What can I say about The Darkness’s “I Believe In a Thing Called Love” that hasn’t already been said? I have no idea. I don’t do any research for this blog. I will say this, though. When I first heard The Darkness I thought their music was stupid. Then, I watched this:

I immediately thought they were awesome, or possibly totally radical. The Darkness is definitely not a joke band, but they don’t take themselves too seriously. This means that rather than being a shitty Queen they were suddenly a campier Queen.

The Darkness also seem to be Joseph Campbell aficionados. The video begins with our hero being born.

He emerges from his watery womb, shows us his butt, and is then molested by a purple monster.

This is very similar to many Navajo myths where a young brave’s loincloth is lifted by a winged buffalo on his thirteenth birthday.

He then assembles his band of adventurers who emerge, robot-like, from the walls.

They receive their call to adventure and quickly face their first foe, a giant crab.

As you know, in psychology a crab represents hidden feelings. I recall a fable from west Africa where a woman is perpetually hounded by a crab who reminds her that menopause can happen to women as young as 40. Here the crab represents our hero’s inability to avoid giant crabs no matter how goddamn hard he tries.

The crab is quickly defeated, however, with the power of rock.

Note the direct rip-off of Queen. Totally radical.

That was only an initial test, however. To achieve his goal our hero must travel through hell.

We are all familiar with the story of Orpheus who traveled to hell while on tour and had his van broken into. Naturally, he had no insurance.

Our hero must now atone with his father, represented here by a giant squid.

I don’t need to explain the obvious symbolism here. A connection you might have missed, though, is that squids are notorious about not turning the heat up regardless of the weather.

Once again the power of rock is called upon, but here it must be extremely focused. So focused that a lightning beam comes out of his head.

Thus victory is achieved.

There is so much to love about this video. It is consistently ridiculous. It has three different guitar solos. It allows you to see each member of the band.

This is actually the only place the video goes a little wrong, because the guitar player is not very interesting on screen. The first guitar solo is awesome, but that is done by the front man.

The second and longest guitar solo is done by the guitar player, though. He mostly just stands there and plays. In order to jazz it up the director decided to put him in front of a wall of amps. And the wall is extremely large. It is also extremely monotonous visually.

This is essentially a tiny man standing in front of a blank black wall. Come on! You are The Darkness! He should be standing on an enormous vagina representing his issues with his mother!

Don’t worry guys, I forgive you.

-PTD