THE MYSTERIOUS MAGIC OF #SECRETELIZAPROJECT

In 2024, I wrote a rambling essay for my Topics in Popular Music course at uni on the position of the ‘girl’ as a marketable demographic in pop. I argued that “Spotify’s editorial playlists, e.g. Sad Girl Starter Pack, flatten and belittle the nuances of their tracklists in order to reduce artists and listeners alike to eternally youthful girls who never reach womanhood, or, consequently, self-actualisation.” I imagine my essay was, at least in part, a response to the transmutation of No Doubt’s Just a Girl from feminist critique into a slogan plastered across mugs and the soundtrack to TikToks that hark back to childhood insults such as, “You throw like a girl.” I’m all for reclaiming what it means to do something like a girl, but I am unsettled by all the branding that seems intent on keeping us small.

When Eliza McLamb released her debut album, Going Through It, I heard all of these overlapping thoughts perfectly summarised in the lyrics of Modern Woman: “They love me when I am miserable // Cause I’m super marketable // Sad girl sings a simple song // And all the others sing along.” Eliza McLamb had already become an artist I trusted on the subject of womanhood. I’m a fan of her Substack, where she has written about everything from first encountering her WikiFeet rating to Olivia Rodrigo and the idea of the ‘Teen Idol’.

Over the past several weeks, Eliza has been teasing the release of #SecretElizaProject, often through Instagram Stories. Snapshots of women dressed in blue, slumped on the floor à la The Virgin Suicides, have appeared throughout the campaign. On Thursday, Eliza emailed me a special blue link. I clicked it and discovered that #SecretElizaProject is a music video for 2025’s Better Song, from her sophomore album Good Story.

The Better Song video is directed by Chris Ripley, known for his cinematography on Sabrina Carpenter’s Manchild and House Tour, Charli XCX’s SS26, and his frequent collaborations with artists such as Harry Styles. The press release I received describes the project as “the story of Chris believing in me and my music, even though he could have pitched this to anyone else with more fame or followers, using anyone else’s money, but he didn’t because he believed in the work, and I wanted you to know that part too.”

The vision of womanhood realised in Better Song inhabits a familiar milieu of comparison and dread, but it is shot through with surreal images of cult activity and feverish mirages of fame. At the beginning of the video, Eliza rolls a die to determine the course of her day and, consequently, her life. Each pathway feels like a wrong turn with a sinister underbelly, reminiscent of Perfect Blue, Midsommar, or Priscilla. There is loneliness everywhere, and a search for the home McLamb calls her “shifting star” in the first verse of Better Song.

I keep coming back to the ideas Eliza has been writing about since Going Through It: collective gendered experience and the chorus of women singing along with her. When I listen to her music, and when I watch the Better Song video, I do not feel that the artist’s vision has been compressed into something simpler or more digestible. The collaborative project behind Better Song preserves the individual story at the heart of its lyricism while still managing to be relatable in all its aching honesty.

When women in music are empowered to take this grassroots approach to the media that accompanies their art, free from the need to appeal to industry giants and their reductive marketing strategies, they create beautiful worlds. When someone is honest about how they feel, and about their experience of the world, others naturally find solace in their work.

Eliza’s decision to include Substack writers, small publications, and student journalists in the pre-release stage of #SecretElizaProject is a further demonstration of the spirit behind the work: to inspire and encourage creativity in its fullest and wildest form, to foster belief and ambition beyond reason.

You can watch the video for Better Song here: Watch Better Song on YouTube.