Bella Poarch – Build a B*tch
2021 · Directed by Andrew Donoho
12M Likes
Best comments
1.“If someone treats you like a toy, be Annabelle.”
More comments
- 2.“The place: *collapsing*. Bella: 'It's dancing time.'”
- 3.“Finally, a TikToker song that doesn't dance for 3 minutes and sound like my 7th-grade SoundCloud.”
The story
Bella Poarch was already one of the biggest people on TikTok – a Filipino-American Navy veteran with more than 66 million followers – when Warner Records signed her in May 2021. This was the debut single, released the same day, written and produced with Sub Urban.
Poarch wrote the video herself, Andrew Donoho directed it and Sub Urban was creative director. The set is a factory that looks a lot like a Build-A-Bear Workshop, except the customers are men designing their ideal woman. Poarch leads a revolt, burns the factory down and escapes. The cameos read like a 2021 internet yearbook: Valkyrae, Bretman Rock, Larray, ZHC, Mia Khalifa and more, and the credits even list a deepfake artist, Shamook. Critics compared it to Westworld.
It pulled roughly 70 million YouTube views in under a week, and about a million TikToks used the song in its first week. It went platinum in the US and Canada and earned an MTV VMA nomination for Best Visual Effects. Poarch said the song is about accepting yourself, flaws and all. Candy-coated on top. Furious underneath.
