Colbie Caillat encourages you to ‘take your makeup off’ in new video

It's not every day that we see a young songstress take off her makeup on camera.

But that's just what Colbie Caillat does in the music video for her new single "Try."

"When I see gorgeous models and singers and they look perfect on their album covers, it makes me want to look like that, too, and it makes me feel like if I don’t Photoshop my skin on my album cover, I’m the one who’s going to look a little off and everyone else is going to look perfect," she tells Elle. "And that’s what everyone is used to seeing."

Caillat, 29, tells People that she wrote the song after talking to Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and two other songwriters about the challenges she's faced in the music industry.

"[People in the business] wanted me to dress a little sexier and kind of change the artist that I was," Caillat says. "[Edmonds and songwriters told me] you don't have to try to be someone else, because people like who you are."

Also see: This celebrity makeup trick isn't all that pretty

The video for "Try" begins with a Photoshopped Caillat and other women of various ages and ethnicities fully made up. As the song progresses, they peel off the layers, removing wigs, hair extensions, fake eyelashes and makeup, until they reveal their naturally beautiful selves.

"Take your makeup off/Let your hair down/Take a breath/Look into the mirror, at yourself/Don't you like you?/Cause I like you," she sings.

The video reminds us of the 2013 viral video in which a model is completely transformed by Photoshop. Both videos challenge the notion of what a "perfect" woman looks like.

Caillat admits that the shoot was initially a little nerve-racking.

"When I shot the first scene with no hair and makeup on in front of an HD camera in my face, flashed with bright lights, everyone was watching. I thought, 'Oh my God, I bet they’re all looking at my blemishes, thinking that I should cover them up, or that I should put some volume in my hair,'" Caillat tells Elle. "But it also felt really cool to be on camera with zero on, like literally nothing on."

Also see: Women would rather go without clothes than makeup

By the end of the shoot — the video was shot in reverse, so the final scenes included full hair and makeup — Caillat was missing her bare face.

"I actually felt gross," she says. "I was just so caked on."

Caillat also refused to use Photoshop on her album cover.

The original lyric video for the song, released last month, featured photographs of Caillat's friends, many of them makeup-free.

Also see: Unreal celebrity makeup transformations

"When I did the lyric video for 'Try,' and I asked some of my celebrity friends if they would send a picture of themselves, you have no idea how difficult it was. Some of them said no, some of them said they’ll send me a picture in a couple of days because they have a pimple on their chin, and they didn’t want it showing in the picture," she says. "And I was like, no, no, no! That’s good! Let’s let all of our fans know that we get them too, because otherwise they’re just think that they’re the only ones who get acne. We all get it, so let’s just kind of laugh about it together."

"And then some of the girls still wore makeup in the pictures because they felt like they needed to at least look – I don’t know, in their eyes, decent or something when they still look beautiful. It was so hard for them to show any degree of realness."

Are you comfortable going make-up free?