Paul McCartney and Emma Stone play a scene out of a therapist’s office in his new video for “Who Cares,” a song against bullying off his latest record, Egypt Station. The onetime Beatle plays a hypnotist who attempts to help Stone with her feelings of unease using a turntable with a swirl on it and a metronome before she regresses into a surrealistic fantasy world where she’s a clown-like magician’s assistant and he sings to her. In a number of vignettes, she’s the target of swords, knives and suffocating crowds, as Macca makes her feel better by singing, “Who cares? I do.”
“My hope is that if there are kids being bullied — and there are … maybe by listening to this song and watching this video, they might just think it’s not as bad,” McCartney said in a statement. “[They might think] that it’s the kind of thing you can just stand up to and laugh off and get through.”
McCartney is bolstering his message by partnering with the nonprofit organization Creative Visions in a campaign using the hashtag #WhoCaresIDo. Its goal is to give people tools, through its network of experts, to learn how to treat others with empathy and compassion. “Millions of people around the world feel silenced, subjugated — bullied — and believe that no one cares,” Creative Visions Founder Kathy Eldon said in a statement. “Our intention with this campaign is to put the power of the song to work and inspire us to show up and care — and let others know that we do care.”
In an interview with the BBC earlier this year, McCartney said “Who Cares” was inspired by another pop star. “I was actually thinking about Taylor Swift and her relationship to her young fans and how it’s sort of a sisterly thing,” he said. “And I was imagining talking to one of these young fans and saying, ‘Have you ever been bullied? Do you get bullied?’ Then I say, ‘Who cares about the idiots? Who cares about all this? Who cares about you? Well… I do.’”