Having been viewed over 15,000 times in just four weeks, Davinia’s music video for her comeback single, Perfectly, has definitely struck a chord. The singer and the video’s director, Steven Levi Vella, tell Iggy Fenech about the vision behind the racy five-minute video.

Davinia. Photo: Steven Levi Vella

Over the past six years, Davinia has become a constant on the local music scene, raking in nominations for Bay Music Awards and top-three spots at the Malta Eurovision Song Contest along the way. So, when Davinia announced she would be releasing a comeback single following a three-year stint in Los Angeles, the US, many wondered what would come next. Particularly as Davinia’s image and sound have changed so much over the years.

The song we got was Perfectly, a catchy pop tune that deals with the baggage of past relationships affecting new ones. It doesn’t pretend to be a love song, however. It simply speaks of the fear and reluctance some (most?) of us feel when we’re on the edge of a new relationship even though we’re not quite emotionally done from the one before.

“I don’t really care if you think it ain’t fair/I’m jaded everywhere. Boy, I’m faded everywhere,” the chorus goes before the beat reaches a climax.

The song, written by Davinia, is an incredibly personal one for her as it’s based on real-life experiences. But it’s also the culmination of three years spent performing and lyric-writing in LA, where she had a sold-out show at The Viper Room (which had previously hosted the likes of Johnny Cash and Iggy Pop) and even opened alongside Nick Lopez for rapper B.o.B. to a crowd over 30,000 people.

“LA was a fabulous experience for me, both personally and for my career,” she tells me. “But it did feel like I was too far away from home, so I decided to move back to Malta and be closer to my family. Even so, I’ll be spending time in LA every year to continue on the work I’ve started.”

It’s not surprising, therefore, that when Davinia approached director Steven Levi Vella to work on a video for the finished song, they immediately decided that they wanted to give the visuals for Perfectly the LA-feel. What followed was a five-minute video that is bursting with references to Los Angeles and beyond, including lovers kissing with a background of the bright lights (i.e. Hollywood!), apples that represent the original sin, and Chinese mythology in the shape of tigers and dragons.

“The video takes nothing literally,” says Steven, whose work has helped artists get noticed abroad, including by Tommy Boy Records in the US. “We looked at the different things being mentioned in the song and at the different emotions felt by the heroine and her lover in the story the song is telling, and we brought all that together.

The apple being spat out by the heroine signifies that she is forgiving herself for her past sins. The dragons, featured on the porcelain vases, are a symbol of power and strength in Chinese mythology – the heroine has the power to make or break this relationship, but does she have the strength to go ahead with it? Meanwhile, the tiger (once again a powerful symbol in Chinese mythology) is there to represent the drive to make progress within the relationship. As with real life, all the ingredients are there to move forward, but will we spot them? Will we use them?”

The video, which took over 16 hours to film, features two lovers going through the trials and tribulations of getting into a relationship that could be great but which comes at a very difficult period in one party’s life. The pig’s heart stabbed at the end, meanwhile, leaves viewers with one question: is that the heroine’s lover’s heart being stabbed or her own?

“My take on the story that led up to Perfectly is that our decisions affect both us and others; thus, that heart, could be either’s. Understanding that is a very important part of a song which doesn’t place the blame at anyone’s door. Rather, it looks at how we sometimes stop ourselves from choosing the future and our own happiness because of things that we cannot change and that are in the past,” Davinia says.

Played on all local radio stations for the past few weeks, Davinia’s Perfectly may be a catchy tune but, it’s when it’s experienced along with its video that the true dark nature of the song and its subject matter come to life.

Perfectly can be viewed on You Tube. The song is available for download on Apple Music and Spotify.