Yaeji, whose full name is Kathy Yaeji Lee, is a New York- and Seoul-based producer who makes fantastic, slow-burning house music for wearing all black and drinking Grey Goose from the bottle. Yaeji’s self-titled EP, released earlier this year, is excellent and now she’s got a new song out, “Last Breath,” with a video that doubles as a make-up tutorial.
As Lee applies a sheet mask, contours her face, and applies peachy-pink shadow, among other products, the glitchy song’s subtitles reveal a more existentialist take on your typical vlogger’s product application. “Place a little bit of your ego on your fingers and slowly apply it to your knees” they read. And later: “This product is called Depression and it stays on for 24 hours.”
Excited to have a new soundtrack to our makeup routine, but also just impressed with Lee’s product application (what is that brow pencil with the comb on the end???) Jezebel reached out to Yaeji to see if she’d pass us her list of products (which, for the record, aren’t sponsorships.)
“I wanted to create a makeup tutorial because I’ve never followed one in my life, but have always been surrounded by the obsession of it in various cultures,” Lee writes to Jezebel over email. She says that in her tutorial she wanted to use different makeup styles she picked up from different countries; for example, the way she does her brows is Korean but contouring is American. “The lyrics were paired with the tutorial to convey how these differing makeup methods are all the same in the end—they’re a way for us to cover up what we want to hide.”
