Narratively, the films overlap: “Iron” ends with a white churchly structure. “I Love You,” the third single to be released from the album The Golden Age, continues the story he built in the other two videos “Iron” and “Run Boy Run”: characters and symbols recur the black and white simple aesthetic dominates all three. The videos for the album, too, seem part of a larger literary project, each forming a chapter of a more complex narrative. The book looks one part religious text and one part fairy tale with illustrations (by artist Jillian Tamaki). His debut album The Golden Age was released in a special edition that, instead of a jewel case, is contained within a book he co-wrote with Katarzyna Jerzak (his cousin). He moved into music as an extension of what he was creating with his music videos, but there is a strong narrative impulse in the work.
Woodkid is the pseudonym of music video director Yoann Lemoine, famous for the videos he’s made for such music stars as Katy Perry, Lana Del Rey, and Taylor Swift. The video that follows seems to have little to do with this image, but, in the context of Woodkid’s larger project, the image and the tale both circle the same enigmatic loss. Woodkid’s self-directed music video “I Love You” begins with a rather enigmatic and violent image of an unconscious boy, a Viking helmet and shoe apparently knocked from his person and lying nearby.