Celeste has treated fans today by releasing the official video for her single ‘Love is Back,’ on her Youtube channel, with the news being announced on her Instagram yesterday. The video features a quirky 1960s office theme based around a newspaper headline stating that ‘Love is Back,’ and featuring Celeste herself in an office singing the lyrics of the song into a bright red telephone in a montage with some stylish animation which echoes the live action scenes in a stylised fashion.
The video’s retro styling which takes us back to the dusty days of paper, desks and telephones are a breath of fresh air in a music industry saturated with hypermodern cliches or equally gadget laden 80s throwbacks and gives us something to really think about. The gentle nostalgia evoked by the video combines perfectly with the simple yet emotive song which tugs at the heart strings in both its musicality and its lyrical content and marks Celeste once again as a master of combining music with the moving image, a skill she first demonstrated with her incredible song composed for the Waitrose & John Lewis Partnership’s Christmas advert 2020 ‘A Little Love.’
While the John Lewis Christmas ad showed Celeste’s talent for writing to a brief, the work she has done on ‘Love Is Back,’ is very much her own, with the laid back R&B style fitting perfectly to her dusty, emotive vocal style which is in all ways unique and incredibly powerful. The video comes just over a week before Celeste’s debut album ‘Not Your Muse,’ is due to be released a month earlier than planned, a surprise announcement which delighted and pleasantly surprised fans who will find their pre-ordered copies arriving much earlier than expected.
While the exact reason’s behind this decision are not known it is likely that the ongoing coronavirus crisis in the UK, which is now claiming more lives on a daily basis than during the peak of the first wave, which has been the cause of another national lockdown without a clear end in sight may have played a role in this decision. As music fans in the UK settle in for another few months without their beloved live music, Celeste has been kind enough to gift us with one of the most highly anticipated works of recorded music of the year so far, and indeed it was hotly awaited throughout 2020 as well when Celeste was becoming the UK’s newest rising star.
Celeste’s debut album ‘Not Your Muse,’ releases on the 29th of January and is available to pre-order here, there are also exclusive bundles including hand drawn prints and alternative covers available from the official store, signed copies available from Amazon on CD or Vinyl. The album will also be available on all major streaming platforms from the 29th and can be pre-ordered as a digital download from the iTunes store. With Celeste already looking to be one of the biggest British artists of 2021 this is definitely one to get your hands on.
