Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfnAOcBirAs
The video for Hate My Life is a mixture of narrative and performance, but the interesting concept of the video is that each image in the video, until the final performance section, is a direct representation of the lyrics of the song. The video opens with a shot of a homeless man refusing change from the band’s lead singer, Tyler Connolly, as he is talking on a mobile phone. This leads into the opening line of the song, as Connolly turns to the camera and sings the line, “So sick of the hobos, always begging for change...” he begins walking down the street, and the camera follows him, as it will do for much of the rest of the video, and as he sings the line “I hate all of the people who can’t drive their cars”, a car screeches to a halt in front of him having nearly hit him, and he slams his hands down on the bonnet before walking on. As he sings a lyric about his wife always wanting “to buy brand new things, but I don’t have the cash”, a woman walks out of a house, kisses him on the cheek, takes his wallet from him and gets into a car, driving away. As the song goes into the first chorus, the camera zooms into a close-up shot of Connolly singing, then performs a 360 turn around him as he sings the remainder of the chorus. As he goes into the second verse, a woman carrying a box of clothing with “laundry” on the side, is knocked over by a man going past on a bicycle. As he helps the woman pick up her items, he picks up an item of negligee, at which point the woman pushes him away in disgust. During this segment, he sings the lines “How come I never get laid, nice guys always lose”, showing that in an attempt to help the woman, he is rejected. In a slight change to the format of Connolly telling the story, the camera pans sideways to a group of workmen as the line “I still hate my job” is sung, at which point one of the workers turns to the camera and sings the line in question. His fellow worker begins to sing the next line, “My boss is a dick”, but before he can complete the lyric, the first worker puts a hand over his mouth and turns his head back, pointing out that their boss is in close vicinity. The camera pans back to following Connolly, as he begins to sing the second chorus, but as he finishes the chorus with the eponymous line “I Hate My Life”, a banner is hung over a balcony behind him by two people which displays the words “I hate my life”. As the song goes into a short musical section, the camera cuts to a large stage set up in the centre of the street, with balloons, party banners and confetti strewn across it in a party, an antonymic image of the song’s lyrical theme. The remaining members of Theory Of A Deadman are on the stage playing the song, and we see Connolly jump up onto the stage, take a guitar from someone on the side of the stage and begin playing with the rest of the band. Interspersed with this are shots of various people gathering around the stage, including some of the characters already seen previously, some of whom are carrying signs with “I Hate My Life” written on them, continuing the contrasting image of a party based around this theme. The remainder of the video is taken up with the gathering crowd getting larger and larger as the band sing the rest of the song. As the band finish playing, the camera turns in the opposite direction from the stage, showing a huge crowd filling the entire street cheering and applauding, before the final shot of the video, in which the camera turns up to the sky to reveal the words “I Hate My Life” in skywriting before the screen fades to black.
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