When Jenny Lewis released “Just One of the Guys,” the first single off her forthcoming album, The Voyager, back in June, I wouldn’t have expected its accompanying video to be full of laughs. The laidback song has more than a hint of melancholy, and Lewis has said that the new album emerged from a difficult period: She wrote it following the death of her father, a harrowing struggle with insomnia, and the breakup of her band, Rilo Kiley. The Voyager, she told Rolling Stone, “tells that story: the longest night of my life and the journey to finally getting some rest.”
But the new video, which enlists the help of Anne Hathaway, Brie Larson, and Kristen Stewart, playfully counterbalances the album’s heavier themes. Donning tracksuits and fake moustaches, Lewis and the trio of actresses go for a literal interpretation of the song’s lyrics: “No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys/ There’s a little something inside that won’t let me.” The video alternates between exaggerated displays of femininity (Lewis batting her eyelashes in a My Little Pony-inspired getup) and masculinity (the women adopting a hyperbolic macho swagger complete with crotch-grabbing and fist-pumping).
Lewis told GQ that the video was as fun to make as it is to watch: “We screamed with laughter all day, huddled behind the monitor.” The album comes out July 29.
