Backup Dancers From Hell: 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 bank 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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Backup Dancers From Hell: Stone Sour - “Through Glass”

We start out in some kitchen where “Pizza Hut” boxes are stacked all over the place, and some guy we don’t know is looking for…

Oh, wait. This is just the advertisement before the actual video. My bad.

We start off with the lead singer (Corey) sitting in a chair in some house, where there seems to be some type of party going on, but I don’t think it’s possible for him to look any more bored than he seems to be. Cut to some woman looking equally bored. (Even her hair is drooping limply, non-stimulated by the hemp shampoo she probably used.) If it’s that bad, shouldn’t they just leave?

And another woman who is bored, despite wearing an absurd little hat on the side of her head that would make most people feel all gussied-up and ready to party. Then there’s a small explosion. No, it’s just some guy taking pictures with an unnecessarily big camera. Tiny Hat girl gets up and wanders off, letting us see that there is something seriously wrong with the lower half of her outfit. Like it’s basically not there.

Pointless Camera Man takes a close-up of Corey, which is not something that he particularly cares for, so gets up as well and saunters off. (At least he has the decency to be wearing pants.) He walks around the room, looking at all the other anemic, non-partying people, mostly rail-thin girls who haven’t eaten since circa 1987. One of them, in a black dress that wouldn’t fit a Barbie doll, appears to desire tremendous rounds of sex from Corey, but he keeps walking, convinced that if he even breathed in her direction she would snap in two and then there would be a pesky lawsuit.

At one point, another barely-clad butt moves out of the way, and we can see another member of the band sitting near another woman with a floral hair accessory. (I’m assuming he’s in the band. He could be Grizzly Adams come to town for more beef jerky before the hard winter sets in.) Grizzly just sits there. He might not even have a pulse, so we should probably check on him a bit later.

Next up is a couple. The woman is another copycat supermodel, but the guy? Oh my. His hair alone could cause instant psychosis for entire societies, but his jacket is even worse. Anyone who would put those two components together in the same ensemble clearly should be loaded into a Hummer and drive to one of those swanky health facilities where superstars hide out until someone else is on the front page.

How Corey is even able to keep singing after seeing that, I have no idea, but he does. The rest of the band members get up from their various locations, and it appears that they might be leaving, but nothing in this video is guaranteed to be what you think it is.

Like the lobster and champagne on the tray being carried by the slutty server as she marches toward us? We learn that it’s just a propped-up cardboard cutout as Tramplina makes her way past.

Corey sees this, but doesn’t seem to be too concerned, so maybe he’s used to these things. He sings some more as we start to see shots of the band setting up their instruments at the base of that ginormous “Hollywood” sign that we’ve all see a million times on that hill. They’re moving very slowly, so there might have been something unexpected in the bean dip.

Back to the party, Corey is still warbling and walking past uninteresting people that no one would really want to talk to if record contracts and hooker-availability weren’t at stake. (Sure seems like it’s a long way to whatever door Corey is heading towards. He needs to pick it up a little bit.) Another shot of the band at the base of the hill, starting to get their groove on. I don’t know why they’re doing that, because Corey is not there yet, still walking through the apparently mile-long house, and the band can’t do much with the song unless there’s somebody to take care of the vocals.

Montage of the band playing without Corey, Corey singing without the band, women wearing swimsuits and high-heels (which has always seemed like the pinnacle of pointlessness to me), fab people swilling champagne, and Corey unable to find the freaking door out of this place.

Whoa, hold up. Some guy just picked up one of the fab people, and turns out they’re cardboard as well. What in gay hell? And he picked up another guy, with the same sudden flatness happening. This party just became very uncomfortable with that kind of action going on. And the weirdest thing of all? The guy picking up the now-cardboard people looks like Chris Daughtry. Word.

Checking back with Corey, we see that he’s not concerned about the invasion of the body-flatteners, or maybe he just hasn’t noticed. He’s wailing away, now marching around the pool, because you can always find the front door out there, right? Wait, now he’s singing with the band over at the hill. What about the paper people at the party? I don’t know any of them, so I’m really not invested, but we should probably learn what exactly happened. Mainly so I don’t serve the same combination of appetizers that might turn my friends into things that people steal from movie-theater lobbies.

Oh, good, we’ve jumped back over to the party, so maybe we can get the scoop. (Have they called CSI yet? We’ll probably need them, especially if George Eads needs me hold something for him.) But we really don’t learn anything. Instead, we just watch Daughtry continue rounding up the flat folks and… I don’t know… using them to fix uneven table legs. (I will say that the technology here is pretty trippy, with folks looking very real until they’re not. But an actual plot would be nice.)

Back to the band at the hill, where one of the members (might be Grizzly, hard to tell) is squatting down, apparently in the midst of doing something one should not do in a mixed setting. This is soon followed by one of the guitar players shoving his instrument at us so we can see that he really is playing it. (Got it. Thanks.) Then the band launches into a powerful part of the song and things get very energetic. They really like to play this song. Sure do.

Back at the party, Daughtry is still snatching up flat low-level celebrities and carting them off. Oh, look at that. Snatcher Man is no longer satisfied with just taking the people. (See, once you turn evil, things start to snowball. Just ask Dick Cheney.) Now he’s turning other things into posters, like swimming pools and wings of the house. There’s no telling when this madness might end.

Oh, wait. There is telling, after all. Because it’s the end of the song, with Corey belting out the last line and then wandering off the set, so we can see that the hill was fake, too. And so Corey can go find some new friends. Because his old ones will probably get sold in bulk to the International House of Pancakes.

We probably shouldn’t eat there for a while. Just sayin.

　

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