Witches in Music Videos

Witchy Music

    Our discussion of witches in film and TV has had me looking for depictions of witches everywhere. This led me to think about witches in music and music videos. For my blog this week, I compiled three of my favorite examples of witches in music.

W.I.T.C.H. by Devon Cole

    

    This song changes the word "witch" to an acronym meaning "Woman In Total Control of Herself". In the song, a W.I.T.C.H. is a confident and powerful woman. The video takes a really fun and lighthearted view on witches. The girls in the video are just dancing to the music and enjoying nature. There are multiple references to witchcraft, like when she says "it's such a wonder to be under her spell" and "I swear to God, I saw her howling at the sky", but the witches are never seen as bad or scary. The witches in this video "ain't out to get you, but [they're] better on your side". 

Seashore by The Regrettes

    This song is about the singer's experiences with being a young woman in the music industry. For context, when this song came out, she was 16 years old. The lyrics talk about her frustrations with being talked down to by older men. In the music video, she plays the part of a woman being burned at the stake after being accused of being a witch. She's not exactly angry about this, more mildly annoyed. I took this as a statement on how she is so used to being treated this way that it doesn't surprise or enrage her anymore. It's annoying, but it's nothing new. This music video makes an interesting statement on the specific kind of misogyny that younger women face.

Willow by Taylor Swift

    We talked a little about the live performance of this song in class where Taylor and her dancers look like witches at Sabaat, throwing glowing orbs around. The music video has a similar scene, where Taylor finds herself at a witch meeting in the woods. The witches are shown summoning something (orange orbs?) from the ground. Taylor joins in and the magic they produced leads her back to the love interest of the video. What we didn't talk about in class was the many official witchy versions of this song. After the song released, Taylor released remixes of this song, each a different witchy vibe. There's Willow (dancing witch version), Willow (lonely witch version), and finally Willow (moonlit witch verison). Overall, Willow is a really interesting depiction of witches in music.

    I'm sure there are many more depictions of witches in music videos, these are just the ones that stood out to me immediately. I find it interesting that all of these depictions are created by women. I wonder how these songs and their videos would differ if they were made by men.