Last week, NPR debuted a video directed by Tyler, the Creator for a sunny, Paul McCartney-aspiring ballad called "Glowing." It's the first music video Tyler has directed outside of the Odd Future camp, and his first non-OF directorial work since PepsiCo pulled a commercial he made for Mountain Dew in May. The song, attributed to no one, was released by Capitol prog-rock imprint Harvest Records. Tyler was brought in after his manager, Christian Clancy, played the track for him on a plane. "This was a song I couldn't get out of my head," Clancy explains. "The artist didn't want to be in the video and wanted to remain anonymous so the music spoke for itself. It wasn't in a weird cliche marketing way but in a real way that felt refreshing. The standard rollout of new artists in the machine sense seems so hollow at this point." Reached over email, Tyler explained his attraction to the song, saying simply, "I like the piano chords at the end of the 3rd bars going to the 4th."
In the video, where grass and flowers radiate Tyler's signature jewel tones, a couple grow old together as the world crumbles behind them. It's either a heartfelt ode to love that prevails or a biting attack on blissful ignorance in the face of hardship. "The original idea had more blood and brighter colors," Tyler says. He incorporated brutal news footage because "it's real stuff that goes on in the world that we brush off and act like it doesn't happen."
In September, Tyler released a teaser trailer for WOLF, a short companion film to his 2013 album of the same name. Both he and Clancy declined to comment on plans for WOLF’s release, but Tyler did look ahead to future music video projects, writing, "I WANT TO DO A VIDEO FOR PHARRELL REALLY BAD AND I AM GOING TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN ONE DAY MARK MY FUCKING WORDS."
