Ida Maria – I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked
2008 · Directed by Jonas Odell
72K Likes
Best comments
1.“No one likes me better when I'm naked.”
More comments
- 2.“If I was a male stripper, this would be my theme song.”
- 3.“I used to sing this song all the time when I was 13, and my mom would always freak out.”
The story
Ida Maria Sivertsen is a Norwegian rocker from Nesna, and this was the single that broke her in Britain in 2008. It went into the UK chart at number 18 on downloads alone, then climbed to 13. She has said she built the tune like a nursery rhyme on purpose: get everybody singing along first, let them notice what they're singing later. The joke has a point. She called it a flip on the way women get objectified, with the guy on display for once.
The video comes from Swedish director Jonas Odell, the animator behind Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out and a Golden Bear winner in Berlin for his short films. He made it through his studio Filmtecknarna with Nexus and went full pop art – Motionographer spotted Warhol and a little Barbara Kruger in the mix. The song borrows from the theme of The Banana Splits, the old kids' TV show, and the video tips its hat to the show too.
The song landed on her debut album Fortress Round My Heart and crossed to the US in 2009, where she played it on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. A kids' show theme, a gallery wall and a woman with zero interest in being the object. Works for us.
