26-year-old crooner Nathan Hartono has finally dropped the first single, “爱超给电” (which translates to Love gives electricity”) off his upcoming Mandarin EP, slated to launch later this year.

爱超给电 is the Mandarin rendition on his 2016 song, Electricity, in which Hartono plays a wistful loverboy. This time round however, Hartono returns as a suave balladeer who’s all decked out in Yohji Yamamoto – so he automatically gets bonus points there.

Shot and directed by famed Singapore-born, Tokyo-based photographer Leslie Kee, the video is fine till midway where Hartono literally gives life to a group of outlandish characters (we count a priestess, a burlesque dancer, an anime doll, pirates, a pig and even a slightly creepy dwarf/puppet). Continue further and suddenly you get to a point where Hartono is bereft of his sleek Yohji jackets and appears topless with faux tattoos and heavily kohl-ed out eyes, surrounded by his gaggle of characters.

The art direction is a tad phantasmagorical and I don’t quite understand the metaphor (if there was one to begin with), perhaps due to my own poor grasp of the language but even so, visually the video leaves one scratching their head. Perhaps go easy on the kohl?

But judging from the enthusiastic comments on Youtube, Hartono’s fans are in raptures over the video and quite ready to lap up whatever the singer has to dish out.

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