Maroon 5″s Adam Levine finds himself inadvertently on the wrong side of the law in the ambitious, yet headscratching, video for “Payphone” featuring Wiz Khalifa. The clip debuted on E! News tonight.
The video opens with a scene straight out of “Falling Down”: Levine is bruised, battered, and shirtless, but he, somehow, still has a quarter to use the phone. We jump back in time to earlier in the day to a suited Levine as a bank desk jockey who can”t get the attention of his dreamy co-worker.
[More after the jump…]
But nothing makes a girl notice you like playing the hero. So showing total disregard for any of the other poor schmoes in the bank, when bank robbers show up, Levine gets his courage up, grabs one of their guns and grabs his girl and flees.
Now, somehow, the police think Levine”s the bad guy. Maybe that”s because he keeps running instead of explaining to them what”s going on. Then in another inexplicable twist, he leaves his honey and steals a sporty roadster–one that Wiz Khalifa has just left at a valet. A police chase ensues–the kind that the local news in Los Angeles thrives on covering. A really big time collision happens that must have cost a pretty penny. Levine gets away, drives to an abandoned overpass, and his car, for some reason, explodes and we catch up to where we came in.
The rest of the band is relegated to the bank robbers, who are seen in a very quick scene, but otherwise this is Levine”s show.
I keep thinking I”m missing something in terms of his being in on the heist and that”s how why the whole thing plays out the way it does, but if that”s the case, I can”t find anything in the video that explains that.
So here are my questions if you have any answers (I fully know I”m overthinking it):
1. Why doesn”t he stop and talk to the police?
2. Why does he leave his girlfriend instead of taking her on the joyride?
3. How does Wiz Khalifa get to the bridge underpass since Levine has already stolen his wheels?
4. What makes his car blow up?
5. Who is he calling at the end? The girl, who still probably doesn’t know his name?
UPDATE: Even though we could embed it, it looks like E! has a 24-hour window. Click here to watch the video.