Jon Batiste – I NEED YOU
2021 · Directed by Alan Ferguson
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Best comments
1.“Find you a man who randomly starts dancing in an art museum, and never let him go.”
More comments
- 2.“The security guard stole the show with that one two-step.”
- 3.“I listened halfway through and clicked on another video. All of a sudden I hear: 'DADDY, TURN THAT SONG BACK ON!! I was dancing to it!!' Ten 'play it again!'s and the most euphoric dancing I've ever witnessed later, my 5-year-old daughter finally fell to the floor with the biggest smile. She didn't even see the video!”
The story
Jon Batiste wrote and planned much of his album WE ARE in about a week, in his dressing room at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he led the band. He recorded it in New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans between sessions for Pixar's Soul. I Need You arrived in January 2021, written and produced with Autumn Rowe and Kizzo. Batiste called it a vibe cleanse, a warm hug after 2020. It mixes jazz, gospel and rock 'n' roll and sneaks in a quick rap.
Director Alan Ferguson, who made Katy Perry's Hot N Cold and Beyoncé's Dance For You, set it in an art gallery where old photographs of Harlem Lindy Hoppers come to life. Batiste plays the leading man and the bandleader both. A young man meets a woman, the dancing takes over, and at one point it seems to grab Batiste's body like a spirit possession. Choreographer Jemel McWilliams put a modern spin on swing and Lindy Hop, Harlem's own invention, with steps from the 1920s through the 1940s and nods to Little Richard and James Brown. There's even a flashback to Batiste as a boy with a saxophone. It was shot in a studio, and the effects crew at FRENDER warmed it up into Roaring Twenties color.
The song got a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional R&B Performance. It didn't win, but WE ARE took Album of the Year. Joy travels well.
