The best music videos always deepen a song, pushing past the music into something that lingers long after the screen goes dark. Rachael Sage’s latest video for ‘Nexus (Acoustic)’, the newly reimagined, stripped-back version of the NYC folk-pop artist’s fan-beloved track, firmly achieves that. It is one of the most quietly devastating and genuinely beautiful pieces of music film you are likely to see this year.
Directed with extraordinary intimacy by award-winning documentary filmmaker Nick Clark, the video opens on three flickering candles, a moment of pure stillness, almost devotional, before a single note is played. Then Sage walks out onto a stage framed by sweeping red curtains, acoustic guitar in hand, her long-time band, The Sequins assembled around her. The arrangement is spare and searching: additional acoustic instrumentation gives the track a new kind of closeness, as though the song has been brought further inside itself.
One by one, a group of people enter the frame, sitting down in silence, each holding a large piece of card and a felt pen. Between shots of Sage playing, we watch these individuals breathe, sigh, and gather themselves. Then they begin to write. “Fear the world.” “Less than enough.” “A stab.” “Painful.” “Broken glass in my heart.” The words are raw, unadorned, and almost unbearably honest. Clark holds his camera steady and lets each one land. Then, slowly, the video begins to transform. A man starts to apply drag make-up, his reflection catching the light. Others emerge in flamboyant, joyful clothing, an unfolding of identity that is quietly defiant and deeply moving. And the cards change too. The same hands that wrote despair pick up their pens again: “You are beautiful, never broken, I love you.” “You are the answer.” “Dream bigger, it’s more than you are.” “You good enough.” As the music swells, Sage steps down from the stage and joins the people around her, the whole frame now alive with warmth and recognition. People finding themselves. People being found. It earns every second of its emotion, because it has shown us the weight that came before.
The song, a tribute to Nex Benedict, the nonbinary student whose death after being violently beaten by school peers inspired the original Nexus, was written in the immediate aftermath of reading about Nex’s story, with all proceeds from the original release donated to The Trevor Project, the leading LGBTQ+ mental health and suicide prevention organisation. That closing image, a rose laid down in remembrance, brings everything full circle with a grace that is almost impossible to articulate. Sage has spoken openly about the personal resonance of the song, connecting Nex’s story to the loss of her first bandmate, who took his own life rather than come out to his parents. That depth of feeling is present in every frame of this video. It is music made in the knowledge of what is at stake and art that understands its own responsibility.
‘Nexus (Acoustic)’ is taken from ‘Under My Canopy’, Sage’s forthcoming acoustic album due later this year on MPress/Universal, and arrives alongside her newly announced role as the first official ambassador for Rainbow Mind, the UK charity providing community-led mental health support for LGBTQIA+ people. She has also launched a limited-edition merchandise collection in partnership with the charity as part of the Take In The Good campaign, raising funds at a moment the community needs them most.
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