Just Because: 9 Music Videos That Take Place in Laundromats

It's one of the biggest music video tropes that's rarely explored in pop culture.

The public laundromat has become a go-to location for artists when making a music video for a single they wish to sell to the masses.

But WHAT IS IT about a space where ragtag groups of strangers gather to fluff and fold their delicates? Is it the obvious metaphor of dirty versus clean? The scintillating possibility of people stripping off their clothes for a wash?

I was feeling a little nostalgic (as usual) and took a look at some of the vids that have fallen under the spell of spin cycles over the past 30 years...

"EVERY HEARTBEAT" / AMY GRANT (1991)

Back in the early 90s, the Christian pop tart followed up her massively successful "Baby Baby" with "Every Heartbeat," a personal childhood favorite of yours truly (the Body & Soul Mix, of course). In one of the two vignettes featured in the video, a laundry-toting hottie attempts to flirt with a young woman who refuses to fall for his cheap tricks (even though he does look good in glasses...and that white tank top).


"LAUNDROMAT" / NIVEA (2001)

The R&B songstress teamed up with He Who Shall Not Be Named (it's R. Kelly, duh) to sing about a cheating scrub, here played by...Nick Cannon!?


"JULIET" / LMNT (2002)

This music video from 2002 sees each member of the short-lived, multiethnic boy band fantasize about the young women who walk into the laundromat where they all look bored as hell while singing into the camera's fish lens. (Maybe it's because they realized how silly "I think you're fine, you really blow my mind" sounds after one too many choruses.) Of course they give the Asian-looking dude some kung fu choreography for his Matrix sequence. And...holy shit, is that Jamie-Lynn Sigler from The Sopranos?


"FALLING STARS" / SUNSET STRIPPERS (2005)

This remix of Boy Meets Girl's 1988 classic "Waiting for a Star to Fall" was on heavy rotation for me in the mid-aughts. It brings back memories of Red Bull-fueled Thursday nights at Tigerheat in Hollywood. God I miss my twenties...


"ONE LESS LONELY GIRL" / JUSTIN BIEBER (2009)

I...I'm not gonna even bother with this one.

"DTF" / ADORE DELANO (2014)

A trashtastic piece that features Instagram thirst trap Max Emerson getting dickmatized by the former RuPaul's Drag Race finalist:

"MY HEAD IS A JUNGLE" (MK REMIX) / WANKELMUT & EMMA LOUISE (2014)

21st century Eurodance music turns a drab laundromat into a hoppin' discoteque!

"SOME KINDA WONDERFUL" / BETTY WHO (2017)

Betty Who even took over a local fluff-and-fold for the lead single off her second album The Valley. The alluring pink hue throughout the second half could almost make a casual viewer mistake it for a Virgin America safety video.

"JUST GOT PAID" / SIGALA (2018)

And then there's Sigala's 2018 single, "Just Got Paid," featuring Ella Eyre, French Montana and Meghan Trainor. Because one celebrates payday with several loads of laundry surrounded by strangers, right? And is that a roll of quarters in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

@TheFirstEcho