Finding HopeALICE (Music Video) by Erin LeCount: A Very Emotional Analysis
TW: non-graphic discussions of eating disorders, mental health, trauma, hospitals, and therapy.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll already know how much I love music and storytelling and songwriting, more than anything in the world: I love diving into the work of others and I love writing my own songs and nothing brings me more joy. I’ve been listening to Erin LeCount for over a year now and while I’ve been working on a broader piece about her songwriting and posting fun little EP analyses on TikTok (here and here), I’ve also been wanting to write about her most recent music video, for the song ‘ALICE,’ ever since it came out because it had such a profound impact on me. But between trying to unravel all of my thoughts around it and life stuff flying at me left, right, and centre, I just haven’t been able to get everything down with any sort of coherence. But now that The PAREIDOLIA Shows are about to happen and Erin has posted about having “something very special” planned for the performance of ‘ALICE,’ I wanted to get all of my thoughts down before I see it, before it can potentially change the way I feel about the song – I already know that I will only love it more (and maybe there will be a Part II to this post) but how I feel about it now is so precious to me that I wanted to document those feelings alongside analysing different elements of the video.
Of the songs on Erin LeCount’s latest EP, PAREIDOLIA, the song ‘ALICE’ didn’t immediately jump out to me as a favourite, not with ‘MACHINE GHOST’ and ‘DON’T YOU SEE ME TRYING?’ clamouring for my attention, competing for the top spot in my ranking. Those two songs immediately clicked for me and I felt them so deeply that it took me a while to start unpacking ‘ALICE’ and all of the layers in the lyrics and the storytelling.
Even then, I think I wasn’t quite ready to fully hear it but when I saw the music video, I didn’t really have any other choice but to engage with it: it just unlocked something that I didn’t even know was there. I sobbed watching it and cried all day thinking about it. I emailed it to my therapist and we’ve talked about it multiple times, played it while we worked on trauma release. Months later, the song still makes me cry because of this music video.
Before getting to the video, I want to talk about the song a little bit because the subject matter (or multiple potential subject matters) is very relevant to why, in my opinion, this music video is so powerful. In an EP full of warped thinking and the seductive pull of self-sabotaging behaviour, ‘ALICE’ is “the final spiral” in a self-destructive downward spiral, a song about loving someone who struggles with the same things as you even as that thing is destroying you both. (x) When she announced the video release, a day before the release of the PAREIDOLIA EP, she posted this on TikTok, which describes the song better than I ever could:
“this song is about when addiction, love, codependency and competition come together and bind you to someone. it’s about the bond between two people who struggle with the same thing, intoxicated by both the vice and by each other. it’s about when leaning on each others shoulders becomes an act of dragging each other down. it’s about the grief of when the person who knows you better than anyone else in the world is the worst person for you to be around. it’s about complex relationships that cut you off from the rest of the world, from yourself, from the chance of ever getting out of that rabbithole – because then what would you ever have in common?” (x)
On Instagram, she posted the same description but extended it:
“…it’s not about pointing the finger or blame, it’s about loving someone whilst hating the parts of yourself they reflect back to you. it took me a long time to write a song that accurately depicts what that type of bond feels like – to own up to the part i play in it. to write about not only about the person and myself, but this third thing – the entity that exists between us that we are both connected by. i wrote many versions of this song and this was the only version that ever felt fair, and ever felt it did justice to the feeling of that love, and what it’s like when it decays, when you must choose to remain there or to walk away from someone you care about for both of your sakes. i’ve received many beautiful interpretations of this song – ‘alice’ is both a person and a manifestation of everything associated with her – addiction, self-reflection, temptation. it’s not a light hearted song by any means, but in many ways feels the most responsible and grown up, the most promising that there is life on the other side of it all and an intention to walk away – which is why it has always been the last song of the EP, and why i wanted to give it early.” (x)
(As a songwriter, the part where she talks about rewriting it multiple times to get it right – and she’s said elsewhere that it took four years to write – fascinates me and what I wouldn’t give to talk to her about that in more detail. I have a number of songs like that, that I just haven’t managed to get right yet and sometimes I wonder if I ever will. I mean, I’d also just love to chat to her about songwriting in general but I am so intrigued by the creative process of this song and how it came to finally exist in this form.)
Many of the lyrics heavily allude to both Erin and Alice struggling with eating disorders, trying to support each other but still ultimately competing with each other, a dynamic that only got more and more unhealthy. My initial interpretation of the song was that it was about two people and the complexity of their relationship as they both dealt with an eating disorder and it wasn’t until I was watching the music video that it really opened up into something more for me, hitting me emotionally in a way that it never had before. Even as I was watching two people dance, it suddenly wasn’t about the relationship between two people anymore: it was about me and the trauma that I live with that I’m working so hard to move on from, about all the time I’ve spent wrestling with it and now learning how to welcome it in and then let it go. That epiphany – amplified by the deep, deep emotion of the music video, of the performances in it – made it a hugely impactful piece of art for me, moreso than I really know how to articulate fully.
For the sake of clarity, when discussing the video, I’m going to refer to the character Erin plays as ‘Erin’ and the other girl, played by Belen Leroux, as ‘Alice.’ I don’t want to assign the emotions and actions I’m interpreting from the performance in the video to Erin the real person and this seems the best way to differentiate the real person from the role she’s playing, regardless of how much is drawn from real life – that’s not mine to make assumptions about. And as Alice in the song can be interpreted as a person, the personification of an eating disorder (or trauma, etc), or both, I think the clearest way to discuss this character is to refer to her as ‘Alice,’ rather than repeating the possible interpretations every time. Hopefully that makes sense and makes this easier to read.
Before the ‘action’ begins, I want to explore the aesthetic choices and how they connect to the lyrical themes of struggling with an eating disorder. One of the first things that really struck me about this video is Erin’s make up; I find it incredibly haunting. I’m not a make up expert by any measure but somehow it’s hardened the angles of her face, making her look tired and drawn and drained, which is only emphasised by the absence of her classic black eyeliner. Even her signature silvery eye makeup seems muted. The effect reminds me very much of how she described the meaning of the lyric “my glass hips will shatter under plastic skin” in this song, how it refers to a shiny but cold and cheap exterior when what’s underneath is incredibly sensitive and breakable. She looks like she’s barely holding herself together. When trying to describe my emotional response to it, I wrote down that it looks like she’s haunting her own body and that still resonates with me. The limp, almost stringy hair, a curtain to hide behind, is a stark contrast to the previous PAREIDOLIA music videos where it’s sleek and shiny and every hair flip is so dynamic. In this video, it cuts through the shot in a very different way, emphasised by the choreography and use of slow motion; the energy feels more visceral and frenetic than in previous music videos. I’m very wary of the “[insert name here] looks sick” territory because healthy and sick look different on different people and it requires a very sensitive, nuanced approach. Having said that, I think it’s fair to say that she doesn’t look well: they’ve done a very effective, impactful job of making it clear that she is not thriving, in this state and in this relationship.
While white clothing has been a pillar of Erin’s brand for some time, I think the white dresses make symbolic sense too: both ‘Erin’ and ‘Alice’ are in such a vulnerable state throughout the video and I think both the simplicity and colour of the dresses highlight this. Wearing white has had many associations depending on the geographical, historical, cultural, and religious context, including innocence, sacrifice, mourning, new beginnings, and purity, all of which feel relevant to the story being told in this song. And interestingly, I feel like Erin has put a personal touch on some of these associations through the consistent use of white in her aesthetic and branding and the strong theme, especially through the PAREIDOLIA EP, of struggling with guilt and shame and striving to feel pure and clean. And on a practical note, the simplicity of the dresses also really allows the choreography to shine because it’s never obscured by fabric.
The story takes place in one space: a cold, clinical room that’s very reminiscent of a hospital ward. There’s a heart monitor-like sound within the production of the song that seems to sonically reinforces this link. (x) It has an insular feeling to it, despite the video’s cool, muted colour palette, that could be interpreted as both intimate and isolating, speaking to the closeness of the relationship and how something that felt so special could become toxic and codependent and suffocating. The dilapidated state of the room, the pale, muted colours, and the abandoned feeling it evokes all enhance the bleakness of this situation. Similarly to the muted make up, it’s like the room – like they themselves – have been drained of colour, of life. This backdrop feels like a very clear reference to the eating disorder theme, to the lyrics about how deep the damage – of this relationship, this self-destructive behaviour – went and the competition it became. This is the bottom of the spiral and the reality is stark and sobering: there are going to be life-threatening consequences if you don’t stop, if you don’t break out of the spiral.
There’s also a sort of meta commentary, I think, if you want to see it (I don’t think that’s quite the right term but bear with me). I obviously can’t speak for Erin or her experiences but when I watched this video, one of the things I found myself thinking about is how broken our mental health system is, how it’s failing so many people. It’s in this dingy, neglected space where you have to do the hardest work: the work of saving yourself. But then it could also reflect that, more often than not, these battles are happening in the grey, everyday, overlooked moments. It’s just fucking hard work and there’s nothing beautiful about it; you hope that there will be beautiful moments somewhere down the line but so often, in the middle of it, it’s brutal and unglamorous and miserable and I think the bleakness of the backdrop while this battle is going on really emphasises that. But that’s a very personal interpretation.
The different sections and movements within the choreography also feel deeply representative of a struggle with an eating disorder, an addiction, a trauma, or a toxic relationship of any kind but I want to explore each of those in more depth as we move through the video. So let’s dive in…
The video opens with the very recognisable hypno-disc, the classic black and white hypnotic spiral, and we zoom out to see it being displayed on a TV. On the surface, this is an obvious visual reference to the downward spiral that is at the core of this EP. The ‘downward spiral’ and ‘down the rabbit hole’ metaphors can be used somewhat interchangeably, which brings together this central theme of self destruction with the Alice In Wonderland motifs (the white rabbit, the rabbit hole, etc) that Erin has been using throughout the ‘PAREIDOLIA Era.’ The black and white spiral is historically linked to hypnotism and putting someone into a suggestible state, making them less able to resist the influence of others. There is also a method of influencing people called the ‘Alice in Wonderland Technique,’ which involves overwhelming a person with contradictions until they become disorientated and therefore, easier to manipulate: when our brains struggle with the cognitive dissonance of conflicting ideas, we search for order (pareidolia – seeing specific, meaningful images in random patterns – would be a fitting example here) and when we are presented with it, the sense of relief can leave us open to influence or manipulation. This concept of craving a sense of order or control and how it leaves us vulnerable to harmful, self-destructive patterns is present in ‘ALICE’ but I want to talk about it more at the end; it makes more sense there but I couldn’t pass the spiral on the TV without beginning to dig into it.
Below the TV, on the television stand, there are two video tapes, one labelled PAREIDOLIA and the other labelled LAIKA. PAREIDOLIA seems like an obvious nod to the title of the EP but, as far as I know, there haven’t been any connections to Laika, the first dog sent into space: Sputnik 2 was launched from Moscow, Russia in November 1957 and sadly Laika only lived for a few hours. I did tweet Erin and @erinlecounthq about it and the latter responded with a gif of a dog in space… Accurate but not super helpful for analysis… I feel like there’s potential for a nod to ‘digital and divine’ here – after Erin’s second EP, I Am Digital, I Am Divine – referencing the electronics of the spacecraft and the beauty of seeing Earth from space but that feels like a bit of a reach. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see where that thread leads.
The first part of the choreography is ‘Erin’ alone and as beautiful as the dance is, she moves as if someone else is controlling her body, like she’s a marionette and the eating disorder is pulling her strings. And then ‘Alice’ appears from the dark and they’re dancing the same sequence together, tumbling down the rabbit hole together.
They touch hesitantly, carefully, until they’re holding hands, holding onto each other, and suddenly they’re locked together in a frantic push and pull, pushing the other away just to pull them back in. It’s vulnerable and raw and almost a fight: ‘Alice’ is always there to catch ‘Erin,’ even if she’s the one who let her fall. It’s like they want to let go but can’t bare the reality of it, like their identities have become entangled, which we can see in the choreography: they only move when the other forces it and then it’s a cycle that just keeps going and going and going, only gaining momentum and never losing it. Now that it’s begun, it’s so hard to stop.
It builds and builds in intensity until they’re clinging to each other, holding on so tight that they’re almost one person, like they don’t know how to exist without each other, identities fusing. It reminds me a lot of what Erin said about the song when she introduced it at KOKO in London during the La Lune Tour in December 2025: “I wrote this song about someone that I loved very, very much, so much that we sort of morphed into one person.” The emotion is so high and you can feel it through the screen and in the song: how much they love each other and how much pain they’re both in. But that intensity isn’t sustainable and I think you can see it on ‘Erin’s’ face; she’s starting to realise how much they’re hurting themselves and each other but the idea of walking away, of leaving ‘Alice’ behind, and having to figure out who she is without her is terrifying. She’s already grieving and the love, the pain, the fear, the anticipatory grief have her holding on even tighter. It’s so raw and so moving and I’m just in awe of the choreography, the acting… the whole performance. I think there’s also an element of ‘sometimes you’re holding onto someone and sometimes you’re holding onto anything that helps you stay upright,’ which doesn’t invalidate the relationship or the emotions you feel but it does make it more complicated because when a person becomes a survival technique, it can be impossible for them to ever be anything else.
Then it cuts to the two of them sitting together on the floor, wrapped in a hug, synched with the song’s bridge and the repeated lyric “love is not enough to save you now.” The realisation is clear: ‘Erin’ knows she has to leave, that it’s the best thing – and the kindest thing – for both of them. She starts to extract herself, to pull away from ‘Alice,’ but ‘Alice’ holds on tighter, trying to keep her there with her. You can feel the panic rise as ‘Erin’ struggles harder and harder and here the lyric can also serve as a reminder of why she’s doing this and a mantra to repeat, to help her keep trying to escape rather than let ‘Alice’ keep her trapped.
They break free and tumble apart. It isn’t graceful or pretty; it’s brutal and violent and bruising. The choreography leaves us with no doubt that nothing about the separation was mutual. The freedom was hard fought and it didn’t come without cost.
They’re facing off on their hands and knees, like feral animals almost, lunging and snarling at each other. I cannot praise Erin’s performance enough: there’s so much happening on her face as she advances and retreats. She and ‘Alice’ are screaming the lyrics at each other – “loving you was all that I had but, Alice, we were dancing with death” – and then ‘Erin’s’ face changes from fierce to hurt and guarded, like ‘Alice’ has gone right for the jugular in this fight. Their positions shift: where ‘Erin’ was lower and more on the defence before, she’s now pushing ‘Alice’ back, protecting her hard fought freedom and warning her to keep her distance. But the look on her face is so hurt and haunted, grieving the situation even as she refuses to back down. The frenzy has died down and the fight has gone out of them both but ‘Erin’ is still holding her ground despite looking like she might collapse from exhaustion, throw up from the turmoil, or both. ‘Alice’ sinks to the ground under her gaze, untethered and defeated, not by ‘Erin’ but by the boundary she’s set. This wasn’t a fight that anyone won or lost: ‘Erin’ survived and now ‘Alice’ must choose to as well. She looks betrayed and heartbroken by the separation, by the abandonment, and you’re just left hurting for both of them. And I think that’s one of the things that is so impactful about this song and this video (and a big reason why so many people connect to it): neither girl is the villain and neither side is easy or clean.
The themes of shame and guilt run through Erin’s music and, within her discography, I think ‘ALICE’ gives us a unique perspective on those emotions and the juxtapositions they often exist within. Putting your physical and mental health first – and giving someone else the chance to – is a choice to be proud of but it doesn’t always feel that way when you’re in the middle of it. So often it’s scary and overwhelming and feels actually unsafe and wrong because you’re going against everything that feels comfortable: it’s so easy for being self-destructive to become a comfortable state even if it feels absolutely wretched. Leaving that familiar pattern and stepping into the unknown, working so hard to do something that feels so wrong, can be absolutely terrifying. It’s hard enough to go through that alone but making the decision to leave someone you love behind is heartbreaking and painful and then compounded by guilt and shame: you hope it will help them but fear that it won’t and knowing that you had to leave regardless doesn’t just resolve all of those feelings.
Perched on a chair above ‘Alice,’ the separation already clear, both ‘Erin’ and ‘Alice’ draw back, ‘Erin’ straightening up. The song ends and suddenly we’re watching ‘Erin’ pull on a pair of black boots, having apparently discarded her ballet shoes. She’s wearing a pair of black rabbit ears, no longer the white rabbit chasing the downward spiral to the bottom. The spiral is playing on the TV again and ‘I BELIEVE,’ the first track of the EP, starts to play, as if the EP and the downward spiral is beginning all over again. But ‘Erin’ turns the TV off, silencing the song and breaking the cycle, before walking away.
I think this is a really compelling way to end the video and the story of ‘Erin’ and ‘Alice’ and it’s a raw and real and visceral ending to the downward spiral at the core of the EP. Every element has been executed perfectly and the result is an incredible video that’s even greater than the sum of its parts, elevating a song that’s already so powerful. The concept, the choreography, the make up, the performances… I cannot praise it enough. I think Belen does a truly stunning job as ‘Alice.’ Her dancing is mesmerising and she brought so much emotion to the part and I think she embodied ‘Alice’ so beautifully when that couldn’t have been an easy task: Erin has been very clear about how personal and important the song is to her and so I think we, as her listeners and fans, are very invested in and protective of the song, for her but also for ourselves and the ‘Alice’ in each of our own stories. And, of course, Erin’s performance is phenomenal. I loved the ‘808 HYMN’ music video and then she put out the ‘MACHINE GHOST’ music video and I couldn’t imagine anything ever topping it and I’ve watched it so, so many times. And now there’s the ‘ALICE’ music video and I’m not sure how I could ever love a music video more than I love this one. I was sobbing before the one minute mark and despite the number of times I’ve watched it, it hasn’t lost any of its emotional impact. I think Erin’s performance is a huge part of that. The physical part – her body language, her dancing, how she brings the choreography to life – is so, so good; I couldn’t tear my eyes away because I was just so captivated by the physical storytelling, by the emotion she was able to embody. It’s a skillset that I’ve always been fascinated by but never been any good at myself. And as compelling as that part is, it’s the emotional performance that moves me to tears every time. You can see everything she’s feeling on her face: the pain, the love, the grief, the fear, the panic, the exhaustion… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a music video that feels as visceral and as vulnerable and as raw as this one. Maybe it sounds like hyperbole, but I honestly think this music video is a masterpiece.
One of the visual details that I keep coming back to is the shoe imagery throughout the video. ‘Erin’ wears ballet shoes, soft and delicate, and has to stretch onto her tiptoes when reaching for ‘Alice,’ whereas ‘Alice’ wears black, pointed, heeled shoes; they’re visual opposites – in the same way that ‘Erin’ and ‘Alice’ have opposite colouring, with pale skin and hair and dark skin and hair respectively – which stands out when the song and video highlight how similar they are, how their similarities are both driving them together and downwards in this spiral. I think there are multiple ways to interpret this choice – as there are for every creative choice in this video – and I’m still turning it over in my head but I think this distinction between the two of them sets up the final scene in the video, which I think is really powerful: the boots that ‘Erin’ puts on are very similar to the shoes that ‘Alice’ wears throughout the video, like ‘Erin’ is moving forward but taking a part of ‘Alice’ with her. We could also interpret it as her taking the experience with ‘Alice’ and using it as the foundation for this new chapter, the boots acting as symbolic representation for that experience. Both interpretations fit, I think; maybe they both can at the same time. Maybe I’m thinking about it too deeply but I love looking at visual storytelling this way and analysing how the little details add to the bigger picture.
To come back to the ‘Alice in Wonderland Technique’ and the way our brains struggle to reconcile contradicting ideas and realities, I think the connections that Erin draws between the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ imagery, the theme of the downward spiral, and the first track of the EP being ‘I BELIEVE’ (and how it reappears at the end of this video) is really interesting. ‘I BELIEVE’ is the tipping point into this self-sabotaging spiral and in the production breakdown of the song, Erin describes the song as being about struggling with the big existential questions and essentially throwing up your hands and saying “I’m gonna take whatever you sell me! Just make me clean! Just make me whole!” and “I’m going to choose to be delusionally optimistic. I’m gonna believe everything you sell me and I’m gonna buy it and it’s gonna make me better and I believe you!” It’s cynical and it’s poking fun but this is the ‘Alice in Wonderland Technique’ in play: being so overwhelmed that you look for order wherever you can find it. As Erin says, the “brainwashed conclusion” is to just take the answer that’s given to her, no questions asked. But then – after everything she’s gone through over the course of the EP – when ‘I BELIEVE’ starts up and that situation threatens again, she’s able to resist and ultimately break the cycle because she’s not struggling the way she was before; she has a clarity that she didn’t have before. It’s a super intriguing lens through which to analyse the EP.
When I first watched this video, my emotional response was so visceral that it shocked me; I hadn’t expected to feel anything like that and it took me a while to figure out where that response came from, what some part of me was recognising in it that my brain hadn’t caught up to yet. But I understand it now, at least more than I did then: I’m not seeing two people but two versions of myself, myself as I am at this moment in time and a version of me that is both the unhealed trauma that I’m trying to accept and the harmful stuff that I need to let go of. In the initial push and pull between the two girls, I see these two versions of myself in this constant back and forth that made just existing unbearable; I went back to therapy – or rather sought out and tried a hopefully more suitable and less traumatising form of therapy – because I couldn’t keep living like that, suffocating under the trauma I was carrying. When they cling to each other, I see my current self trying to welcome in and accept the unhealed parts of myself, trying to reassure the old patterns that I don’t need them anymore, taking one last moment before letting go of them, grieving a part of me that I don’t recognise myself without but need to let go of because now it’s just hurting me. And when they struggle apart and ‘Erin’ is holding her boundaries and protecting the freedom she’s fought for, I see myself letting go of the old, unhelpful and even harmful stuff – the defence mechanisms that are now just stifling me, the damaging thinking I’ve internalised, the self-destructive patterns that feel safe and right even though they’re anything but – but some of it is so deeply entangled with who I am that it’s a fight for my life to get free. And getting free isn’t always enough; sometimes it lingers nearby, ready to creep back in, and it’s a constant effort to push it back and defend the new ground I’ve gained. I’m doing all of these things in different areas of my life and to varying degrees in therapy – and every day, truthfully – and that work is so hard and so scary – I need words so much bigger than the English language allows – and I think that, watching this music video and seeing this huge emotional process play out in front of me, I felt seen in a way I never expected because how could someone depict my emotions so clearly when I could barely understand them myself?
I still talk about this music video in therapy and I can only imagine what experiencing the song live will feel like after having this experience – and this is just one song in a discography of songs that feel like they were torn out of my body… I wish I could bottle up that feeling from when I first watched it because, as agonising as it was to feel it so deeply and so suddenly, to feel so seen and so understood is unlike anything else; it’s important and precious and I’m grateful that, even though I can’t experience it exactly like that again, I do feel echoes of it every time I watch it.
This has ended up so much longer than I thought it would be and while a part of me wants to go back and chop out whole sections, I’m resisting the urge. This music video means so much to me that I don’t want to edit the emotion out of my thoughts on it. So if you’ve made it this far, I’m very grateful. I hope you feel that you got something out of it. If you’re reading this before going to one of the PAREIDOLIA shows, I hope you have a wonderful and safe night! I’m going to be singing my heart out (and potentially bawling my eyes out) from the disabled sections in London and Bristol! If you’re reading this afterwards, I hope you had a wonderful and safe night! And if you’re reading this and you are Erin LeCount, thank you for everything – your music has had a bigger impact on me than I could ever coherently articulate and I am so deeply, deeply grateful.
Finding Hope 