Daughtry - “No Surprise”

We start out in some industrial area, with the band kicking off the song while standing next to a giant manufacturing something or other. (I didn’t realize that industrial areas came with their own live entertainment these days, but times change.) While Chris is doing that yodeling thing that starts the song, a beat-up truck drives into the area, and out hops a guy with a piece of paper. Maybe he’s taking a survey on better ways to start off a video?

Nope, seems he’s here looking for a job, but the little foreman guy doesn’t have any openings. So sorry. Cut to Chris driving through the area in an open convertible, for no apparent reason other than to show off his new shades. The sunglasses are nice and all, but dude, this other guy just got his dream of employment crushed. Chill. Chris turns the car and drives on down the road. Applicant Guy also drives away, allowing the band to play for an audience of absolutely nobody.

Cut to Chris tooling around in his car (do people in music videos ever NOT drive a convertible?). He conveniently passes a diner that just happens to be our next set piece, so that was very helpful of him. We go inside the diner, where we watch as some Waitress Lady is having a nice chat with a cute guy. A bit later, Waitress Lady is just trying to serve a drink, when some rude person bumps her and Lady dumps the drink on another patron who turns out to be very unsupportive about getting wet.

Manager Guy comes rushing up, because he finally has something to do, and of course he promptly yells at and then fires Lady, because if he didn’t do that we wouldn’t have a story for our video. Lady stomps out of the store and hurls her apron to the ground, because that always accomplishes a lot, and then she goes off to wherever fired people go in the middle of the day.

We visit with the band for a little bit, since this is really their song and all, then we’re back with the beat-up truck pulling up to a house. Our non-hired friend from the beginning of the video gets out, waves at some bro living next door, then goes inside to give the unemployment report to his girlfriend, who just happens to be the recently-liberated Lady from the Diner. To make things even more fun, they then stare at overdue bills and low bank-account balances.

Since this is supposed to be reenactment of real-life domesticity, they get into a huge fight and wave their arms around and holler things we can’t hear because Chris won’t shut up for half a second. Whatever words are exchanged, we can assume that nobody will be getting any dinner or sex that evening.

Cut to the next morning, with the couple snoozing in bed, so either they made up or they have very short attention spans. The dude slips out of bed and goes off to do who knows what, then Lady awakes, quickly counts on her fingers and realizes that somebody is missing from the bed, and she goes running off as well. I guess Dude was nowhere to be found in the house, since we then see Lady rushing out the front door, furtively glancing around for her man while still managing to look cute in her cut-off shorts and modified flannel top.

We watch as she runs all over town, looking hither and yon for Dude, but he’s taking this hiding business very seriously and remains unseen. Lady tries real hard, even doing this very cinematic thing in the middle of a parking lot, where she and her hair are captured in a nice 360-degree spin of the camera. But she finds nada. (Well, she does bump into a really cute guy along the way, but she isn’t thinking clearly enough to get his number in case she needs a Plan B in her life.)

Lady finally arrives at that dusty manufacturing place, where nobody seems to be working but the band is still playing an apparent marathon set, then she decides to climb a nearby hill of dirt, because that seems reasonable when you can’t find your boyfriend. Once at the top, she gets tired and decides to lean against the side of an enormous rock that is completely out of place but seems sturdy enough. As the camera pulls back, we see Dude leaning against the other side of the rock, both of them looking distraught and unsatisfied.

The video ends with Chris doing the final bit of yodeling on the song, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Julie Andrews made a sudden cameo, offering everybody a job on the set of her new movie, Princess Diaries 3: Shrek Meets Mary Poppins, but this doesn’t immediately happen. The camera lingers for a bit, helping us understand that being pretty doesn’t mean you can get or keep a job, but you still might get a chance to be in a music video, then we fade to black…


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Daughtry - “Over You”

We start out with a young woman, sitting in a crappy metal chair in what looks like a crappy office basement or some such. She’s wearing a wrinkled hoodie and her hair is messy, so she’s probably not having a very good day. The camera zooms in on her eyes so we can see that, yep, it’s a bad day. And possibly a bad life. Anyone who is forced to sit in a metal folding chair has done something wrong at some point.

Cut to Chris starting the song while standing in front of a boarded-up window that has been un-boarded, probably by someone who wanted to see what the sunlight would do when it hits Chris’ head. He doesn’t stand there long enough for us to find out, and instead stomps over to the rest of his band as they are playing in another section of an old abandoned house. Right as Chris is singing the words “old abandoned house”. It’s perfectly timed in an “I’ll completely forget about this in two minutes” sort of way.

Cut to the woman and what might be her boyfriend, at some party where she’s having a swell time sucking down adult beverages while he stands in the corner and glares at her. (So he’s one of those kind of boyfriends. Great.) Of course, Girlfriend appears to have had about 700 drinks, based on her inability to satisfactorily get number 701 anywhere near her mouth without spilling most of it. (So she’s one of those kind of girlfriends. Terrific.)

Brief interlude so the band can play the chorus, and we can reflect on both the tragic relationship arc that we’re watching and the amazing way that Chris’ mouth attacks that surely innocent microphone. For bonus viewing, the camera spins around quite a bit, letting us marvel in the amazing set detail, which includes stripped box springs, those dusty pictures of old folks that nobody remembers but people still keep, and what might be a pile of kumquats in the corner. Very nice.

Back to the soiree, where Girlfriend is getting that “what?” look that drunks get when they are vaguely aware that they’ve done something wrong but have no idea what that might be and just decide to be belligerent. Boyfriend remains very unimpressed, but at least he’s moved to a new glaring position, one that allows the light to better feature his hairdo. (Nice highlights, dude.)

Oh, here’s the requisite part where the band jams as Chris catches his breath and dries off the microphone. I’m not sure why they need so many guitar players, but they seem to be having a good time. Chris steps back up to the microphone, and it whimpers a little bit. Poor thing.

Now the unhealthy relationship duo has moved to a convertible tooling down the road, with Boyfriend driving (hallelujah) and Girlfriend sitting on top of her head rest and waving her arms in the air like she just don’t… remember the rest of the words to that song. He’s still glaring and pouting, natch, but he’s not exactly telling her to get her drunk ass back in the seat, so I’m giving this relationship roughly two more hours before he signs into an online dating service.

Time for the chorus again. Guitars, decrepit house and eyeliner. Wait. Maybe Chris isn’t wearing his trademark eyeliner. Has there been a budget shortage? It’s hard to confirm the eyeliner status, because Chris won’t stay still and the camera person went to the school of “just roll the damn thing all over the place”.

Back to the car, where Boyfriend has had enough of nearly-airborne Girlfriend, so he finally gets her uncoordinated self in a more traditional car-riding position. Sadly, Girlfriend starts grabbing at the gear shift (maybe she’s hungry and thought it was a hotdog?), causing Boyfriend to snap at her rudely and make dramatic hand gestures. Girlfriend slumps to the other side of the car, sad and confused.

Then, in that illogical vodka way of thinking, she decides it would be appropriate to turn into a she-beast and start slapping and scratching at him. This does nothing to help matters, of course, and their increasingly out-of-control tussle sends them swerving into the path of another car. Whoopsie.

Cut to the band, playing and drawing out the suspense. Did they crash? Did somebody get hurt? Did she ever get anything to eat?

We get back to the action, and find Girlfriend wearing a white dress in a white room, possibly a bathroom, crying and having an emotional breakdown or a really bad reaction to the shellfish. Then she’s on a bridge, wearing a black top, all crouched and furtive like a documentary on The Nature Channel. Back to white-dress Girlfriend, where she really, really hates the mirror above the sink for some reason. Then she decides she’s okay with it, and decides to wash her face and tidy up.

Now it’s time for a montage, with jump shots of White-Dress Girl huddled in the bathroom corner, Gazelle Girl running across the bridge like there’s a sale at The Gap, White-Hoodie Girl remaining uncomfortable in her chair, Gazelle Girl apparently taking a break to run hurdles at a local track meet, and Chris and The Daughtries jamming their way to the end of the song.

We close it out with Gazelle ending up at an intersection where she finds….well, nothing, which makes her even more distraught. (Was she looking for, I don’t know, the boyfriend that we haven’t seen since we got schnockered and accidentally played chicken? Oooh, girl, what you done did?) Then Hoodie gets up and walks to the front of the AA meeting. “Hi. My name is Sarah…”

Hmmm. Well, I feel really proud about the beer sitting next to me as I write this. You?


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Daughtry - “Life After You”

  We kick things off with some woman standing in the fading sunlight, staring at a hill, then cut to Chris walking back to his hotel, where he proceeds to work on his new song. He strums his guitar and sings to us for a while (because rock stars always have cameramen in their hotel room, it’s some type of rule). We then see him calling someone, presumably the sunlit woman. She doesn’t answer, so Chris goes back to singing.

  After a bit, he marches out of his room and down the hall, with the camera positioned just right so we can see he’s wearing a lot of hardware around his neck and that some of the buttons on his shirt seem to have malfunctioned. For whatever reason, Chris purposely runs down the cameraman, so you know there were union meetings after that mess.

  Next we see Chris and the gang piling off their tour bus, with Chris being played by Vin Diesel in this scene. Another shot of Sunlit Woman gazing out the window and still avoiding communication opportunities that might arise. It’s possible that she’s just out of range and is unaware that Chris would like to reach out and touch, but really, where is “out of range” these days? Other than places where people watch Fox News and actually believe what they are seeing.

  Chris and peeps are back on the tour bus, with everyone looking bored even though a camera is shoved in their faces. See, it’s the “touring” part of touring with a band that would make me crazy. I don’t want to be in a rolling breadbox where people can’t actually ever go away and leave me alone. My band would never have a second show.

  Next we have the band folks trooping into a bar, where Chris sings some more and continues to diddle with his phone. (Sunlit Girl doesn’t answer, because we’re not even halfway through the song and she has plenty of time to be coy.) Frustrated, Chris leaves the bar and goes to the next gig with his band, which just happens to be next door.

  Okay, maybe “gig” was too strong of a word. We’re in a big warehouse with no actual audience, but this doesn’t stop everybody from pulling out their instruments and fingering them. They play for a while, with the band members pretending that they can’t see the camera people rolling equipment between their legs, trying to get a good shot.

  This goes on for a while, because this is the part of the song where Chris really gets into the vocals, and it just wouldn’t be right for us to cut away to meaningless stock footage of people eating burritos or scantily-clad hookers flashing their dripping crevices whilst hand-washing a car that wasn’t all that dirty to begin with. As usual, Chris hits all the notes and, as usual, it looks like it is really painful for him to do so.

  Quick, confusing shot of someone possibly poking a reclining Chris with a drumstick. I’m sure I’m reading more into that than necessary.

  Sunlit Girl is now in her bedroom, looking dissatisfied.

  Now we have Chris and the boys getting ready for a real concert, doing the group hug thing backstage. The fraternizing is disrupted when Chris’s phone lights up. Oh? Yep, it’s Sunlit Girl, really tired of eating alone in restaurants and not having anybody to argue with about what the last episode of “Lost” really meant. Chris grins and takes the call.

  We wind things down with Chris all elated as the boys grab their gear and head out on the stage. See, folks? Everything will work out in the end if you just write a song about it and go on tour. It’s that simple.


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Daughtry - “September”

  We start off with just Chris and his guitar on an empty stage, which is stark and moody. He’s strumming his instrument and staring at the floor like he’s really sad, or maybe he’s trying to remember if he put cashews on his grocery list. He finally starts singing to… no one. We see that the auditorium is completely empty, so either he’s rehearsing or somebody really jacked up the ticket sales.

  As the camera moves around to show us that this is a really nice theater, with pretty wallpaper and stuff, the other band members start arriving and prepping their own instruments. (What’s up with that, not being here in time to play the song? Were they watching the end of “Dexter”? You’d think these people could afford Tivo.) Chris doesn’t bother to yell at them, continuing to sing and look pensive about things he probably shouldn’t have done.

  Somebody turns on some home movies, which begin to play on a fancy screen at the back of the stage. (The first image is of a little boy running his ass off in a yard, and I think it’s a little Chris, because there’s an empty tube of eyeliner tossed on the ground.) The rest of the band finally starts playing, and I can’t help but wonder why they are all standing so far away from him. Is this distance thing in C-Dawg's contract, or are they just scared of him?

  Next we have Chris sitting by himself in the audience, so I guess it was really bothering him that no one showed up at his concert and he took matters into his own hands. He starts watching the home movies and pictures playing on the screen, still looking sad and unsatisfied. (Does this man ever smile?) One of the snapshots is of a horrified youngster holding up a pair of underwear that he got for Christmas, probably from that one weird aunt we all had who smelled like old perfume and insisted on buying us crap like that instead of real toys.

  As the song starts to pick up speed, we get even more videos and pictures on the giant screen, which makes things a little confusing. (Bell bottoms and bad perms are flying all over the place.) We also start seeing Chris singing in some other room with gray walls (because you can’t have perky colors in a Daughtry video) that I guess he picked out as a place to sing the really loud parts of the song, so the acoustics must be pretty good. (Hey, is that the girl from the “Thompson Twins” on the screen at 1:52?)

  And we go on like this for a while, with Chris singing on stage, in the audience, and in the mysterious room where something is causing him to bend over a lot. The giant screen is still filled with embarrassing and awkward clips of days gone by, but Chris isn’t bothered by the pictures, because he now has enough money to buy new friends if anybody is stupid enough to poke fun.

  Then the really fast part of the song kicks in, with folks pounding on their guitars like somebody spiked the fruit punch, and a curtain drops off the big screen, revealing an even bigger screen where fast things are happening. Cars are zipping down highways, bad 70’s clothing comes flying at us like we’re the Death Star under attack, and big-haired women are frantically hurling pea salad at long-ago Sunday picnics.

  The band is really jamming now (even though they are still maintaining their possibly court-ordered distance from Chris), with flashing lights, jump cuts, and hundreds of yearbook photos proving that nobody had any sense in high school. (And to think that we all actually looked at ourselves in the mirror, approved of what we saw, and then we and our braces marched into Algebra class thinkin’ we all hot and stuff. God.)

  Several shots of people fishing, so I guess that was important to Chris at some point. And, big surprise, there were birthday parties in his childhood, with munchkins mainlining sugar and then cheesing for the cameras. (Ah, those were the days, back when you ate whatever you wanted because the only people who knew anything about healthy food all lived on communes and gave birth to children named Bean Sprout and Roach Clip.)

  The song finally starts winding down, the pace of the old-school videos tapers off, and Chris stops singing notes that require us to see his uvula. We wrap it up with just him and his guitar again, strumming quietly and reflecting. The stage lighting fades to just one spot on Chris in the middle of the stage. Very nice.

  Then they slip in some brief video of… I’m not sure what that is. An ultrasound? Solar flares? Alien beings sending Sarah Palin her next instructions?

  Fade to black.


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