The pop star parodied the infamous PSA to promote her new single “No Drug Like Me.”
In a promotional video, the pop star hearkened back to the “just say no” public service announcements of yesteryear.
Carly Rae Jepsen remade the classic “this is your brain on drugs” public service announcement, complete with egg-smashing and frying pan-swinging.
She made the video to announce her new single, “No Drug Like Me.” In it, Jepsen holds up an egg, representing your brain, and a large frying pan, representing “No Drug Like Me.” She places the egg on the countertop, and winding up to crush the egg with the frying pan, she delivers her riff on the classic line:
“This is what happens to your brain when you listen to ‘No Drug Like Me.’”
After smashing the egg on the counter, she goes to town on the rest of the kitchen, swinging the frying pan through fragile objects that represent your family, friends, money, job, self-respect, future, and life.
This isn’t the first time the PSA has been remade. Notably, Rachel Leigh Cook, who starred in the original PSA, reprised her role to take aim at how drug policy has fallen short. Cook especially focused on how drug policy has been a conduit for systematic racism.
“This is one of the millions of Americans who uses drugs and won’t get arrested,” Cook said while holding a white egg.
Picking up a brown egg, she continues: “However, this American is several times more likely to be charged with a drug crime.”
In this version, the frying pan crushes the job prospects of the brown egg who has drug charges on its record.
“The War on Drugs is ruining people’s lives,” Cook says at the end of the video. “It fuels mass incarceration. It targets people of color in greater numbers than their white counterparts. It cripples communities. It costs billions. And it doesn’t work. Any questions?”
Comparatively, Jepsen’s is pretty tongue-in-cheek, remixing the PSA to say that her song is so catchy it will destroy your relationships and ruin your life. At the end of her video, she throws whole eggs, shell included, into the frying pan as a snippet of her new song plays.
“No Drug Like Me” comes from her upcoming album, Dedicated, due to be released on May 17th.