Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan make vintage game show appearances in the retro music video for the “Expectations” remix, which also features musician David Byrne and producer Dan Nigro.
Directed by Bardia Zeinali, the clip sees Rodrigo and Roan (in his feature film debut) appearing on sets clearly inspired by “Family Feud” and “Hollywood Squares.” Byrne appears as Johnny Johnson, the host of “Great Expectations,” where he asks three Rodrigos in different outfits to “tell you a little bit about how you got here.”
Below is a trip to different sets and a new “Expectations” verse featuring Roan tackling Rodrigo in a “Family Feud” encounter on the “Sister Feud” set. “I thought it would be fun so I took her to a concert in the front row,” he sings. “His hand moving up my skirt, no piercings on his tongue / He said he’d call me later, that was three weeks ago / Classic Los Angeles behavior, he could have just said no.”
Nigro, who produced Roan and Rodrigo’s albums as well as “Expectations”, appears at the end of the movie with a giant telephone piece from the 1990s. Her appearance makes sense, as she produced the track and its parent album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.”
Speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe on Thursday afternoon, Roan and Rodrigo explained why they worked together on the remix. “This is obviously my first feature film,” Roan said. “I’ve never done this before, so it sounds perfect to me. I don’t know. I just feel like it represents a generation of songwriters who really think about lyrics. With this song, I felt like, ‘Wow, it’s so cool that he put a pretty difficult concept into a pop song that’s my favorite pop song ever.’
Rodrigo revealed that he asked Byrne to appear in the video but was “a little shy” about making the request. “I’m always shy about asking people for favors, but he was so upset,” she said. “He showed up all day long. He had a character that he created, and he created this Johnny Johnson character. We have so many examples of him just ad-libbing and riffing, and he was into it. And I said, ‘Gee, David, maybe he should be an actor one of these days, too.'” “He has a versatile talent.”
Beyond sharing Nigro as producer, Rodrigo and Roan go back several years; Roan supported the former on both the “Sour” and “Courage” tours. Roan recently performed at Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields Festival in late August as part of an all-female lineup that included Doechii, Rachel Chinouriri, Garbage, the Breeders and more.