Pom Pom Squad are a band that’s absolutely on the rise and had a great 2021 with the release of Death of a Cheerleader. Even so, when the band fired off some playful tweets expressing their admiration for Nada Surf‘s mid-’90s hit “Popular” earlier this year, no one thought they were that serious.
I’m gonna recreate the video for popular by Nada Surf but I’m gonna play every character
— Pom Pom Squad❣️ (@pompomsquad) March 25, 2021
But, what started off as a joke has become a reality with a terrific twist. Mia Berrin did exactly what she promised she’d do and today, you can see the fruits of her labor. If that’s not enough, Berrin enlisted none other than Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws for an appearance.
The new video took place at the Bayonne High School, the same place where the original “Popular” took place.
“Working with Nada Surf was such a dream,” Berrin said. “They’re such an incredible group of individuals and were so kind to everyone in PPS during our time out on tour together. It’s hard not to be inspired by their career, so to intersect with their legacy even a little bit is really special.
“I think the video is amazing! I love how it feels like a shot-for-shot recreation at the start but quickly takes on its own totally new character,“ Caws said in a statement of his own. “The original was shot in 1996, looking back at previous decades, while this one feels set in the present day, looking inwards and towards the future… another really cool aspect of the video is that the cheerleader character feels more and more sincere and human as the story develops. By the end, she’s much more than a player in a high school creation, she’s a person in the world and the singer of the song. To me there’s a “closed film” sense about Pom Pom Squad. Meaning that even if you could trace influences in their music, it feels as if they’ve invented it all themselves. They are their own world. That’s a trait I’ve felt in all my favorite bands: they’ve created their own reality.”
It’s a great full-circle moment that is one of the more positive things to occur in 2021. Nostalgia, baby!
