Here are two videos by musician Calvin Harris, describing his process of making his songs.
One feels like a genuine exploration of the making of a song, and the other feels like a promotional piece. Indeed, the Slide explanation came a month after the release of the single, whereas the Potion explanation was released 3 days prior to the song coming out.
The Slide piece is an expansive exploration of each intricate detail of the song. The pieces slowly fit together, as the song comes into vision. The artist, and the collaborators stay out of the explanation - Harris restricts himself to four words, and hides his face. Slide is an incredible bit of music composition, and can explain itself.
The Potion piece is Harris putting himself front and center. 19 seconds is devoted to the explanation of the musical composition, where Harris speaks and puts his face front and center. He finishes with a brief interlude where he hypes up the Dua Lipa collaboration, followed by a rest of the fucking owl cut to the finished song.
The Slide video appeared around the same time as the Deconstructed video, but it was one of the pioneering videos of the genre, and had great success - partly because it felt like an authentic look at the song, and partly because it was a great song. The success was unforeseen, and the Potion video feels a desperate attempt at recapturing lightning in the bottle.
It missed what made the original good. People already had the chance to connect with Slide, and want to know more about the innards. The Slide explanation had breathing space, for each of the elements of the song to shine. Comparatively, the Potion explanation fits the mould of TikTok content - short, hyperactive. Harris actively interferes with his own song expressing itself!
TikTok inflation, and hype has meant the Potion video, despite my lesser opinion, has almost caught up to the Slide video. But it is telling that the latter semi-deconstructions of the singles have not performed particularly well.
I hope my tone isn’t one of pure cynicism; I really do love the Slide breakdown! I want to see more like it. Just give the song enough time to breathe.