Popscreen: The Streets

The Streets

“When You Wasn’t Famous”

Dir: Adam Smith



Countless music videos and songs fetishize the performer’s own celebrity, but it’s rare that they do so in as self-deprecating and witty way as The Streets’ “When You Wasn’t Famous.” The Streets (the nom de rap of one Mike Skinner) treat us in this video to a lighthearted romp through a high-priced rehab facility, complaining all the while about the camera phones and tabloid reporters that are always on hand to capture bad behavior. How, he asks, is he supposed to snort a line in front of a bunch of strangers if they’re all taking pictures of him? Ah, the tribulations of fame.

These lyrics, straight off tabloid front-pages, are delivered to the receptionist, the psychologist, the masseuse and the group therapist at the resort-like clinic—he skips the group hug to let us know that “when you’re a famous boy, it gets really easy to get girls”—and finally to the friend who picks him up, asking “Are you ready for the relapse?”

Even though the song is all about the annoyances of people following his every move and trying to pick up famous girls, Skinner acknowledges that he’s bringing it all on himself, nonchalantly replying “I know” to his manager’s dire videophone warnings. The song is just as much a jab at stars who whine about how hard it is to be famous (and the ones who go to rehab clinics for “exhaustion”) as it is at the gossip rags. The video proclaims that he plans to keep making the wrong choices as long as he can, publicity be damned. As long as one of those choices isn’t to become self-serious, he’s welcome to them.

—Elisabeth J. Bloomberg