listeners to a tundra of longing and loneliness.
In a haze of fur coats, obsidian smoke, white light and snow, the music video masterfully paints a dreamscape for the single’s somber cries. Its lucid visuals and vulnerable lyrics construct a mirage of intimacy, bringing a surrealist aesthetic to the crushing reality of heartbreak.
Filmed in Vilnius, Lithuania, the video begins with beabadoobee trudging through a desolate field of snow. With vocals frosted in melancholy, she sings, “While I’m yours and you are mine / Going steady till we lie, high at sunrise,” to the steady beat of a drum and throbbing electric guitar.
As the music floats from verse to pre-chorus, beabadoobee graces listeners’ ears with an eerie, indie-rock sound. Steeped in desperate loneliness, the song finds an echo in the music video’s eerie visuals. beabadoobee stands at a bar, reclines on a bare white mattress and lies in the display case of a butcher shop. Walking through the night, beabadoobee draws the paces alone.
But while this softer, sentimental aesthetic characterizes the single’s first half, the instrumental takes the song’s icy chill to a boiling point in the latter half. Effortlessly pulsing between quiet pining and aggressive desire, beabadoobee and The Marías masterfully capture the agonies of yearning.
As María Zardoya, the lead singer of The Marías, sings “Nightmares always feel like this,” the camera shifts to a shot of beabadoobee under a harsh spotlight. A fiery red light flickers in the distance. A car is overturned and engulfed in flames. Juxtaposing rich blues with orange lights, the video’s deliberate, poignant imagery enhances the track’s melodrama.
The final chorus is pressurized with intensity. beabadoobee cries “Stay, stay or just leave / Stay or just leave me be” as the instrumental roars. This final cry for affection, laden with thunderous drums and hot with aching passion, is the song and video at its best.
At the end of the video, beabadoobee returns to sit on the mattress, now less barren, closes her eyes as a blend of distant vocals fades off into a whisper. A flurry of snowflakes blur the lens and fill the room. Zardoya’s haunting voice rounds out the song as she pleads, “Don’t go / Don’t go.”
The music itself is an enticing display of shoegaze and grunge, a stark difference from beabadoobee’s earlier discography that typically featured softer, pop sounds. With the atmospheric vocals of The Marías, beabadoobee seems to be leaning into the alt-rock sound she brought to “Cologne” — this time, with darker visuals.
Alongside its intriguing, cinematic video, ‘All I Did Was Dream of You’ is a promising sign for the singer, especially following more than a year without releasing original music. The moving power ballad is the epitome of what fans love about the beabadoobee — ardent yearning, alternative melodies and honest lyricism.
Kendra Eastep is also a senior staff writer covering arts and culture.
