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Carly Rae Jepsen and Lil Yachty succeed in making me want to live at Target

Carly Rae Jepsen and Lil Yachty succeed in making me want to live at Target

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Seems fine!

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Last night’s Grammy Awards were 100 hours long and rife with injustice, including an all-too-predictable Album of the Year snub for Beyoncé’s Lemonade, a boy pop-punk duo taking off their pants in public, and an inexplicable zero nominations for Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion Side B.

However, there was one bright spot that nearly alleviated the sting of the other awful stuff: a Target commercial! Congratulations to capitalism, the real winner of the night. Carly Rae Jepsen and Lil Yachty starred in an elaborate musical ad choreographed by La La Land’s Mandy Moore, directed by Mozart in the Jungle creator Roman Coppola, and produced by hip-hop hitmaker Mike WiLL Made-It. They twirled around with dryer sheets and emoji pillows while performing a sticky sweet remix of Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock’s 1988 party song “It Takes Two.”

It is a treat in all ways.

Is this what Target is like now? Should we all go to Target? Dance at Target? Wink at each other at Target? Make purchases of Klondike bars and sensible knee-length dresses at Target? Ride “hoverboards” with our eyes covered with a Gear VR headset at Target? I don’t know, just some thoughts I had while enjoying this music video!

In my four full years studying the basically fake field of “Communications,” we talked a lot about a persuasive tactic called “reciprocity,” which is a fancy word for “doing people favors so they buy stuff from you.” If you’re a fan of the classic Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street, you’re aware that the strategy of having Santa Claus do favors for harried moms on the go is a very effective marketing push for Macy’s department stores. The “miracle” referenced in the title is a strong Q4. Anyway, someone told Target about this principle and they did us the huge favor of making a treat of a music video. I guess we owe them one!

I love it, and that’s fine, in my opinion.