If the latest season of Black Mirror has placed a very specific earworm in your head, then you might be in luck. Almost a week after the anthology series’ fifth season debuted, Netflix has dropped a full music video for “On a Roll”, one of the songs featured in the episode “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too”.
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The video, which you can check out above, features the “latest single” from pop star Ashley O (Miley Cyrus) before her career and life quickly take a turn for the worst. As those who have seen the episode know, it ultimately sees Ashley put into a coma by her controlling aunt (Susan Pourfar), who then creates a digital copy of her to continue performing music. When two of Ashley’s fans realize what has happened, they go on a wild adventure to save the real Ashley, and she is ultimately able to be herself and perform punk music.
The episode has arguably become one of the most controversially-received Black Mirror entries yet, with quite a lot of viewers split about whether or not they loved or hated the episode. As the show’s creative team have explained, that sort of polarizing nature to the plot – some of which was influenced by Cyrus’ real career – was intentional.
“Most of it was already there in the script and then we sent this to her, thinking it was a gamble — like dropping a coin in that thing where the coin bounces off the pegs, and then you lose!” Charlie Brooker said in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “We thought we just wouldn’t hear back. But we had nothing to lose because she would be so perfect for the part. And it turned out she did know the show and likes the show, and she was really excited because the script resonated with her. We had a Skype chat with her early on, and it was immediately apparent that she’s very smart and just funny. She takes her job very, very seriously but she’s also aware of the absurdity of that whole world.”
“Obviously, “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” is very heightened and it’s a very unusual tone for us, because it all starts out like it’s going in one direction.” Brooker continued. “It’s more traditionally Black Mirror for the first half, and then it starts accelerating into craziness. But there were several things Miley said that ended up being reflected in the script that were to do with the music industry. Certainly, she doesn’t have an evil aunt who controls her. But there were aspects and things she was saying about live performance and the general sense of the responsibility you have to fans. The general sense of how you move on as a performer if you want to express yourself differently than the box people have put you in. I think all of that stuff resonated with her.”
All five seasons of Black Mirror are now available to stream on Netflix.
