Faking a smile with the coffee to go

I was at the gym last night (that’s right baby!) battling away on the treadmill when ‘Bad Day’ by Daniel Powter came on MTV Hits. As any of you gym goers out there will know, anything barely listenable that promises to kill another 3 minutes of treadmill or bike induced torture is a blessed relief. Now I don’t know much about this Powter character but he seems to have one hit wonder written all over him. I could be doing him a huge disservice of course, and the album could be full of similarly bittersweet Radio 2 pop gems. The other thing we know about him is that he’s bald. Or should I say, we don’t know that but, The Edge style, he wears a hat ALL THE TIME – in his video, on his TV appearances and in every single publicity shot of him. What other conclusion are we supposed to draw?

Anyway, much as the song is nice enough, the video is absolutely fantastic. I suggest you head over to here right now and watch it. I was there running (alright walking, but I had the machine on an incline) with a big stupid grin on my face at the sheer genius of it. The basic premise is that a girl and a boy who work in skyscrapers that face each other are having a series of endless bad days, sitting in boring meetings, dealing with objectionable colleagues, going through the same places in the city but just missing each other, wondering if love is out there for them, until they bond through their amusing and harmless graffiti on a subway poster. The video ends as the girl comes out of her office in the rain, hails a taxi and the guy comes out of his office and holds an umbrella up for her and they know immediately that they’re perfect for one another. It’s perfect – it honestly looks like the song is advertising a John Hughes film from the 80s – it’s that good.

Talk about knowing your demographic, I imagine that when the video makers and the record label watched the final cut of this video they were cracking open the champagne before the second chorus. The girl and the guy both work in jobs that allows them to wear just cool enough indie clothes, the girl is the one from The OC who went out with Seth Cohen for a while. My favourite bit is when they’re on their trains home and both focus on couples sharing their journey home. Basically, the whole message of the video is ‘as long as you’re with someone you love those bad days won’t seem nearly so bad.’ Love is the answer and you know that for sure.

I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff, it appeals to the part of me who thinks that Andrew McCarthy doing that thing where he wipes the collecting tear from his eye before it has time to fall down his cheek is a classic movie moment - Christ I even think You’ve Got Mail is a pretty terrific Christmas romance. I only wish that the video was made up of clips from a film – I’d be first in the queue. Maybe I should write it.