InfoSearched
Hayley Kiyoko conjures a witchy exorcism of toxic love in her “I Wish” video.
Hayley Kiyoko dropped the official music video for “I Wish” on July 18, 2019, marking her first solo musical release since her 2018 debut album, Expectations. The Atlantic Records/Empire single arrives as the lead offering from her upcoming project, and the accompanying visual swaps her usual pop-video gloss for a candlelit, seance-driven storyline about cutting a disloyal lover loose for good.
- “I Wish” is Kiyoko’s first solo release of 2019, following her appearance in Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” video the prior month.
- Kiyoko directed the video herself, with Marla Vazquez producing creatively under French Productions, building a supernatural teenage-witch narrative around a seance-style ritual.
- The song’s spurned love interest, “Raquel,” is played by model Bree Kish, while actresses Maia Mitchell, Madison Pettis, Ana Osorio, and Tamika Miller portray Kiyoko’s coven of friends.
The Seance at the Center of the Story
The video opens with Kiyoko and her circle of friends gathered in the woods, brewing a magical potion around a candlelit seance. The four friends — Maia Mitchell as “Carmen,” Madison Pettis as “Jo,” Ana Osorio as “Beth,” and Tamika Miller as “Luz” — join Kiyoko in a ritualistic spell meant to sever her emotional attachment to Raquel, the unreliable love interest played by Bree Kish. It’s a literal exorcism of the “black heart” Kiyoko sings about in the lyrics, staged less like a typical pop clip and more like a short supernatural film.
That witch-coven framing lines up directly with the song’s lyrical content, which describes a partner who “don’t care it’s a storm in my iris” and stays “selfish with your affection.” Rather than illustrating the lyrics literally scene-by-scene, Kiyoko’s direction leans into ritual and metaphor — the potion and the spell stand in for the emotional work of letting go.
I Wish I Wish I Wish I Found Love / Cause I wake up up in the morning time / And there’s nobody here by my side
Choreography and Crew Behind the Camera
Dance sequences threaded through the video mix choreographed movement with freestyle work, performed by Kassidy Bright, Britt Igra, Deanna Jenkins, Taylor Thomas, Martina “ANDROID” Heimann, and Kellina Rutherford. Director of photography Pavel Brenner shot the visuals, with Chris Loh handling Steadicam operation and Cami Starkman cutting the final edit. The combination gives the video a fluid, handheld intimacy that matches its woodland, ritual setting rather than a polished soundstage look.
On the music side, “I Wish” was produced by Jason Evigan and Pat Morrissey, with songwriting credits split between Kiyoko, Morrissey, Evigan, and Bibi Bourelly. That production team’s fingerprints show in the track’s moody, mid-tempo build, which gives Kiyoko room to move from resignation in the verses to release in the chorus’s repeated “I Wish” refrain.
Building on a Breakout Year
“I Wish” lands at a moment when Kiyoko’s profile has been climbing well beyond her own catalog. Her cameo in Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” video the previous month put her in front of a much wider pop audience, and this new single functions as her follow-up statement as a solo artist since Expectations dropped in 2018. Fans tracking her career shifts alongside other artists navigating public breakups and reinvention through music can find similar threads in coverage over on Trending Music.
The video’s themed cast — actresses better known for film and TV work stepping into a music-video ensemble — also reflects a broader trend of musicians recruiting recognizable screen talent for narrative-driven visuals, a pattern worth watching alongside other Trending Celebrities crossovers this year.
The spell in “I Wish” ends with Kiyoko walking away from Raquel for good, but the song itself leaves the door open lyrically — she’s still asking “why won’t you just send me somebody?” by the final chorus. With the single serving as the first taste of her next project, the real follow-up question is what full-length record, if any, Kiyoko and producers Jason Evigan and Pat Morrissey build around it next.
Students are fighting climate change, one TikTok video at a time | ABC News
How Charli D’Amelio Uses TikTok To Make MILLIONS
911 Call of Man Clinging to Car Hood: ‘Someone’s Trying to Steal My Car’
Wibmer’s Law – Fabio Wibmer
The Best Upcoming HORROR Movies 2020 & 2021 (Trailers)