Michael Ray is opening up about the vision behind the video for “Get Her Back.” Released as the lead single off his latest EP, Dive Bars & Broken Hearts, the video for “Get Her Back” was directed by Spidey Smith, he and the singer collaborated on the concept.
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The video raised some eyebrows, as the lead actress resembles Ray’s ex-wife Carly Pearce. It ends on a cliffhanger as Ray’s ex is seen slipping and falling next to a pool, leaving her fate up to the viewer’s imagination. Ray says that the ending isn’t meant to be jarring, but rather a nod to the country music videos he grew up watching.
“I’m a big fan of 90’s country, I’m a big fan of 90’s music videos,” Ray tells American Songwriter, citing The Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” and Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls” as videos from that era that had shocking endings. “Me and Spidey wanted people to fall back in love with the music video, and were like, ‘How are we going to do this?'”
Ray points to Travis Tritt’s trilogy of videos for hit singles “Anymore,” “Tell Me I Was Dreaming” and “If I Lost You” released throughout the ’90s as direct inspiration for his own video, particularly that of “Tell Me I Was Dreaming.” The second installment in the trilogy, “Dreaming” continues the story of Tritt’s character, war veteran Mac Singleton, whose pregnant wife Annie dies after slipping and hitting her head on the dock while cleaning a boat.
Ray created a similar scene, ending the “Get Her Back” video with his ex having a dramatic phone call on the pool deck when her foot slips and she falls and hits her head on the ground. “I go, ‘Tracy [Lawrence], Travis [Tritt] had these videos and they were in a row, so you couldn’t wait for the next Tracy or Travis video because they were like movies,” Ray explains of the “true crime” concept. “That is what we wanted people to get out of this and have that excitement of what happens.”
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Throughout the video, Ray is seen in an interrogation room being questioned by an officer about his ex-girlfriend’s mysterious accident, as clips of the couple in love contrast the ones of them fighting as he catches on to her suspicious behavior. The video ends with the police investigating the crime scene as Ray sings, I just wanna get her back/For everything that she did behind closed doors/All the lies and the signs that I ignored/’Cause I swore that I loved her, but now that it’s over.
Referencing the recent popularity of true crime podcasts and documentaries, Ray admits it was a “weird line for us to walk” when coming up with the concept for the video. “That was the whole idea of this video was doing that type of miniature movie,” he continues. “How do we capture a song that says so much in three minutes visually.”
Dive Bars & Broken Hearts was released in June 2023.
Photo by Spidey Smith / Essential Broadcast Media
