Ben Stiller would drive all night for SZA. In fact, in the new visual for the singer’s track “Drive,” which dropped on Friday morning (Dec. 20), the Nutcrackers star looks entranced as he lip-synchs along to the song while barreling down a dark road in his SUV.
In the Bradley J. Calder-directed clip, Stiller enthusiastically sings the moody ballad’s lyrics about hitting the road to clear your head while trying to not get too in your head about everything that’s going on. “I been up ’til up midnight, drivin’ to nowhere/ Bumpin’ a slow song, can’t get my head clear/ I been up ’til sunrise, headed to nowhere/ Hopin’ that someone’s missin’ me somewhere,” SZA sings over gently plucked acoustic guitar.
After worrying that she’s balled so hard she’s hit her peak, SZA brags about all the exes who still want to hit her up and how she has no time to waste on haters. And while he’s hitting those lines, Stiller closes his eyes and begins to drift to sleep before waking up with a renewed energy that inspires him to lean out of the window and rip doughnuts in the middle of the street. Eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the midnight ghost ride is similar to a lip-synching cameo Stiller had in Jack Johnson’s “Taylor” video in 2003 — only this time around, the actor’s hands are wrapped around a steering wheel instead of a guitar.
Things then get super weird as Stiller drives off and SZA pops up in the woods dressed as a sexy alien insect as the second half of the song turns into a slow-grind R&B jam and the singer crawls her way across the marsh. The costume is similar to one in the teased artwork for SZA’s long-awaited deluxe edition of her blockbuster SOS album, Lana, which is due out on Friday, as well as her Hot Ones look from September.
SZA first revealed the Lana title during a show in New York in September 2023, during which she told the audience that the deluxe version of SOS would be like “a whole ‘nother album … It’s seven to 10 songs, and it’ll be out this fall.” Then in a November British Vogue interview, she described Lana and the SOS deluxe as two entirely different albums.
But then earlier this month, SZA confirmed that Lana is the title of the SOS deluxe album, and teased the tracklist. SOS debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums charts following its 2022 release, shattering the record for the biggest streaming week for an R&B album by a woman at the time with 404.6 million official on-demand streams for the album’s songs, according to Luminate.
SZA will embark on the Grand National stadium tour with Kendrick Lamar beginning in April.
Watch the “Drive” video above.
The post “Ben Stiller Ghost Rides All Night in Moody Video for SZA’s ‘Drive’” by Gil Kaufman was published on 12/20/2024 by www.billboard.com