18th and Addison’s “Broke Down in Babylon” Music Video is a Total Visual Experience for the Emotions.
It’s official. The “Broke Down in Babylon” music video is out meaning that the song is officially out (okay, not technically). The video, which premiered this afternoon on Outburn magazine’s website, is an awesome visual experience that captures the essence of the song extremely well.
Clocking in at a cool 3 minutes and 19 seconds, the video is a trippy, dramatic, somewhat maddening emotional experience. From the onset, a dizzying array of flashing neon technicolor lights create a state of madness and disarray - a theme that runs constantly throughout the song and video. When the duo appear out of the lights, noticeably sullen and clearly apart from one another, they are handed accessories— Kait is handed a wide rimmed Panama hat, Tom is handed a jacket. The synth driven chords fill the empty space.
Kait gazes off into the distance before looking into the camera to begin vocalizing the state of mind she is experiencing, while the neon colored technicolor lights still flashing in the background. There are alternating shots of Tom being fitted into his jacket and Kait singing noticeably turned away from the camera. The entire time those neon colored technicolor lights keep flashing. It gets a little trippy at times. But that’s the point. “Broke Down in Babylon” isn’t shy lyrically about expressing the madness and emotions that come with having had enough.
“When I wrote the first two verses lyrically I just felt like I was at an emotional standstill. I sort of just felt numb to everything around me and started questioning everything I’ve done or haven’t done, where I was, who I was and when you feel like that it’s really easy to feel alone, and just broken down mentally and emotionally,” Kait explained to me in a recent interview. And you definitely feel that during the song and video. Towards the end of the first verse, Kait turns and faces the camera, wondering aloud, ‘have I lost it all?” We then see a shot of Tom in his jacket turned sideways hinting that he’s probably wondering the same thing. But before the question is answered, Kait turns away again and begins singing the second verse in the same fashion as the first — her figure a side silhouette, neon technicolor lights flashing.
In the second verse, Tom appears to harmonize a bit more, and with each of his harmonies, shots of him turned in the opposite direction of Kait emerge on screen indicating the duo might be coming together in a coming shot.
And sure enough they do. Backs turned to one another, the longing intensifies, until both Kait and Tom seem to lose their mind.
Tom cups his face in his hands and circles around in a state of panic. Kait shakes her head furiously, pulling at her hair. Tom rips off his jacket and feigns a scream. The scene reminded me of a scene out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or The Walking Dead. You feel like the duo are physically being taken over by this feeling of panic and madness.
Mid video things get super dramatic and captivating when ex Taking Back Sunday vocalist, Fred Mascherino, randomly shows up to save the day, so to speak. And that is precisely what Fred does when he shows up on screen facing the camera. He saves the duo from their state of madness without taking the spotlight off 18th and Addison. Or does he?
The rest of the video features Tom and Kait facing away from each other, alternating with shots of Fred taking both Tom and Kait’s place of being turned to each of their sides. As the video finishes out, a montage of Kait’s furious head shaking and Tom’s state of panic reappear, alternating with shots of Fred singing to the camera, until the three fade into the lights and the video literally blurs out. The video ends with a dedication to Johnny Dee Denker who passed away in 2020.
Overall, I thought the video had a very Alice in Wonderland feel to it — that is, if Alice in Wonderland were taking place in some club in the late ’80s or early 90s. The video has a very disco-y vibe to it. I kept expecting Tom or Kait to break into a dance. Musically, “Broke Down in Babylon” has elements of shoegaze/dream pop mixed with alt pop, although Kait admits, “it’s really hard to put your finger on it stylistically.” And it is. Kait went onto explain in my recent interview that while “Broke Down in Babylon” is full of “a lot of rock and roll elements” there are “moments that are more pop influenced.” And it’s true. Broke Down does bridge the gap between rock and pop. But it also gets electronic and alternative at times to the point where the song itself almost can’t be genre-ized. But in the end, labels don’t matter. Broke Down proves itself as a tight modern alt-pop track that evokes feelings so many people can relate to these days. 18th and Addison have gotten more mature in their lyrics and more comfortable in experimenting with their sound. And yet “Broke Down in Babylon” does remind me a lot of the duo’s song, “Leeches,” which isn’t exactly a bad thing.
The duo are “very proud” of their music video “considering the circumstances we’re in today. We made this one entirely ourselves in the garage. Extremely DIY, very fun and creative. It’s colorful and a little dark at the same time which perfectly depicts how we felt at the time of writing the song,” Tom explained in my recent interview with the duo.
And the song and video both do their best to display that dichotomy. You feel every emotion in the video. And I love when artists become a character or take on a role. In “Broke Down in Babylon,” Tom and Kait take on their perspective roles as prisoners of madness especially well. Although Broke Down is a song about having a breakdown of sorts, all is not destroyed for 18th and Addison. This song is a big hit for the duo and I see this video going down as a classic in 18th and Addison’s catalogue of hits in the future.
