The Wanted – “Glad You Came”

  We start things out with the video literally following the opening lyrics of the song (the sun goes down, the stars come out) so right away I don’t care for the director, going for the obvious and all. Then we see that said director is none other than “Director X”, which usually means “this thing was mashed together by a marketing team and a drunken stylist with the main goal of filming somewhere tropical”. Who knows what kind of hot mess is going to come flying at us, so fasten your seatbelts.

  We first see the guys all lined up in a row, sitting on a cliff overlooking a patch of water. They appear to be gazing at something in the distance, which could be the setting sun but could just as easily be that drunken stylist doing something obscene with coconuts. Then we have the guys staged in front of a stone wall, in a stance that says “cover shoot”, so one of them can start singing while the others wait for panties to be thrown at them.

  Then we’re back by the cliffs, and the cinematographer gives us glowing close-ups of each acne-free face so we can cheer for our favorite, but I don’t know any of their names so the only way I can describe it is “five guys sitting around on boulders, with one of them considerably whiter than the others”. Then we get a long-shot rear view of the guys lined up again, staring at the now-annoying sun as it finally plops out of sight, thus making it harder for any witnesses to testify later about what they might have seen the boys doing in the darkness.

  And then bam, it’s the next day, the peaceful part of the song is over and we are plunged into some beach-party locale as the music ramps up and some of the guys’ shirts come off. The editor doesn’t waste any time letting us know that we are in Ibiza, where endless videos like this have been made in between rounds of massive alcohol intake and spontaneous near-nudity. (As if to highlight that second part, we get a montage of supermodels proving that you can indeed wear a paper towel as a dress and still look quite fetching.)

  Within about three seconds of arriving in Ibiza, the guys start hooking up with some of the supermodels, because things like that just naturally happen in a place where everyone is nearly-wearing the same minimalist designer fashions and you really can’t tell people apart. Might as well pair up with the first person you meet since they all look the same in the mirror over the bed.

  Then the boys head over to a nightclub (or dayclub, whatever, these places never really close in Ibiza) to sing part of the song, although it appears that most of the patrons are more interested in being served a cocktail rather than being serenaded by a singing group that can’t even manage to wear the same outfits. This is followed by the guys going back into the cliffs, where they discover a pack of chesty women lounging about in the crevices, looking like lionesses as they wait for somebody to wander their way so they can make a kill.

  Of course, all of these overheated women are staring at the guys like they’ve never seen anything else as desirable on the entire planet. Within a few more seconds of their arrival, the boys have managed to all hook up with one or three of the desperate non-housewives. Then we head back into town, or at least somewhere that the cliffs are not so noticeable, so we can watch the guys hunt down more prey, because having less than 15 available females on your dance ticket is so old-school.

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is basically the plot of the entire video: the five guys are on a perpetual quest for women, though they apparently don’t have to try very hard to accomplish this mission. On dance floors, on speedboats, on sun-drenched beaches, on the top of a hotdog stand, the women are throwing themselves at the guys with the rapidity of a jackhammer, as if none of the hormone-dripping women can imagine living if living is without at least one member of The Wanted.

  This goes on for a very long time, because the women are everywhere in Ibiza. They return your volleyball when it bounces their way, they come out of the depths of a swimming pool, they fall out of trees, they pop out of the trunk of your car, they are awarded as door prizes at the supermarket, and they are neatly stacked in your underwear drawer. Even the white guy, slathered in SPF 150, has to deal with rafts of women floating up to him and yearning for his slipperiness.

  The mating rituals reach a high point when one of the guys actually makes musical and physical love to a woman in the bathroom, both of them knocking things off the vanity as they satisfy their burning needs. (It also appears that there is another couple going at it in the shower behind them, but this can’t be fully confirmed because the video editor is making jump cuts like a woodpecker on crack.)

  We stop having sex long enough for some of the guys to climb one of the cliffs and then leap into the ocean, as if they haven’t already proved their manliness, or at least their horniness, by bedding half the population. Then the gang heads back to that nightclub so they can sing about their exploits, reminding us that this is indeed a music video and not the Kama Sutra. The boys also exhibit some dancing skills by performing intricate choreography that involves putting their arms around each other’s shoulders and then bouncing.

  There’s an additional sequence where it appears that the guys are having a night parade thrown in their honor, but this might just be the line for the margarita stand. Again, the editor really doesn’t like to stay on one scene longer than three milliseconds. And the director doesn’t let anybody who isn’t pretty come anywhere near the camera.

  We end the video with hung-over people waking up on floors and tables and toilets, and some of the guys do seem a bit concerned that they might have overindulged a bit. But then their faces brighten as they realize that it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and there’s an island of women out there. Maybe they can order a few with room service?

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