Everybody’s been there—having so much to do that they don’t know where to even begin. That’s how Eliza McLamb starts her video for Better Song, part of her 2025 album Good Story. The indie rock singer-songwriter is told to roll the dice so she can get the ball rolling with her four essential tasks: recording a song, doing laundry, going to yoga, and applying for a job.
Better Song commences the record that pushes McLamb to cope with what she felt during certain times of her life. The opening few lines, “I have trouble with memories / Making them up and forgetting things,” progressing to, “You said you wanted a better song / And I've been trying, but I'm coming undone,” accentuates this thesis as she unravels while thinking about the person who tore her apart.
After rolling the dice, the subsequent scenes are her completing each chore, some more successfully than others. Despite the momentum of her working on all of them, there is still a lingering ominous haze with every few shots that highlight browsing on social media. The most notable one is seeing a post with a gigantic font saying, “HER LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOURS,” which plays into the common sentiment of feeling “less than” the people who post about their glamorous lives online.
Three minutes into the video, McLamb is thrown into acts of intense emotion: rage, despair, franticness, and anxiety, some initially masked with joy. Just as things are looking sunny, it was clear the worst is yet to come. Through every beat drop, viewers feel an extra weight on their chest as the visuals punch them alongside the montage of expressions McLamb feels. Instead of simply achieving each task’s completion, she falls into extreme situations that lead her into immense distress.
Who knew that rolling the dice would bring about electrocution in a cult? What about smashing her guitar in fury, or abandoning a show just before she was about to go on stage, let alone cancelling an entire tour?
The escalation of events in this video is at its height when Better Song’s electric guitar is delivering waves of shock through the fast-paced shots of each scene. Somehow, while working on the tasks, she managed to make the situations worse than where they began—it’s truly a human experience when everything seems to go awry at the same time, causing endless hopelessness and regret.
What quenched that fiery indignation, at least momentarily, was a walk into a small pond surrounded by nothing but trees, rocks, and cattails. McLamb strips down to a tank top and shorts before abruptly submerging into the pond, acting as a mute to all the noise that was induced by trying to address all the unfinished chores.
Directed by Chris Ripley—who has worked with stars such as Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, and Lana Del Ray—Better Song beautifully captured a chaotic run of moments through 35 millimeter film and an aspect ratio that added to the storytelling ambiance. McLamb did a fantastic job at portraying the emotional paralysis someone can feel after an experience so specific and harrowing, that even an attempt to mend their life crashes and burns. After all, it only takes something as simple as rolling the dice to go haywire—and sometimes, it leads to a Better Song.
