YUQI ‘Stay’ MV Review: Sunflower, Road Trip and the Friends Who Keep Hope Alive

YUQI ‘Stay’ MV Review: Yuqi’s ‘Stay’ Official Music Video is a bright reminder to live your youth to the fullest, while holding on to hope and keeping moving with your loved ones or friends beside you. Through sunflowers, a road trip, an “unsuccessful” fishing attempt and handmade sun pendants, the MV finds joy in the little things that make life worth living and celebrating.

YUQI ‘Stay’ MV Review

‘Stay’ MV is the kind of MV that would make you do two things almost immediately: one would be to keep hoping and looking at the brighter side; but the more immediate response to the MV would be to call your friends and just tell them how much you love them. It is bright, colourful, and full of happiness that comes from being with people who make even the most ordinary day feel worth remembering.

What hooks me the most about this MV is its brightness: not just the colours, although they do make the frame look like an afternoon you wish lasted forever, but the way the video approaches “hope”. There is a road trip with girlfriends; there are sunflowers, activities that do not really give them the “result”, and there is this constant feeling that nobody needs to have everything figured out to enjoy the art of living. I absolutely love that!

The video carries the sentiment in even its composition, with the landscape and pastel colours adding to the narrative. The song tells us to live our youth to the fullest while venturing through it. It is a simple thought, but it is given a lot of space to breathe, which makes the MV warm and personal. It does not make living your youth to the fullest look like some grand achievement that you must accomplish before some set age. It looks like going somewhere with your friends, doing things together, laughing at what did not work out and having enough time to notice the sun.

The Hope We Find in Each Other

I particularly love the way this MV uses sunflowers. Their presence is not just another pretty detail in a colourful MV, but they fit the feeling of the song in a beautiful manner.

Sunflowers are so closely associated with the sun, with turning towards the light and watching the girls travel together; the frames that fit sunflowers make that image feel even more meaningful. What I find particularly lovely is the connection between the flowers and the friendship at the centre of the video. Sunflowers are known for their response to sunlight; they turn towards the sun when the sun is there and towards each other when it is gone. The image I kept returning to while watching the MV was that of friends turning towards each other.

The girls in Stay do not need to turn their road trip into a lesson about friendship. They are simply together, moving through the day and enjoying each other’s company. Yet, the sunflowers make their togetherness feel like an extension of the song’s message: keep the hope alive in your life.

The friends go fishing, but they do not catch the fish they set out to catch; that does not seem to take away from the joy of doing it together, and this is where the video gets something right about the way we experience happiness. We are so used to measuring an activity by its outcome that even our idea of having fun can become a little exhausting when we start treating it like an achievement, but what if it is all about memories and experiences? Perhaps this is also what living your youth to the fullest means: not filling every available hour with something impressive, but allowing yourself to enjoy the hours that do not bring something “impressive” at all.

The Sun They Made For Themselves

The handmade sun pendants are another detail that stayed with me because of the warmth they carried. One of the friends makes a neckpiece for all of them, with a sun at its centre, and the girls eventually hold their neckpieces up towards the sky together. 

There is something so endearing about the fact that the sun they carry is something they made for each other. The sun already exists outside them, of course! They have now created their own little version of it to share, which makes hope personal. The pendants are neither “expensive” gifts nor “grand declarations”, but their value comes from the fact that one friend took the time to make something for everyone, and each girl gets to carry the same little sun, a reminder of the time they have spent together and the friendship they hold so precious.

We cannot always control how much hope we have on a particular day, nor can we make everything around us brighter just because we want it to be, but we can make things for one another, show up, or even remain when everything seems to be falling apart or failing. These might be the small suns or the rays of hope. The girls holding their suns together is a lovely visual for that very reason.

Keep Going But Take Your Loved Ones Along

Stay’s optimism comes through the things the girls actually do: the road trip, fishing, handmade pendants and the sunflowers give the song’s message something tangible to hold up to. The MV does not need to make the girls win something extraordinary to show us why their time together matters.

It is also why the idea of being together feels so important here. There is a difference between being told to stay hopeful and being reminded that you do not have to figure out everything alone. The first one can feel like another responsibility on an already difficult day, while the latter feels like somebody you love making space for you beside them.

Yuqi’s ‘Stay’ is not asking us to pretend that every day is beautiful, or that we would succeed in whatever we start, but it is just asking us to keep hoping while enjoying the youth when we still have it. Sometimes, you do not have to catch a fish to make the story memorable!

Watch Yuqi’s ‘Stay’ MV on YouTube.

Keep hoping and enjoy your life!

What is the one thing or person that makes you keep moving forward in life? Tell us in the comments!!

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