Music Video Breakdown: ‘Closer’ by The Chainsmokers

It’s definitely not the first song to lament over the end of a romantic relationship, and yet the Chainsmokers and Halsey’s “Closer” music video seems to bring something suspiciously sinister to a clichéd storyline. “Closer” follows a tumultuous relationship between Halsey and Andrew Taggart. The video is composed of clips from their time together and apart, tampering with the temporality of the video. This repetition—paired with the close shots, the repeating lyrics, and the grayish tones—suggests that Halsey and Taggart are trapped in time, never aging and forced to go through the motions of kissing, touching, and singing over and over again. “Closer” is not just a breakup song. It’s a cry for help.

The majority of the video is close shots of Halsey and Taggart kissing, over and over again. It all seems to be happening in the same room, which may come off as banal and repetitive. The tight frames suggest confinement—there is no negative space. Your eyes are forced to concentrate on their faces, like how Halsey and Taggart may be forced to keep up this charade. And because these clips are constantly played through all four minutes and six seconds, it seems like the kissing and touching are endless. “We can’t stop singing,” Halsey’s disgruntled expression seems to say. “When are we going to put on real clothes?” Taggart’s constant shirtlessness begs to ask. “Help us.” The desperation is thickly layered in the video.

This same desperation is brought to the surface with the lyrics. “And I, I, I, I, I can't stop / No, I, I, I, I, I can't stop,” Halsey sings. “No, I literally cannot stop. When can we escape from this dimly lit room?” would be a more detailed phrasing. At 3:10, Halsey and Taggart start aggressively singing “We ain’t ever getting older,” over and over again, building in tension with every repetition. Why the intensity? Perhaps they really are not growing older. The two are trapped in time, never aging. Several years after the breakup, the two see each other at a party again in the video. And they look as young as they did when they were still happy in love.

Appearances can say a lot, as evidenced by their youthfulness, and by the overwhelming gray tones in the video. Gray can symbolize many things, including age, decay, and the passage of time. In this case, the gray envelops the video, suggesting that time should be passing. And yet Halsey and Taggart remain as youthful as ever. The grayness implies that because time cannot undergo its natural course with the couple, it must find a way to pervade somehow—hence the urgently gray tones in the video.

So will Halsey and Taggart ever escape this timeless state? Will they ever find their way out of the music video? The answer is unclear. At the end of “Closer,” the two characters walk outside and seem to still be on unhappy terms. They look at each other, eyes heavy with meaning and regret. Their relationship is over, but will their role in this ever-playing music video be?

—Staff writer Grace Z. Li can be reached at grace.li@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @gracezhali.

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