"We Belong..." In A Storage Facility?!?!

In light of yesterday's post where I praised the new Def Leppard single "We Belong," HIM provides this commentary. He doesn't like the song nearly as much as I do! 

Let’s start with something very simple: lyrics.

 

"We Belong"

Sometimes I feel I don’t belong here
Sometimes I just don’t feel

I feel so uninvited
A wound that never heals

I need a little shelter
Just for a little while

Sometimes I hide the sadness
Behind a painted smile

If you cast the first stone
I will roll it away
I will kneel at your throne
Hold my hands up and pray
I will hold back the tide
Push the oceans aside
Save the day
But I can be stronger

You’re all that I am
You’re all that I see
The keys to the kingdom
Are waiting for me
So don’t hold me back
Don’t hold me down
Just hold me and don’t let go
You’re all that I am
You’re all that I do
The end of the rainbow
Is waiting for you
So tell me I’m right
Cause this can’t move on
Not if we belong

Whatever happened to forgiveness
Are the words too hard to say

What happened to the answers
They disappeared along the way

I hide behind the madness
Still looking for the clues

And there’s nothing left to chance
When there’s nothing left to lose

And the voice in my head
Screams the words I believe
And the light in the dark
Is the air that I breathe

(Chorus, last line now: Back where we belong)

As you cast the first stone
And I roll it away
And I kneel at your throne
These words that I say

(Chorus)

The keys to the kingdom
Are waiting for me

 

This is fairly standard fare. Ambiguous enough to be about love, loneliness, and loss, and redemption, and other stuff. You set it to mid-tempo music, cue some strained (read: heartfelt) vocals, and you have yourself a hit on the Golden Oldies Rock station in your town (you know the one, named after some sort of animal: The Fox, The Eagle, The Bear, or what have you).

 

So let’s do that: here’s the actual song as performed for those of you who don’t already have it in heavy rotation.

The “switching singers” thing is a nice touch (even if Collen sounds like an evil-robot super villain, especially after the first pause in the lines he sings). Campbell and the rest all have nice sets of (some more and some less processed) pipes. Pretty chill and mellow, like the ballads on Hysteria turned down a notch so you don’t wake the kids up. This version of the band is clearly not my cup of Earl Grey. But, hey, a lot of people enjoyed 2015’s Def Leppard.  So raise your fist and whisper; rock softly. It’s better to fade out than burn away?!

But let’s push it a bit further: the official—not fan—video meant to serve as a visual accompaniment to said lyrics and said performance.

 

Hmm. I am not sure where to start. I will put aside the current fascination with slightly retro looking computer animation (a trend that Iron Maiden has helped to champion). I get it. That is a cost effective way to tell a story. I also understand that every song has multiple meanings, hits different tonal pulse points, and leads different listeners down different paths depending on the time of day, mood, or events with which they associate a song.

I also know that there is a thing called rhetoric. I think that traditionally applied to written and spoken words (like, say, lyrics or songs) and attempts therewith to persuade. I hear that rhetoric now applies to visuals as well. Don’t worry. I am not going to start pondering the significance of pasta advertisements (Roland Barthes, “The Rhetoric of the Image,” 1968) or ask you to question the stability of textual meaning (Jacque Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” 1971). I mean, what do I know? I am a humble mushroom forager from a non-descript part of the Northwest.

 

What I do know is that this video presents an unsettlingly (at least for me) picture of who Def Leppard officially are presenting themselves to be. To wit, they are dirty and tattered sheets wavering in a dimly lit storage facility (a la Raiders of the Lost Ark). Oh, and they morph into and out of each other. And the storage facility also relates to space crafts and other sci-fiey schematics (on screens that are not tattered sheets, though colored the same). There are also graphics of women in suits. And robots.

 

The big reveal is that there is a space station, from which (one assumes) came—spoiler alert one—the giant pod (which occasionally glows from within with bright light) that is being carried around the storage facility on a forklift during portions of the video. Said space station is—spoiler alert two—found to finally be resting on some sort of barren surface, a tangle of jagged rocks partially submerged in mirrored liquid.

 

Phew! It finally makes sense. No it doesn’t. Why are the members of Def Leppard consigned to soiled bedsheets waving in the breeze of a storage facility? Why are they also part of a computer read-out that involves robots and women and a dog (or is it a leopard)? What does any of this have to do with “casting stones” or “looking for clues”?

 

I know this is a bit of overkill when it comes to metal, when it comes to elder statesmen like Def Leppard. I can’t help but think, however, that the band thinks this means something. So, in the spirit of closure, I ask you all to tell me: what does it mean to you? To me? Well, I think it means that they are tired vestige of who they once were. And they, like countless other bands I love, have just decided to say: “You know what? It doesn’t matter that much anymore. Sing it. Sell it. Tour it. We can afford to release whatever we want in the name of art. And we will puff it and fluff it and turn it every which way. But, at the end of the day, we are a greatest hits machine that tours for the sake of touring and the money that it generates.” Thing is, I don’t think a band like Def Leppard would ever actually say that . . . to the press or the fans. Funny thing is, this video said it for them and likely in spite of them. Ah, rhetoric. I guess it does betray us, providing stable enough meanings in spite of what we hope to suggest or obscure.

 

Now, clean your palette: here is Helix’s “Rock You” (warning: there is nudity!):

 

Wait a sec! Do they mean “rock,” like the music or like the physical object for which one must dig? Ugh. I am done thinking about metal. Too damn difficult.