Look! A Kelly Clarkson video for “People Like Us” broke out in the middle of Nokia and BMW commercials! Seriously, I know that product placement in music videos is nothing new, but when it is as blatant as it is in this clip or in the new Jennifer Lopez video, it takes me right out of any story that the video is trying to tell.
And in this case, Clarkson is trying to tell a story, though I”m not really sure what it is. In a device straight out of “The Wizard of Oz” or “Pleasantville,” the clip takes place in both black & white and color. At the start, she is a scientist, presumably studying “People Like Us,” people who live in color, like those of us described in the song as “We are all misfits living in a world on fire.”
[More after the jump…]
But she”s got a secret, Kelly does… As she goes in to comfort a girl who”s living in color, she reveals that she”s a Pepper too, oops, I mean, she reveals that she”s one of them, a person who”s in color, and she”s a spy in the house of black & white… or something like that.
But after conferring on her Nokia phone and conducting some more lab tests, color-coded Kelly grabs the little girl and they jump into her red BMW and they escape through a tunnel that leads them to a splendiferous world full of color and shiny happy people, all of whom, presumably, have Nokia phones and BMWs.
“People Like Us” is the third new song off of Clarkson”s “Greatest Hits: Chapter One.” She is currently wrapping up the recording of her Christmas album for release later this year.