I Dare You to Explain What's Happening in the Video For Rita Ora's 'Your Song'

The video begins with Ora, donning a tan suit and about three dozen too many items and accessories with it, addressing a board room filled with well-dressed skinheads while having sexy visions of another skinhead she appears to have made out with earlier in the day. As we progress through the incomprehensible narrative, we see Ora dance backwards, walk backwards, fall backwards, and drive backwards until finally arriving on the bank of a river with the skinhead she remembered making out with earlier.

This would have made something resembling good sense had the rest of the world moved in reverse along with Rita—as it does in the videos for Coldplay’s “The Scientist,” The Pharcyde’s “Drop” (sort of) and, excuse me, Enigma’s “Return to Innocence”—but in “Your Song,” Ora is the only character moving backwards. And she’s only doing so through space, not time. When we see her car drive in reverse through London on its way to meet up with Mr. Skinhead, we’re observing a vehicle driving recklessly, not reversed imagery meant to, I dunno, represent the past? Or a memory she’d like to return to?

This gets even more difficult to follow upon revisiting the opening. When we see her imagining the skinhead she kissed while in a meeting with the skinheads she didn’t kiss, we’re not watching her remember something that has already happened, we’re watching her imagine something that could—or perhaps even predict it! I think? But even that makes no sense, because if she did know her one true skinhead love was waiting for her on a river bank, it wouldn’t explain why the hell would she had to walk/dance/drive backwards to get to him.

Your Song’s got me feeling like I’ve, I’ve gone nuts, I’ve gone nuts, I’ve gone nuts.