The phrase “falling in love” seems oxymoronic. Love is supposed to be filled with affection, warmth, and tenderness, while falling is often filled with scrapes, cuts, and bruised egos. Regardless of the pain, we inevitably fall time and time again. Ben Kessler‘s video for his new song, “Concrete,” illustrates what can happen when falling for someone takes a turn for the worse.
Starring Ethan Frank, who also shot and directed the video, it follows three friends who get caught up in an unfortunate love triangle. Kessler’s song makes the video multifaceted. While we don’t hear anything the actors are saying, the song serves as Frank’s plea to his crush, to choose him over another guy. The song begins with a simplistic finger-picked guitar and Kessler’s vocal. As the video progresses, so does the song with the addition of percussion and faint yet bright synths. Kessler sings, “Hold me / Tell me that you really wanna know me / I’m falling fast and it’s on me / But I’m one fall away from the concrete,” as Frank is chased down the street by his crush’s love interest, quite literally tripping and nearly falling on the concrete.
Kessler also questions whether this is something that he’s ready for as he sings, “Ooooh / What if I’m not ready for ya? / Ooooh / What if you don’t want me at all?” This hesitation coincides with the actions that Frank conveys, showing that’s he’s not completely sure how to make the jump from friends to more, with the additional obstacle of his crush being into someone else. By the end of the song Kessler has made what he wants evident, as has Frank, but as it often goes Frank decides he has to choose himself and blocks his crush in an attempt to stop pining over someone who didn’t want to catch him.
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