Other Doctor Lives: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – “We’re on Our Way Now” (2021)

Music video acting is interesting. It’s like, yeah, it’s acting, but it exists in this weird in-between space. The storytelling strokes in a music video can be overly broad, while at the same time, the identity-less characters that actors play can be drawn rather blankly. You’re not necessarily looking for who the character is, you’re looking for how the video makes you feel.

Like a number of music videos that tell stories, the tale in “We’re on Our Way Now” isn’t necessarily the same one told by the lyrics, although they both stir up a similar response. The song is a moody rock venture—when I realized that Noel Gallagher used to be in Oasis, I wasn’t surprised. It’s about a lost opportunity: seemingly a lost love, a lost chance that may have been snatched away by death. Right from the start, it’s wistful, entreating, “Remember what might have been.” The pre-chorus features the mournful lines, “Good luck in the afterlife. / I hear the morning sun doesn’t cast no shadow,” and the chorus, while melodically brighter, is still hung with glints of regret.

The video also asks us to consider what might have been, or perhaps what once was. We follow a man and a woman in two different scenarios—personally, I get the feeling that we’re looking at the past (the happier passages) and the present (the sadder ones,) but the former might also be a “road less traveled” kind of thing. In the happier passages, the two are clearly a couple, in love in easy, uncomplicated ways like walking through the park or driving through the city. In the sadder passages, we don’t know exactly what’s happened, but it seems they don’t have each other: the man is leading a lonely reckless life, while the woman stares into the camera with tears in her eyes.

Given that there are basically two “characters” in the video, it’s no surprise that Matt Smith plays the man. I’ll admit that his performance pulls me in more in the sadder passages. Whether he’s nervously looking out the window or lying listlessly on the bed of his small upstairs flat with a bag full of money (like I said, a lonely reckless life,) I feel like I’m being invited into his situation, whatever it might be. I want to know more, and I want to know what have happened between him and the woman (played by Gala Gordon.)

But while the happier passages are more boilerplate, they’re valuable for their contrast to the other scenes. These shots of a couple contentedly in love—are they the life the man used to have, and if so, what went wrong? Are they the life the man might’ve had if he’d not gone down a different path?

Accent Watch

Not applicable—he doesn’t speak onscreen.

Recommend?

In General – I think so. I wasn’t familiar with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, but I liked the song and the video is interesting.

Matt Smith – Why not? It’s not a super demanding role, but it’s four minutes out of your day, so if you like Smith, you’ll probably enjoy it.

Y tu Luna también: Katy Perry – “The One that Got Away” (2011)

I’d have liked to jump into another one of Diego Luna’s TV projects, because he’s seriously done so much good TV work, but I also want to make sure I’m not in the middle of a show when season 2 of Andor hits—April 22^nd, woooo! So I’ll be throwing in more film and miscellaneous stuff in the interim, along with one of his shorter TV offerings.

Seeing actors I like in old music videos is always an interesting experience. It may or may not involve actual acting (beyond, generally, kissing and/or other sensual stuff,) and there may or may not be any discernible plot. In Diego Luna’s case, this Katy Perry video tells a surprisingly complete story.

The title is self-explanatory for the song. It’s about looking back and regretting the loss of an old love. The verses are catchy and filled with story lyrics, reminiscences about a first real adult relationship and wistful lines like, “Talk about our future like we had a clue. / Never planned that one day, I'd be losing you.” The chorus comes in hard and really hits: “In another life, / I would be your girl. / We keep all our promises, / Be us against the world. / In another life, / I would make you stay, / So I don't have to say / You were the one that got away.”

The video is more plot-oriented than many, bookended by scenes that aren’t set to the music. This framing device features Perry in slightly uncanny old-age makeup, which takes the “look back in regret” theme about as far as it can go. Meanwhile, the “meat” of the video, the actual song, shifts back and forth between the older Perry and flashbacks of her youthful relationship with the eponymous one that got away. While the video hits all the main beats of the relationship, both good and bad—this is, after all, a song about a lost love—it reaches a point where its story diverges from the story in the song, which is kind of odd. As a video, it works beautifully, but as a companion to the song, it begs the question, “Did you listen to the whole thing?” A bit like the instances on Glee where it’s clear they didn’t go beyond the title and/or the chorus in terms of matching a song to the theme of the episode.

Diego Luna plays the lost love that the song revolves around. In the flashbacks, he and Perry are wrapped up in their art and their relationship almost equally. They’re a bit bohemian, a bit rock ‘n’ roll, and they fill their ramshackle love nest with passion and beauty. It gets trite in places, but the video makes it work. We see why they love each other, the way they’re both attracted to what’s different and creative and exciting. But we also see why they fall apart, how their passion for their art is tied to a volatility that makes them prone to dramatic actions in their anger. It’s an “epic” relationship of the Veronica Mars/Logan Echolls variety, very “lives ruined [and] bloodshed.”

This setup gives Luna a broad canvas to work with in the span of four minutes. As the lover, he’s intensely focused as he creates and brimming with light and love as he shows his work to Perry, his muse. In a photography session, they both play with gender, and he leans into the feminine quality of his beauty as he peeks out coyly behind a fur-trimmed coat. When he’s in the creative zone and his impatience rises, his temper flares—both he and Perry do (and presumably say) things they’ll come to regret.

A while back, James Corden brought up the video when Luna was a guest on his show, and Luna predicted that his death would someday be announced as, “The guy from the video of Katy Perry just died.” Even though the video winds up telling a somewhat different story than the song, I understand why it has such enduring popularity with Perry’s fans. It’s romantic and emotionally charged, and Luna creates what really does feel like a character in his interactions with Perry in a pretty short time.

Recommend?

In General – If you’re at all into pop music, I would. It’s an enjoyable song with a memorable video.

Diego Luna – Why not? It’s less than five minutes out of your day, and Luna is effective in it.

Warnings

Drinking, sensuality, and thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: Lewis Capaldi – “Someone You Loved” (2019)

*Note: Since there are two different Capaldis in this project, I’ll mostly refer to them by their first names.*

It took me a bit of trial and error to find Peter Capaldi in this music video, because it turns out the song has two of them! I watched the official video first, which has so many people in it that I wondered if Peter was just a cameo in the crowd. (Singer Lewis Capaldi is an extended relation, so it would’ve been plausible to Peter to pop up briefly as an Easter egg.) But there’s a second music video, one in which Peter is the star.

It's a music video that tells a story, a decently complex one for the medium. In it, we quietly follow a man through his day, drifting in the recent memories of his days spent by a hospital bed. We see how his life intertwines with that of a young mother, how much they mean to each other in a way that few can relate to. (I’m avoiding getting too deep into spoilers, since watching this mini-story unfold in the video is genuinely lovely.)

As with a lot of story-driven music videos, the narrative it’s telling isn’t exactly the one told by the song, but it resonates on a similar level. Lewis’s voice is raw and plaintive as he sings about the loss of a loved one from his life. Some of my favorite lyrics from the song are as follows:

·        “It’s easy to say, / But it’s never the same. / I guess I kinda liked the way you numbed all the pain.”

·        “Now the day bleeds / Into nightfall, / And you’re not here / To get me through it all / I let my guard down, / And then you pulled the rug. / I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved.”

·        “I’m going under and this time I fear there’s no one to turn to. / This all or nothing way of loving got me sleeping without you.”

Extended relation or not, Peter Capaldi was a great choice to play the central man in the video (he’s the only character with a name, David Simon.) He brings such a light touch to the role, conveying sadness, loneliness, and love in a really understated way. His scenes show how wearying these emotions can be, how they weigh on you.

But at the same time, it’s ultimately a hopeful video. Wistful flashbacks are tinged with warmth and Peter’s lovely smile. We see unlikely connections that mean the world to the characters involved, new connections formed in the wake of the loss. The whole thing is wonderfully done, and the video gives the mournful song this sense of the sun waiting to peek from behind the clouds.

Accent Watch

Not applicable, there’s no dialogue.

Recommend?

In General – I would. I like the song anyway, and this video casts an interesting slant on it.

Peter Capaldi – Yes. Music videos tend to paint their stories in pretty broad strokes, but this one is fairly subtle. In less than three minutes of dialogue-free acting, I feel like I understand who David is, and that’s quite an accomplishment!

Warnings

Thematic elements.