Tyla’s video for “Water” is dry and dusty. Parched chile.

Tyla has FINALLY released a music video for “Water”. And given the blatant product placement of Lemon Perfect water, I guess she was probably waiting on that product tie-in cheque to clear. It really does seem like Tyla blew her entire music video for the year on “Been Thinking”, because “Girl Next Door” got a lyric video for a music video and now “Water” gets this.

I was gonna review “Water”, but the review woulda just been ‘The song is great. You shoulda seen the whine I buss the first time I heard it.’

I really like the vibe of this video, and that there is a visual through line from “Been Thinking”. It feels like it’s set in the same world, which I find really cool. The video also has a very Janet Jackson “That’s the Way Love Goes” vibe about it with how chilled it is. Anything Janet Jackson-esque in a video get s a thumbs up from me.

But...the video is really boring.

So little of the vibe of “Water” is captured in the video. The elements are all there. Tyla all greased up. Her girls around her all whining. A beach. Some water. Some body-to-body contact. But it all needed to be heightened to really capture the song. There also needed to be a lot more highlighting of the choreo. To only have Tyla dance it in the last 20 seconds of the video was strange. And what we do see is shot and edited so badly that you can’t see the dance well enough to really follow it, which is extremely bizarre given the TikTok challenge for the song which is largely responsible for the song gaining the popularity that it has. And to not make more of the setup of Tyla dancing in water was also a strange creative choice. She shoulda been kicking that water up and poppin’ her pussy in it just as Namie Amuro was doing in her video for “Want Me, Want Me”.

“Water” is so popular right now and going all sorts of viral that this video being so dusty will not hurt it. But it is a shame that the video wasn’t better and that it didn’t offer more. Adding a Janet Jackson style music video edit of the song which features a dance breakdown would have been an easy way to have the music video offer something the original release of the song didn’t. Leigh-Anne gave a lot of what I needed Tyla to give in this video, which is funny, because Leigh-Anne’s video for “My Love” was basically a Tyla video. Same with the song.

HENNYWAY.

Tyla’s album is rumoured to be releasing in November. Although I wonder if this date will be stuck to. Her label could either keep this date to capitalise on the success of “Water”, which continues to climb up the charts. Or they could choose to milk another single or two and then release the album in 2024. Either way, Tyla had my attention from “Been Thinking”. But after follow that up with “Girl Next Door” and now “Water”, I am absolutely seated for the album.