Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Bon Iver dances, Kanye West broods, Francis and the Lights struts in 'Friends' music video

In which a man dances before sitting on a step ladder

Christopher Hooton
Friday 08 July 2016 08:03 BST
Comments

Francis and the Lights have posted a new music video for 'Friends', which features Kanye West and Bon Iver.

There's a number of interesting things about this song/video, so I'm going to go ahead and itemise them:

- It clears up why that new Chance the Rapper song, 'Summer Friends', sounds so much like Bon Iver - it is Bon Iver. "Francis and The Lights sampled his own song to produce Summer Friends for me, this is the original", Chance tweeted last night. Francis has gleefully spent much of the past 24 hours retweeting people who accused him of ripping Bon Iver off.

- The video sees Bon Iver and Kanye reunite again. They appeared on West's 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' and 'Yeezus' albums together, but went their separate ways for 'The Life of Pablo'.

- Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) dances. He doesn't look wholly comfortable with it (possibly the entire point), but he gives it his best shot.

- Kanye doesn't actually rap in the track. He justs smoulders in the corner of the incredibly conceptual video

The video was directed by Jake Schreier, with the song having been co-written by ex-Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij.

Francis and the lights are headed up by Francis Farewell Starlite. The band previously toured with Drake, MGMT and Chance and the term "and the Lights" refers both to the lights on a stage and pixels on a computer screen.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in