This music video acts as a film trailer, with a narrator and actors talking through it. However it is not an actual film trailer but just acts like one. It starts with a narrator saying “Her name is Alexia Wolf, a sexy assassin with a troubled past.” This already links to the lyrics as the title “howling for you” relates to her surname, Wolf. Whether she is the one who is ‘howling’ for someone out of anger or others are ‘howling’ for her out of love is not yet explained in the video.
Throughout this narrative it shows her as a little girl, her father making medieval era weapons and then her father being killed. When this happens she drops her toy dinosaur and runs for her life, as the murderer of her father picks up the toy dinosaur. It then shows her as an adult looking focused and angry. The narrator says “Now this kittens all grown up, and the claws are coming out” also relating to the title as howling and claws are words both related to wild animals, especially wolves, which links to her surname yet again.
We then see her having sexual intercourse with a long haired man who afterwards says “That was amazing.” She turns and looks at him infuriated and then there is a shot of some chains and another of the male characters fist tightly clenching until it goes limp. We then discover that he is dead, but throughout this we also realize he is not the murderer of her father as there is little resemblance between the two. She stands at the door and says “you’re welcome” in retaliation to his comment about the sexual intercourse earlier. During this scene the narrator says “Bad guys beware, she’ll bang you, but then she’ll hang you.”
The lyrics of the first chorus that play throughout this first part of the video go “I must admit, I can’t explain, any of these thoughts racing through my brain, it’s true, baby I’m howling for you.” At first, looking at these lyrics alone would lead someone to believe they’re about a person and that the theme is love. When watching the music video however, it becomes apparent that the lyrics meaning can vary. Alexia Wolf ‘can’t explain the thoughts in her brain’ because she witnessed her father dying and anyone going through an experience like that has a tidal wave of thoughts and emotion that can’t be easily deciphered even by the person feeling and thinking them. Now the narrative starts to edge more towards her ‘howling for you’ out of anger, ‘you’ being the man who killed her father.
“There’s something wrong, with this plot, the actors here, have not got a clue, baby I’m howling for you.” These are the lyrics to the second verse, which could relate to her lying to the ‘actors’ as they ‘don’t have a clue’ that she is planning to kill them. ‘Actors’ could refer to all the characters as the music video is clearly supposed to be a film trailer but doesn’t seem to be 100% serious, especially towards the end where it seems to become more of a parody.
The next few shots show her meeting a man and the two having passionate sex. Instead of looking at this man in anger she seems to look at him affectionately. When the narrator says “She vowed never to love,” we see her standing in front of a glass case which contains her dinosaur that was taken by the murderer of her father. Then the narrator speaks again. “But when she falls for the same man who killed her father…” It now becomes clear that this man she has just fallen in love with is in fact her father’s murderer. We are then introduced to a new character. He is an African-American man who is dressed as a priest. He makes a motion with his hand to another suited African-American man as if to say “stop” or “quiet.” He says to the other man “wow! It’s about to go down.”
We then see a montage of lots of different scenes that would be in the fictional film as the song lyrics go into a chant “Nana nana na, nana nana na”. The video seems to stick to a spaghetti western theme with some modern touches such as a female protagonist. A few shots in we see Alexia vow to ruin her father’s murderer’s life and cuts his eye. The rest of the montage now appears to involve him seeking revenge on Alexia for his eye. A handful of new characters are seen throughout, most of which seem to be hunting down the protagonist Alexia Wolf, such as an Asian cowboy, a female dressed in black leather with two knives and a rather large man muscular man. However amongst these characters is a young girl who looks much like the protagonist. This characters is not explained but in my opinion she could be one of two things. Most likely she a fellow assassin and friend or relative of Alexia’s. Looking deeper into the narrative she could even be something more symbolic such as the physical embodiment of Alexia’s conscience or revenge that only she sees. The two African American’s seem to play a big role in the story as they are seen in many of the shots throughout the rest of the video.
“Mocking bird, can’t you see, little girls got a hold on me like glue, baby I’m howling for you.” This line could be interpreted as coming from the villain’s perspective. The little girl he’s referring to could be Alexia as when he first met her when killing her father she was only a child. She has a ‘hold on him like glue’ because she took his eye, and he cannot rest until he takes revenge. Revenge is in this circumstance an emotional ‘glue.’
“Throw the ball, to the stick, swing and miss, catcher’s mitt, strike 2, baby I’m howling for you.” To me this comes across as a comparison between the villain’s hunt for Alexia and a baseball game. He’s trying to score a home run against her to beat her but continuously misses, just like he tries to have her murdered numerous times but fails.
Then the more comedic and parody based part of the video comes in. Alexia sits at a table with the other female assassin. She says “He wasn’t my first love.” The other female asks a question out of surprise “There was one before!?” to which she receives the answer “No, two.” Again the chanting chorus starts and we are introduced to two more characters. These are played by the two men that make up the band ‘The Black Keys.” They are dressed in stereotypical Mexican clothes (although they are not actually Mexican).
We now see another montage of action clips but this time the narrator introduces the actors who play the characters. A lot of the actor and director names seem fictional;
“Chris Marss Pilero
Trisha Helfer
Trisha Helfer
Sean Patrick Flannery
Corbin Bernson
Diora Baird
Christian Serratos
Sir Todd Bridges”
The Narrator then introduces the band. “And introducing Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach as ‘Las Teclas De Negro.” This means the band name ‘The black Keys”
In Spanish. The music video finally ends with the narrator saying “She’s howling for love, she’s howling for revenge, she’s howling for you.”
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