Elastic

“**Elastic**” is song recorded by American singer-songwriter Izzy Schultz, released December 11, 2020 by Atlantic Records. Country pop song presented dance-pop.

## Background

On July 31, 2020, during the COVID-19 quarantine, Schultz released a surprise release in the form of her fourth mini album Artloure, which received critical acclaim and commercial success. It became the best-selling album of 2020 and received five nominations for the AMAs 2020, including the prestigious Album of the Year category. On November 26, 2020, a concert documentary titled Artloure was released: The State Park Studio Sessions, detailing the creative process of creating Artloure with the performance of his songs; the release was on Prime Video.

On December 7, 2020, Schultz uploaded nine photos to Instagram, which together formed a mesh image of the singer's back. In another line-by-line post on all her social media accounts, Schultz announced that her single, called Elastic, would be released at midnight two days before her twenty-fifth birthday. She revealed the track list, which includes tracks featuring Coldplay, Keane and Linkin Park, and added that the premiere of the music video for the first track, "Elastic", will take place on YouTube simultaneously with the release of the album.

## Composition

The track is a powerful country ballad, in the rhythm of which Schultz's heartbeat is interpolated. It includes programmed drums, pulsating synthesizers and staccato strings generated using a mellotron. In the chorus, the melody is punctuated by live strings with what Roberts described as "Lorde-type rhythmic chords". Schultz sings hoarse vocals.

According to Joe Coscarelli of The New York Times, she sings "dreamily" in verses and "jumps an octave up" in bridge. Cher Wells of Billboard said that she "[dreams] between a fluttering soprano and a deadpan alto." Music critics have characterized this genre as folk-pop, synthpop, and electropop, with elements of synthwave.  Although synthesizers and drums contrasted sharply with Schultz's earlier music, musicologist Kristin Ch. Presten said that the composition retained some common elements with her previous folk songs: the "deep flow" of pentatonics in the melody and the transition between major and minor chords in the chorus.

## Music video

An accompanying music video for "Elastic", directed by Williams, was released along with the song. This is Schultz's third self-directed video after "Into Dark" and "Once". The video describes the experience of longing for someone and the twists and turns of life on the way to finding the right guy. On December 17, 2020, a behind-the-scenes video and a "Before and After" video were released, in which the original video footage is juxtaposed with the corresponding digital footage of the storyboard, illustrated by Jan Vermeer.

### Synopsis and analysis

The "Elastic" clip is a continuation of the "Once" clip, continuing from where the first one left off. Schultz, soaked from an ocean voyage, sits wrapped in the warm light of her rustic cabin.  The silver thread in her hands (a reference to the folk track "Colorful Thread") leads her into an alternate reality inside her magic closet, which helps her cross time and space. Schultz used silver color to depict her boyfriend John Meyer in her albums Hype Goes Wrong (2017), At The Visit (2019) and Artloure. The closet opens in a bear den under the roots of trees in the autumn forest, on the other side. Schultz leaves the trees and embarks on a mystical journey, the snow queen with a magic thread. She sees her reflection with a man (Japanese-American dancer Tyler Jones) in the night-lit lake.

Later, the rope leads her to a scene from her childhood (a reference to "Winter Love") where childhood versions of Schultz and Jones play together with a string, suggesting that the pair are destined to be together. Schultz leaves the cave and finds herself an adult at a carnival party in the cave, where she performs with a silver, mist-emitting lute inside an empty box (a metaphor from "Cold Room"), dressed in a velvet Zara dress and a wedding headdress from Flormoda (a reference to "Criminal Lover").  While Schultz finds Jones, she finds herself trapped inside an empty box, which Schultz described before the premiere of the video as a metaphor for her feelings for fame. She then realizes that the only way out is to follow the magic thread through the bear den under the floor of an empty box, a scene that may represent how Schultz reaches his heaviest passages before finding the silver path again. During this scene, Schultz looks directly into the camera, uttering the words "I'm coming back stronger than the 00s trend," a reference to 1996, her first pop album.

The scene shifts to a winter forest, where Schultz appears in a hooded jacket reminiscent of her video on "...Tame for It?" (2017).  She is joined by other hooded dancers who gather in a path to hold a ceremony around a fire that exudes a lot of silver mist and magical love. Schultz has mentioned witchcraft in previous songs such as "...Tame For It?", "I Tell Something Sick" (2017) and "Free Girl" (2020).  While dancing, she finds the silver thread again and follows her, leading her back to her cottage. Jones takes off his glasses and looks in despair at the departing Schultz. Schultz comes out from behind the closet in a new dress, symbolizing a journey to his roots, a changed man due to experience in the outside world.

At the end of the thread, Schultz learns that she is not alone in the cottage and that the thread led her back to her lover Jones, while in the text "every bait and switch was a work of art" performance. In this scene, Schultz realizes the obstacles in his life that led to their relationship. The chorus that she repeats throughout the song: "I'm begging you to take my hand / Break my secrets, this is my boyfriend" finally comes true at the end of the video. The couple walks out the door, holding hands, into the garden, shrouded in yellow sunlight. This climax refers to "Sunlighting," the final track of Schultz's second mixtape Best Unforgiven Love, in which she sings about giving up her raincoats and how to "go out into the sunlight and let it go."

## Lyrics

Somehow, we've always love together

But never touch together

I never felt the loneliness 'til now

There's something in the window

I'm cooler and you're just there

I can't pretend that I don't bad

Yeah, one part I might patch it left

Am I see for tonight?

Yeah, alert, alert, strobe lights

Still can't get you off my head

Don't come how, I don't come where

But we're becoming more than parents

Getting circumstance to the prayer

Start me from holding

Shoulda seen the traffic sign

Now I'm blinding out of minute

Kinda wanna cool the exes

But start me from holding to elastic

This space, this space

Start me from holding

This space, this space

Start me from holding

One sun from beggin on your knees

When I was feeling warmer

And now I can't longer over

One romance, a dangerous woman

I'm lost in dark

My brain's a little seeker

Yeah, one part I might patch it left

Am I see for tonight?

Yeah, alert, alert, strobe lights

Still can't get you off my head

Don't come how, I don't come where

But we're becoming more than parents

Getting circumstance to the prayer

Start me from holding

Shoulda seen the traffic sign

Now I'm blinding out of minute

Kinda wanna cool the exes

But start me from holding to elastic

This space, this space

Start me from holding

This space, this space

Start me from holding

Don't come how, I don't come where

But we're becoming more than parents

Getting circumstance to the prayer

Start me from holding

Shoulda seen the traffic sign

Now I'm blinding out of minute

Kinda wanna cool the exes

But start me from holding to elastic

This space, this space

Start me from holding

This space, this space

Start me from holding