Score: 1 star/5
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Oh, imprisonment within happiness. Now, I‘ve never been one to imply that such a thing is worse than imprisonment within pain. But this was before I saw the foolishly monochromatic cutesy-video for “Love Won’t Make You Cry,” in which the term “love” is used so many times as to render it almost entirely meaningless.
What bothers me the most about “Love Won’t Make You Cry” (other than the fact that, as any one who’s ever truly lived knows, it’s an ERRONEOUS STATEMENT,) is the ideal being propagated here. Things LITERALLY fall into place here for the video’s male protagonist (and he’s a good ol’ boy alright, male in both sex and gender), and the end objective is simply heterosexual romance. We’re supposed to fall in love with the Parisian cinematography here [1], but I’m not buyin’ it: true romance comes speckled with strife, with as Bukowski said “The impossibility of being human,” and nothing in this video makes stalwart the human will. In fact, it’s the opposite: being around unattractive people is actually seen as unbearable by the female love interest, see her rolled eyes on Paris’ subway about two-thirds of the way through. Aw, sorry love birds, didn’t mean to trouble you with us normal people!
Incidentally, I’ve reviewed Bitter’s Kiss’ album as can be observed on this site, and this may be the very worst song on the album. Where even the album in general fails is basically lack of experience, lack of reason to write a song in the first place. It’s like some cheap Paris tourism advertisement — come here and you’ll live the vapid American dream of being with your “honey” — never mind things like the storming proletariat, or corporate takeover — the world is your big lollipop.
To be fair, Chloe Baker is all of 19 years old, and seems to have never had her heart broken, because there is NO rough exterior on this girl. The apt, and somewhat sterile, pop sense wielded here, possibly in collaboration with her father who owns her studio, basically acts as a competent solvent, though in doing this it dissolves entirely the already almost undetectable value in Baker’s words. She’d do well to heed the words of J.D. Salinger in his novelistic finale Franny and Zooey: “‘He said to shine my shoes… for the Fat Lady.’” Or better still, put her in the video.
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[1] A reference to the recent Eagles of Death Metal shooting would be cheap here (though in no way topically uncalled for), so I’ll avoid it.