IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Stuck at home, Alesso and Liam Payne still film music video
NEW YORK » The coronavirus has halted many plans in the music industry, from tour cancellations to album pushbacks, but it didn’t stop Grammy-nominated DJ-producer Alesso and former One Direction singer Liam Payne from filming a new music video.
The pair joined forces for the new dance song “Midnight” but couldn’t film a typical music video because of social distancing, quarantining and being homebound due to the spreading virus. So Alesso went into the Los Angeles studio where he originally created the track to film his portion while Payne, who lives in London, had a friend film him singing on his balcony.
The result is a clean, simple clip that could pass for a video that was not made with limitations. “Midnight” was released Wednesday.
“It was nice just to make a video with a lot less noise around it — music videos are always so busy,” Payne said in a phone interview with The Associated Press this week. “For me personally, just to be able to go outside my house, perform a song on the balcony and just sing it the way I wanted to perform it rather than have people telling me how to move or what to do, or anything like that. It was very much our video, and I’m proud of that.”
“It’s kind of refreshing to just see Liam perform and me just working on the song,” Alesso added. “That’s really how we do it, you know? And kind of let the song have the shine. For me, it was refreshing.”
“Midnight” is a relationship song about coming together. But the performers said that with the impact the coronavirus has had around the world, the song has taken on a special meaning.