Music Video Breakdown: 'Don't Wanna Know' by Maroon 5

In skimming through Maroon 5’s entire music video history (which spans the course of over a decade—feel old yet?), it’s pretty safe to say that nothing the band has created is quite like the music video for their latest single, “Don’t Wanna Know.” Surprisingly, the video is a deliberate departure from their most recent offerings, entirely avoiding the sultriness of videos like “This Summer” and “Animals” in favor of something, well, more eccentric, to say the least. In brief, if you came into the video with the sole expectation of a shirtless Levine singing heart-wrenching lyrics into a standing microphone, you’re in for a shock.

The video opens with a close-up shot of Adam Levine waking up one morning as a giant pseudo-insect-tortoise. This sounds unreal. It’s not. Levine wears a worn-out expression, obviously dissatisfied with the way his life’s going despite the fact that the video depicts him living in a lavish mansion, doing yoga, and blending kale smoothies. Throughout the course of the video, we’re introduced to other equally giant and bizarre caricatures, such as an innocuous eggplant and a hemi-tomato with tentacles (seriously, this is all real). Notably, all the caricatures run away from hordes of teenagers who try to capture them through a mysterious app on their smartphones.

Given teenagers with smartphones running around the street, capturing outlandish creatures, the video clearly references the “Pokémon Go” craze that exploded during the past summer. Still, though the fact that the video alludes to Pokémon at least elucidates the cartoonish costumes, to say that the video is merely a play on the game would be to completely neglect the video’s underlying message. Maroon 5, a band that’s been under the scrutiny of the public eye since the early 2000s, uses the inanity of “Pokémon Go” to lightheartedly address an issue they’re all too familiar with—the suffocating nature of runaway celebrity culture.

The video incorporates several larger-than-life scenarios that only serve to accentuate this theme. In one scene, for example, a somehow mammalian-like bee with antlers must flee its elliptical to avert the public’s voyeuristic gaze. In another, an amorphous snow pea with a disturbing amount of leaky vitreous humor does a bit of leisure reading at an outdoor café but is ultimately chased out of its spot by a crowd and inevitably captured by a young woman’s smartphone. Even Levine’s insect-tortoise character himself, who is romantically interested in a rather disappointingly normal tangelo (Sarah Silverman), is precluded from confessing his feelings by a throng of smartphone-bearing teens.

Feel uncomfortable yet? Well, perhaps that’s the point. Each scenario’s absurdity is deliberate in its being so profuse as to be jarring. Through “Don’t Wanna Know,” Maroon 5 offers the idea that maybe celebrities aren’t people who should be sought after like pocket monsters. That maybe we should respect that celebrities enjoy going out to cafés, being in relationships, or going on an elliptical once in awhile. And that perhaps the difference between those who are celebrities and those who aren’t isn’t nearly as dichotomized as we make it out to be.

By Courtesy of Pitchfork

—Staff writer Patricia M. Guzman can be reached at patricia.guzman@thecrimson.com.