Music Video Pitch: Absolutely (Horror Story of a Girl)

How many lovers would stay, just to put up with this every day and all day?

Lights up on our Lead, a sleepy-looking woman, sipping coffee at her kitchen counter. The sunrise streams in the window, casting her in a radiant glow.

She brings the mug to her nose with both hands and sighs appreciatively as she inhales. She looks, in a word, hopeful.

The camera slowly pans out to reveal a shabbily-dressed man with a guitar. To describe him would be to describe any mediocre white dude.

He’s standing close enough to invade the woman’s space, but just far enough away that he could feign offense if asked to back up.

“THIS IS…”

The woman jumps at the jarring opener, spilling her coffee. She glares at the man in annoyance.

She’s clearly caught off guard and uncomfortable with the overbearing (yet underwhelming) singer following her to the subway. No one else appears to notice him, however, so she does her best to ignore him, too.

How Many Days Disappear?

As we follow our Lead through her daily routine, she runs into example after example of casual misogyny:

- An older male coworker putting his hand around her waist to lead her down the hallway while he talks down to her like a child.

- A man getting on the treadmill directly behind her at the gym, even though the entire two rows of are empty. He stares blatantly at her ass.

- A male driver yelling something vile out a car window at her as she’s walking on the sidewalk. She pretends not to hear, but subtly clenches her fists.

All the while, the singer is with her, never seeming to run out of things to say.

Failing to read the room, he dances jovially, often disrupting what the woman is doing. He’s an ever-looming, unapologetic reminder that, although this story is about a “girl”, she’s not the one telling it.

How Many Lovers Would Stay?

Cutting to a couch, a date sloppily gropes at the Lead’s clothing as she stares dissociatively ahead, statuesque, rattled from the day’s events.

Finally noticing her blank stare, the date becomes irate and yanks her toward him by the sleeve of her dress. She reacts in fear, pushing him off hard enough to rip the sleeve.

He storms out, slamming the door. The woman, exhausted, quaking, and now half-dressed, begins to cry.

While she’s not looking, the oppressive singer subtly drops his guitar, revealing a camera around his neck, which he uses to take a Polaroid of her without permission.

At the camera’s flash, the woman flinches and glares at him angrily. There’s a renewed fierceness in her eyes, fueled by the heat of the hell she’s been through.

We pan in on the developing photo. She truly does look so sad and lonely there.

When She Smiles…?

Just as we reach that most iconic of lines, the music abruptly stops and the singer pauses mid high-note to say:

“You know, you’d really look better if you smiled.”

When he doesn’t get a response, he looks up from the photo… And the screen goes dark as he’s knocked out with a bat.

The singer awakens, bound with rope, in the dark interior of a trunk. He’s visibly panicked, but his screams are muffled by his taped mouth.

The trunk opens to reveal the night sky. Our Lead looks down sternly at the wretched man. She’s flanked by several other women, background witnesses to the abuses in earlier scenes.

His makes stifled noises of begging/protest as they pull him from the trunk and onto a rowboat. Just as they’ve been taught to do for so long, the women pretend not to hear him.

The group rides in silence across the remote lake. As they reach the perfect spot, the women toss the man unceremoniously into the depths before sitting back down and looking reverentially toward the Lead.

She silently pulls out a lighter and ignites the only evidence: the Polaroid photo.

Music Starts Back Up, With Gusto!

On the final “she cried a river and drown the whole world” the camera takes the singer’s POV underwater as he sinks.

The Lead, aglow from the flaming picture looks down at him from the surface, apparently unmoved, until…

She smiles.

How Did We Wind Up This Way?

This article stemmed from a conversation between my best friend and I while listening to the original song, Absolutely (Story of a Girl), and joking back and forth about what it could be about. As our jokes tend to, it spun out of control and morphed into a feminist toppling of the patriarchy.

While researching the actual meaning of the song, I came across a great article interviewing the song’s writer and lead singer of the band Nine Days, John Hampson. He broke down the origins of the lyrics as well as the song’s use in the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once.

According to Hampson, the song was originally written in response to a conversation with his then-girlfriend about the seriousness of their relationship and where he saw it going.

“As terrible as it sounds, the song is really all about how she was kind of looking for the relationship to go to that next place, that engagement ring, and I just was like, ‘Yep, definitely’, but not actually fulfilling my end of the bargain.”

In the end, John did marry the woman and the two are still together to this day!

My interpretation may have been way off, but this was an incredibly fun article to write. What other songs should I reimagine?

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