Here It Is: ‘The Room’ of Music Videos

There's no denying that we live in a cynical world. Once something gets too popular, it gets monetized, repackaged and resold. But I'm not just talking about punk bands, dance music, "indie," hip-hop, or basically any other subcultural movement that's been gobbled up and spat back out by soulless marketers. In addition to those once-good things, it also happens to bad things like Rebecca Black's musical output or the wonderfully naive shark films of The Asylum. Eventually, viral law states that these things achieve mainstream ubiquity and lose what once made them special. The creators attempt to milk that miserable magic for all it's worth, but it never works once the artist becomes self-aware—look no further than Birdemic 2: The Resurrection for proof.

That's why we need to appreciate our garbage before it becomes gentrified. Tommy Wiseau will never release another The Room, but rapping dads/babies/grannies everywhere will recruit their families for guaranteed-to-go-viral, horrifyingly white YouTube clips. Like any other culture, online detritus has a limited shelf life before it becomes too popular and, as a result, too self-aware.

Now that we've cleared that up, I want you to make sure no one else is around. Is it just us? OK. It's time for me to tell you about Jack McConnell.

Professional music writers are pitched at all hours, across every platform (shout out to the bands that follow me on Instagram; I'm definitely going to check you out and make you big) with every degree of thirst. As a result, many press releases go unread. Fortunately for me, a colleague opened the email he received from McConnell featuring the video for his new single "Where Are You" and forwarded it straight to me. I will forever be in his debt, as it's a thing of puerile, putrid purity. This is trash at its most transcendent, a romantic rock song that'd put a shit-eating grin on Tommy Wiseau himself.

Better yet, the number of plays the video has received is perpetually stuck at 301+ (YouTube's max-out number while it's tabulating results), and its commenters are almost all picture-less blue figures sharing generic messages of approval. In other words, I'm pretty sure this thing has only been viewed by bots. Until now.

For what it is—one man's unfiltered love letter to the world and tribute to both the history and future of recorded sound—this song and video are flawless. If anything, the only problem with this experience is that there's too much to take in at once. Merely two seconds in, we're treated to a shot of our boy, rocking aviators, a burgundy tanktop, and lightly distressed bootcut jeans, toting his six-string through the forest with a nice old-timey vignette. It's classy yet edgy, like all of the best rock 'n' roll before it.

The song's all sensitive acoustic guitars, sparse piano, and cymbal swells, building with soft-rock passion while Jack rolls out of bed. It's a black-and-white scene complete with moving Photoshop 4.0 filters, something that looks and feels like a self-published erotic novel come to life, and he hasn't even started singing yet.

Once he starts, this teenaged Romeo delivers his lines in a profoundly nasally croon, like he could've played in the best post-New Found Glory pop-punk band had the right person showed him the right thing at the right time. Instead, "Where You Are" sounds like a male-fronted Evanescence ballad as our boy sings, "It's been a little while now / Since I've seen your face / Memories are all I hold onto / As I slowly fade away." For the record, the lyrics have already been uploaded to a popular lyric site, albeit with a photo of the middle-aged Scottish politician of the same name.

With the arrival of the lyrics, the video starts coming at us with so much visual information. A photo of Jack with his lost lover sees her disintegrate into nothingness. Shirtless, he spends the next shot staring up and singing into an approving light as it shines down from the heavens. Then he walks around a busy thoroughfare wearing nothing but a blazer and a dog tag. The video has not yet reached its 30-second mark.

The woman from the photo appears to Jack, and he follows her through an alleyway and into a stairwell. As he ascends the stairs, the song ascends to its heartfelt chorus, and the video switches to color (well actually, it awkwardly flips between color and black-and-white footage with little logic). A shirt-averse, long-haired man. A rooftop in the broad daylight. The line "it's tearing me apart." This video is The Room of lite-rockin' pop music.

The chorus ends and we're treated to some tasty bass licks while Jack reaches for the heavens, longing for his lost love. You may be looking at the runtime of the video worrying that there are still three minutes left, but I can guarantee you that we're only getting started. Up next, Jack takes his killer hot rod for a spin while two or sometimes three shots overlap on the video.

Jack thinks he sees his lover in the woods, so he pulls over, takes his guitar out of the trunk, and goes for a walk. There's an amazing pre-chorus part where he falls to his knees in the gravel. "Without you, I can't breathe," he laments. His muscular arms look incredibly buff in the burgundy tanktop. Jack is jacked. Please don't beat me up, Jack.

Our guy stays by his car for the second chorus, belting his heartfelt lines straight through his nose-hole. He can't get that picnic out of his mind (though it looks like a fairly shitty picnic with zero drinks and possibly nothing in the picnic basket). But just when the video feels like it's out of ideas, Jack grabs his guitar again, the song builds up with some killer palm-muted guitars, and we're treated to what might be the greatest bridge since The Beatles.

Perched atop an incredibly shitty, rusted-out shipping container, Jack's all of a sudden switched outfits. He's now wearing a fedora, a tie-dyed t-shirt and salmon-colored jeans. He looks like an upvoted Reddit pick-up artist post that's become sentient, and it's nothing short of perfect. "I cannot live without your kiss / Let's make love and just forget / We ever were apart / You'll find heaven in these arms." I know I did.

You probably think Jack's blown his load here. Wrong again, pal. It's time for the guitar solo. And what a guitar solo! Outside of the actual technical aspects—pinch harmonics, wicked triplets and hopelessly sloppy hammer-ons—Jack finds himself in a new location, with a new outfit. Possibly pleather pants, a button down vest, and a silk scarf comprise the look, while a mossy, rocky beach take care of the setting. While he shreds, Jack's guitar-face gives us a solid idea of what his O-face must be like. This is one of rock music's greatest moments.

For the video's denouement, Jack busts out one final outfit, pairing some pre-9/11 American Eagle jeans with a white dress shirt, entirely open save for one done-up button. He strolls along the water, offering up his chorus one last time (by now worthy of status as an American standard), soaks his jean cuffs in sea, and stares into the distance. As the lead guitar hits a particularly sour note, he sees his lover, but she's quickly beamed away. Admittedly, the CGI is one of the few areas where the video could use some minor improvement.

There are plenty of reasons that "Where Are You" is great, but mostly it boils down to raw, unbridled sincerity. Far be it from the so-called "new sincerity" bandied about by Arcade Fire/Black Keys/Mumford/etc. It's instead a naive, simple authenticity. Jack McConnell believes he's great, and in some ways he's right—hammer-ons aside, he's a better guitar player than most people I know, he understands song structure even if the lyrics and, well, most aspects of the song are beyond repair, and he's smart enough to pack his videos with quick edits so the audience doesn't get bored. More importantly, however, Jack McConnell exhibits an addictive and engaging sort of blind confidence that's, in a word, beautiful. Of course, if and when the Daniel Toshs of the world get their hands on him, that'll all disappear, he'll become a self-aware sideshow attraction, and we'll be lamenting from the top of a shitty, rusted-out shipping container, wondering where he is.

Where are you, Josiah Hughes? He's on Twitter - @josiahhughes

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