In other teenagers-are-more-talented-and-emotionally-literate-than-all-of-us news, fifteen year-old Ruel has released a neon light-filled video to his latest single "Don't Tell Me," and it's great.
On the track, which was written after Ruel attempted to tell his family about a crush, Ruel says: “My whole family was like, ‘Ruel, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re way too young to think about that sort of stuff.’ And that really frustrated me. I thought ‘they can’t tell me how to feel’, so I wrote a song about it. I never thought it would lead to all of this.” The soul-tinged pop single is exactly what I wish Justin Bieber was making when we were fifteen. Maybe I would have jumped on the fangirl wagon had the Biebs commanded this kind of sound. It's sincere but not too earnest, apathetic but only just enough.
The video features Ruel wandering around a city, singing from atop skyscrapers so much larger than he is. The video celebrates the duality of being a teenager: he knows a lot, but is also still learning; he's a trendy city kid while retaining the emotive heart of an artist.
