Chris Young: Is That You?

Lady in Red (and Yellow and Green and....)

Chris Young had a good year. He established himself as a legitimate Nashville leading man with a rich voice and enough boy-next-door looks to carry off the sexy video for “Tomorrow,” the highlight, musically speaking, of his career to date. His hit “Voices” remains one of those songs that is so singable and upbeat that it was released twice. He toured with Jason Aldean, pumping up a rowdy crowd admirably.

However, at this critical juncture — following up on the sexy guy from “Tomorrow,” the people in charge of his new video, “You,” have practically dug him a hole and asked him to jump in. There are plenty of bad videos. This is one of them.

Not only is the storyline profoundly corny — Chris Young is a grease monkey working a rural gas station, playing his geetar in between pumping gas and cleaning windshields for passers-by, all of which happen to be cute women who turn out to be friends ­— but the styling is so out of date it’s painful to watch. The premise is that this sort of gas station attendant can only be found circa early 1960s, therefore it has to be shot in a grainy black and white. Only, to make each individual lady stand out, parts of their outfit have been color-isolated to match the color of their car. So we have red lady, yellow lady, turquoise lady, and so forth. The color isolation mode on your camera is one of those extras that you should never, ever use. The first time someone shot a woman in black and white lying on a bed of red! rose petals might have been cool, but anything after that is a cliché at best, and visually boring and predictable at worst.

The gimmick in Chris Young’s video gets old after a few seconds, yet you are forced to endure several of these color swaps through the length of the video. It’s so annoying that it drowns out the music and makes you want to change the channel. Who at Sony thought up this bunch of shite?

Chris Young is a rising star. Please, please, please, put someone with a clue in charge of how he looks. His fans will thank you.