Pop Screen: Missy Elliott

I know this middle-aged jazz saxophonist who swears that Toni Braxton’s 1996 hit, “Un-Break My Heart,” is the most musically fascinating pop song of the twentieth century. I guess he must be right, because hella people have been revisiting that song’s tormented legacy this year! First, Eurotrash man-band Il Divo translates it into Italian, and now, Missy Elliott’s in a really messed-up version of that song’s video!

In the film adaptation of the Braxton classic, everyone’s favorite contralto was all weepy because her boyfriend got blown up in a motorcycle accident. In Finnish director Antti Jokinen’s Missy clip, we see Miss Demeanor’s beau make a similarly shuffling exit from the mortal coil. Now, if the video were as lame as the self-pitying album version of the song, it would be ’96 all over again. Luckily, Missy added an amazing new verse, and Jokinen realized that it’s way cooler to watch a murder than an accident.

Everything looks like an opium hallucination in the video, and Missy gets to do some real-ish acting, too. We’re barraged with non-chronological images of Missy getting arrested, Missy’s boy flipping his car, Missy contemplating married life, and, in the coolest part of the video, Missy getting sedated in a mental ward.

It’s there that the music gets all Aphex Twin on us, while Missy throws in a titillating rap about how her homeboy was sexually inadequate (even pre-mortem) that makes Toni look like Celine Dion. Oh, wait, Toni Braxton actually is kind of like the Celine Dion of R&B. Wait, didn’t Celine Dion also have a video about her boyfriend dying in a car accident? For that matter, has anyone ever seen them in the same room together?

Back to the Mystery Machine, Scooby!

-Staff Writer Abe Riesman can be reached at riesman@fas.harvard.edu