Friday, December 30, 2011

David Guetta, Usher - “Without You”


  We start out with a shot of our planet rotating complacently, then we focus on Brazil, where it is apparently 6:07am according to a handy title card that pops up. (Why anyone would be up at that unnatural hour, I don’t know, but something must be going on.) We have lots of happy people on a beach, or so it seems, and everybody is waving their hands in the air to the song, so maybe they’ve been up all night at a rave or some such and they’re just waiting for the drugs to wear off.

  Cut to South Africa (9:07pm), with other happy people, but before I can figure out where they are or what they’re doing, Usher suddenly appears on screen. He’s on a beach as well, but it looks suspiciously photo-shopped, so somebody might be lying to us. No matter, he kicks in with the vocals and some arm choreography. His vocals rawk in this song. The choreography, not so much.

  Quick shot of David Guetta taking the stage somewhere, his trademark locks blowing in the artificial breeze of a nightclub. Zip over to Thailand, where it’s 4:07am. (Which also sounds suspicious, since it’s supposedly only two hours later in Brazil. Who’s making the facts up here? Must be a Republican.) This is confirmed when we get a shot of the United States, where it’s 2:07pm, totally ignoring reality, another Republican trait.

  More shots of Usher, thankfully toning down the arm movements for a bit, and a few snippets of David, doing some product placement with a pair of snazzy red headphones. David fiddles with a soundboard, amping the song, and the various crowds around the world get their groove on in a multi-cultural tribute to the joys of a synthesizer.

  Sadly, Usher gets invested in the arm choreography again, but this is balanced by the song kicking into the driving beat that apparently makes everybody on the planet jump up and down. Sadly, part two, this jumping causes seismic faults to split open across the same planet, with parking lots buckling and walls crumbling. In the real world, this would be an issue. In a music video, apparently not.

  As the thumping beat continues and tectonic plates shift, Usher pauses on his fake beach so we can fully study his new hairdo. It’s fetching and all, but it’s not really why we paid the cover charge. So he resorts to more of that arm-flapping business, throwing in some subtle dance moves and some extra falsetto.

  Cut to a couple of blonde girls, sitting on yet another beach and reading on their electronic tablets (because everyone takes those to the beach, right?) that the continents seem to be shifting. Oh? This is something that we didn’t plan for. Are we sure this is covered in the budget?

  As we get more images of those continents going AWOL, Usher keeps wailing away and the rude planet-changers keep bouncing around on the beaches. In fact, they seem to be inspired by the fact that alcohol-fueled rhythmic expression can alter history, so they ramp up the shimmying and shaking. It also seems that applying day-glo face paint makes things even better. You should probably write that down.

  There’s a brief montage of David fiddling with more knobs, then we’re back to the National Geographic footage of dance-inspired global realignment. It seems that all of the continents are heading toward each other and closing the ocean gaps, which is really going to piss off the cruise-line people. But the dancing people don’t care, as long as the music continues and they get to keep wearing glow-in-the-dark headbands.

  The continents finally meet-cute, and all of the various beach-partiers go running toward one another in a universal symbol of togetherness, totally thrilled that they can now increase their Facebook friend total. Everyone seems to get along swimmingly, even though they don’t speak the same languages and a ton of folks just had the market-value on their formerly beach-front properties just hit the toilet.

  We wind things down with everybody partying like it’s 1999 and Prince is still relevant. People are still jumping up and down, which they should probably stop doing or there might be another global shift, but who’s counting. Usher comes out to close the show, although he’s technically not really there, inspiring all the jumping people, including David, to make a heart-shape with their hands. We love everybody. Awwww.

  But somebody still has to pay the bar tab. Just sayin.


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.



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