DLS

This video is one of my favorite music videos of all time. Not only because of the song and the band, but also because of the way they chose to portray the story they are telling. Alot of bands choose to put a nice focus on the lead singer for the audience to stare and oogle and admire. But the All American Rejects chose to switch it up and bring normal everyday people to the other side of the screen . They dont just give us the audio examples of the " Dirty Little Secrets" with their lyrics, they reenforce that with the handwritten and artistically drafted personal secrets that the public hides. This amazes me because they also introduced the humor and irony of life as they show some secrets that we are trained to think of as ridiculous in contrast with the heart wrenching truths that we can all related to, or even the unthinkable ones that are secrets for a reason. It brings up the question of humanity. How are we able to put on that mask of " normality" while holding these secrets within us. We dont hold them in the lightweight form of a decorated notecard, but hold them heavily on our shoulders. And although we are sometimes ashamed, dirty little secrets have a power all their own, like a secret identity you can always return to, a secret power that someone may one day understand.

To bring this human condition back into the video, all of the notcards are hung together behind the musicians, side by side like a tapestry of failures and hopes and dreams and fears, a vinyl personalized collection of dirty little secrets combined in a way that only musicians can. Oh, AAR how do you know?