Tags
1990s, Closing Time, Dan Wilson, fatherhood, Feeling Strangely Fine, Grammy nomination, last call, Music, music video, One Hit Wonder, Rock, Semisonic, two continuous shots
Closing Time (MCA, 1998)
Closing Time is a song by American rock band Semisonic. It was released in March 1998 as the lead single from their second studio album Feeling Strangely Fine. Their signature song, it was written by Dan Wilson and produced by Nick Launay. The single reached number one on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and the top 50 in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It is certified silver in the UK and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song in 1999. While the song is about people leaving a bar at closing time (also called last call), and widely interpreted as such, drummer Jacob Slichter has also indicated that the song was written by Wilson “in anticipation of fatherhood” and that it is about “being sent forth from the womb as if by a bouncer clearing out a bar.”
The music video was directed by Chris Applebaum. It features two continuous shots, running side by side on the screen. One side shows the band playing the song in a rehearsal space. The other side features a woman (played by Denise Franco) as the singer Dan Wilson’s girlfriend. As the video progresses, Dan and his girlfriend switch sides of screen, as they attempt to meet up. At the end of the video, they both wind up at the same nightclub. However, they still end up missing each other by mere seconds and never meet. The “trick” of the video is that each shot was done as one long, continuous shot, with no cuts or editing, and therefore relies on proper timing to get the two sides of the video lined up properly.