Page 62 - 2017 Official CMA Program

“BLUE AIN’T

YOUR COLOR”

“BETTER MAN” KEITH URBAN
DIRECTED BY CARTER SMITH
LITTLE BIG TOWN
DIRECTED BY BECKY FLUKE AND REID LONG
Filmed in retro black and white to match the rhythmic flow of this
Keith Urban ballad, this video frames the mood and simply highlights
Set out in the country, this somber, airy tale opens to a rural home a woman in distress. Urban and his band are set up on a small stage
on rolling hills with horses running wild. The narrator, Karen Fairchild, in a dive bar, when in walks a seemingly frustrated woman. She takes
stands in a bucolic field, blurred from view. Immediately, there are her place on a bar stool with a glass before her as the band plays
quick cuts to a dripping faucet, a slow-moving front porch fan, and in the background. Between shots of Urban singing and the empty
an open screen door, beckoning viewers into a tale of loneliness, bar, the lyrics are hitting her deeply. Keith sings “Chances are, you’re
jealousy, heartbreak and longing for the impossible – to go back in sitting here in this bar ‘cause he ain’t gonna treat you right,” and we
MUSIC VIDEO OF THE YEAR NOMINEES
time to change someone in order to create a better relationship in see the despair on her face. The woman gets up, plays a song on the
the present and future. As Fairchild sings to the song’s subject, “But jukebox and begins to sway to the tune. The video progresses with
I just miss you, and I just wish you were a better man,” members of her dancing alone to the music as Keith plays on the stage until the
the band, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook and Philip Sweet act very end. The camera shows the broken-hearted woman as the music
out the roles of an intertwined series of familial generations. A man’s stops, she pauses and the band behind her disappears.
old, leather-banded wristwatch is a strong piece of symbolism that
eventually passes around to the men in the storyline. As the video
concludes, final scenes show the characters running away through
fields until they stop in their tracks and reflect on the past.

“CRAVING YOU”

THOMAS RHETT
FEATURING MAREN MORRIS
DIRECTED BY TK McKAMY

Maren Morris and Thomas Rhett play cops and robbers in this thrilling
music video that resembles a movie trailer for a modern, blockbuster action-drama film. This video opens to quick scenes of foreshadowing
action, then rolls into movie-style credits. Then a mob boss character is the focus, and somehow intertwined in a criminal tale involving Rhett and
Morris. The video cuts at times to Rhett’s wife, Lauren, who plays the role of a supportive partner to Rhett at a darkened home. There, a baby is
on the way, and Rhett can break from the chaotic double life he leads. Scenes from home cut to a masked robber, played by Morris, entering a
bank and firing a shotgun in search of a safe. Rhett arrives at the bank in a vintage getaway muscle car, and he and Morris flee. Morris’s prize loot
was a wooden box from a bank safe, and she gives it to a mob boss in a dim underworld lair. Soon the cops swarm and arrest everyone. To much
surprise, Rhett’s character is revealed as an undercover officer embedded to bust the “bad guys” on a mysterious agenda. Morris is led away in
handcuffs with the villains and it leaves viewers craving a sequel!

60 THE 51st ANNUAL CMA AWARDS