Finally, the most awaited music video featuring Asim Azhar and Areeka Haq was released yesterday and within less than 24 hours has already amassed more than a million views.
The star-studded project not only has Asim Azhar and Areeka Haq, it’s a joint effort by several music artists who have indeed produced a visually stunning music video
As claimed by the creators, the video is definitely the biggest collaboration of the year and includes Shamoon Ismail, Talha Anjum, Talhah Yunus, Raamis, Hania Aamir, Asad Siddiqui, and Mooroo.
The video begins with the introductory quote, which is, ” If you choose money over love, you will always be poor.” The quote gives a clear hint to the audience that the song’s story will explore the volatile relationship between love and money. Well, the story starts off with Areeka paired up against Asim, the girl is shown to mingle with the guy, slip him a drug in his drink and run away with his money when he blacks out.
This continues through the rest of the video, with the girl being shown as a gold digger and the guys as hopeless romantics
Perpetuating the ‘gold digger’ stereotype about women who dress and look a certain way and swindle “innocent boys” of their cash and “innocence” is a theme that recurs throughout the video and is rather jarring to watch.
The Asim Azhar and Areeka Haq song does try to redeem this by showing guys to be chasing after any girl they see but it’s too little too late
After hammering in the idea that women are gold diggers with every guy (five musicians in the song, to be exact), the last few seconds of the video show another girl stepping in after all the guys have been cheated by their ex – Areeka. The guys are shown to drool over this new girl just like they did the old one. While this may be an attempt to try and show that men are unchanged after their terrible experience with a relationship, sadly because it’s too little too late, there’s not much this does other than show that guys are so innocent that they’d just be swayed by beauty whenever they see it.
As soon as the music video was released, it became one of the top trends in the country with people bombarding the social media platforms with their views about the new music video
Quite a few expressed their disappointment with the Asim Azhar and Areeka Haq collaboration because of the song itself, although Areeka Haq’s debut in mainstream entertainment industry was decently praised
A lot of them found the concept of perpetuating the dangerous stereotypes about girls being gold diggers and guy’s being too dumb, problematic
Of course, people had to meme the song as well and meme it, they did
Aside from the criticism directed at the song, the audience praised the acting skills of Areeka and mentioned that they loved to see her performance in the music video
A majority of the viewers appreciated the way the video was shot, They discussed how perfectly the video was shot and the video was actually worth watching.
If you’re among those who still haven’t seen it, here’s the complete video:
While the video is being criticized for unfairly stereotyping women and for portraying them as gold diggers, many of the viewers are appreciating the cinematography of the video. The audience has also mentioned that the expectations from Asim Azhar were really high and they were expecting a grander version of the song still the joint effort by the artists cannot be undermined who definitely deserve appreciation for their work. Sadly, the video does no justice to representing relationships between young women and men.
Have you watched the music video? Sound off about your thoughts on the song in the comments below.
