Tears

Scores & Rankings

Details

Music Video

The music video for the song was teased twice; the first, accompanying the song's announcement, promised "straight-up cinema". In it, the imagery suggested country noir—Carpenter wears a cowboy hat in a fog-covered hay field, not far from a crashed, smoldering car, and gazes toward an abandoned house.[12] The screen then cuts to black, displaying the title "Tears" in a blood-red font, with a blood droplet in the 'A'.[13] She captioned that teaser, "Tears video. 8/29... just one more week until Man's Best Friend!"[14] Another teaser, released on August 27, 2025, shows Carpenter walking through a hallway with red walls, as hands with long nails reach out toward her.[15] The music video was released alongside the song and the album on August 29, 2025.[16] It stars American actor Colman Domingo in drag,[17] and is primarily inspired by the 1970s cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.[18] It was filmed over two days on August 11 and 12, 2025 in Los Angeles, California and directed by Bardia Zeinali, who had directed the video for Carpenter's song "Please Please Please" the previous year.[19] The farmhouse exterior scenes were shot on August 12, 2025, at the Golden Oak Ranch.[20] On September 1, 2025, shortly after the release of the video, the original ending was replaced with an alternate ending, teased on YouTube's Instagram story with the caption "New Endings Loading". The following day, on September 2, 2025, a second alternate ending was released. A third alternate ending was later released on September 3, 2025. The original ending was reinstated on September 4, 2025. The video opens with an eerie nighttime scene. Carpenter, following a car accident with her boyfriend, wakes up dazed in a field. Hearing a creepy laugh from a nearby abandoned farmhouse, she investigates. After hearing the magic word "shikitah", she enters the front parlor and finds herself surrounded by odd artifacts and a player piano. She is enticed by Domingo, who pushes her into the backroom, filled with drag queens. Carpenter is stripped down to her white lingerie by hands coming out of the walls and is handed a "Tears" can bearing an uncanny resemblance to a can of Coke. She performs a pole dance in a cornfield as Domingo voyeurs from afar, has a dance break with Domingo in the back alley of a retro American city street, and joins the drag troupe to perform the burlesque finale. At the end of the video, Carpenter is tossed out of the house, only to find her boyfriend, who has regained consciousness, coming towards her. After this point, one of four endings plays out.[21] Original ending With a puzzled look, Carpenter tells the boyfriend that she thought he had died in the accident because "someone has to die every video." She then apologizes before hurling one of her heels at him, piercing his chest and killing him. As he crumples to the ground, she gets up to leave, saying matter-of-factly, "You have to give the people what they want." Alternate ending 1 As the boyfriend is almost struck by a nearby lightning bolt, he jumps, startled. Carpenter then warns him to move over to avoid a falling tree, but he does not hear her as the tree crushes him to death. Carpenter then laments to herself, "I told him to move over," and gets up to leave. Alternate ending 2 Carpenter and the boyfriend suddenly see a nearby grand piano falling from the sky, but the boyfriend does not have time to run before the piano suddenly crushes him from above as a bewildered Carpenter stares in shock. Alternate ending 3 In this ending, Carpenter does not see the boyfriend or his car in front of her. Hearing ghostly rustling, she calls out to the empty field, only to find no response. Concluding that the boyfriend has left without waiting for her, a disillusioned Carpenter leaves, badmouthing him as "typical, stupid, useless." Some time later, the boyfriend, wearing red lingerie, opens the door from inside the house and calls out to Carpenter, only to find that she has left. Dejected, he walks back inside and shuts the door.

Notes

Chart History (20 weeks)