Trent Atkinson and Brandon Stansell | For You / 2018 [music video]

in the name of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

MYLEN and Brandon Stansell (composers), Trent Atkinson (director) For You / 2018 [3.30 minutes] [music video]

 

There’s not a great deal to say about openly gay Country/Western singer’s Brandon Stansell’s For You except that it’s great fun.

     Here we have a kind of duel Stansell as, in a kind of nerdish version of himself, he introduces the “larger than life” drag queen Eureka to his “crowd,” she scanning the room and falling immediately in love with another more dapper variation of Stansell who sits with others.

     The two eye one another, Stansell winks, and love in suddenly in the air. But a moment later the dapper, socially accepted Stansell turns back to his friends, seemingly dismissing the outlandish newcomer.

     Hurt, she goes running off, the first Stansell chasing after her, as well as the slightly more dapper second version. The nerd tries to comfort the inconsolable gray and white plaid clad queen without much effect—that is until he offers her up a plate of corn chips. Suddenly taken with her, he reaches out and pulls away her glasses revealing the truly glamorous version of Eureka the likes of which we have seen in RuPal’s drag show.

     Suddenly the woman who Stansell has described as the “real deal…tough as nails and funny as hell,” appears in a blouse emblazoned with country & western like cowboys that might have been drawn by Tom of Finland. The fellow Tennessean becomes the comic embodiment of Stansell’s real boyfriend, “a wonderful man” he’s been dating “for a couple years now,” for whom the buoyantly uplifting song was actually written.

    In the video’s narrative, however, the dapper Stansell now enters the scene, demonstrating his interest in the queen as well, a feeling she’s now only too happy to reciprocate, leaving her nerdy admirer behind.

     But soon we see him mopping very much in the manner of Eureka earlier on. Observing his pain, she pushes the new lover away, returning to Stansell the outsider to offer him up a fresh plate of corn nuts.

    Both lovers, in cameo locket-like frames, meanwhile sing out the chorus:

 

You got me finally feeling emotions

Lost in the moment don’t know where it’s goin'

When it’s hard just breathing

You keep my heart beating

Love looked like falling everyday

'Til I fell for you

 

     Stansell, born and raised in Nashville, explains that his coming out was not easy. The singer explains:

 

“My coming out was pretty tumultuous, actually. I grew up in a small Southern Baptist family, and when I came out at 22, my family reacted harshly. They never wanted a gay son/brother and didn’t know what to do when they realized they had one. Unfortunately, things were said and done that I don’t think any of us really care to remember, but for me, they have been impossible to forget. I have spent the better half of a decade trying to wade through all the things that happened to me, and even though those things were painful, I can’t help but to be thankful for them. I’m thankful for the path that brought me here because I believe it is what made me who I am ⎯⎯ and that is person I am deeply proud of.” Stansell recounts that even he grew up as a child in the Grand ‘Ole Opry, he had to leave Nashville for Los Angeles, to finally create “my sound and style in my own unique way.”

 

    Although the chorus represents a glorious statement of resilience, the verses and pre-chorus lyrics hint at that darker and earlier distress:

 

[Verse]

Used to be bitter but you make me better now

There’s something about your style

Like I’m gonna stay a while

No longer searching feels good to figure out

That it’s gonna be alright

Come take my hand let’s ride

 

[Pre-Chorus]

In moments and seasons

We're caught in the deep end

I need a hand to hold me

Love me like you know me

When it’s hard just breathing

You keep my heart beating

Love looked like falling everyday

'Til I fell for you

    And then the chorus reiterates what love can do for anyone: keep the heart beating. In a time when much of the conservative South has begun turning their backs on drag, Eureka turns heads, revealing the fun and beauty of, as Stansell puts it, a woman having “more hairspray and heels than my momma ever had!”

   Who could not love this absurd pairing of the gay Nashville singer and the splendiferous Tennessee drag queen all in the name of Stansell’s real-life love?

 

Los Angeles, August 21, 2025