Explaining the Video: Cobra Starship “Living in the Sky with Diamonds”

The newest video for Cobra Starship, “Living in the Sky with Diamonds” from their CD Hot Mess, is a simple but beautiful story about love, loss and fruit.

We begin with a girl who is walking by herself, perhaps a consequence of her taste in hair, make-up and clothing.

She walks alone through the city. How do we know it is the city?

So there.

Cobra Starship, on the other hand, is also lonely. They are being forced to play a show in an empty theatre, possibly due to the fact that Hot Mess as an album was, well, a hot mess.

I mean COME ON. I tried to like it, guys, but seriously? And what’s really upsetting is that it’s your “mainstream breakout” CD and it’s so damn weak compared to your previous albums. It’s like you took your tongues out of your cheeks and planted them firmly in the metaphorical asshole of mainstream radio play. I’ve got nothing against groups I like getting more famous and more people figuring out why I loved their music, but not when the music that gets them noticed is crap compared to what I know they can do.

But I digress. Here’s a picture of Ryland being hot:

ANYWAY, our heroine(?) is walking alone in a street market. Maybe she’s looking for some new clothing, but maybe, just maybe, she’s looking for love.

Or, you know. Apples.

Now, what could be WITH this apple imagery? Possibly to represent temptation? After all, there’s the story of the apple in Eden. There’s Snow White, where a woman’s undoing is because of her temptation with an apple.

Or maybe, just maybe, Cobra Starship is reaching further back. To the Greeks, the golden apples of the Hesperides were said to be able to make one immortal. Hercules was challenged to return one during his great labors. The Norse had a simliar mythos involving golden apples and immortality.

And of course, the Greeks also told the myth of the apple of dischord, used by Eris, goddess of dischord and chaos, to begin an argument at a wedding she was not invited to. Could Cobra be implying they are some sort of force of ultimate dischord in this world?

…of course, there’s also the fact that apples are DAMN tasty.

Anyway, as our heroine(?) walks, she starts to think, boy, I wish somebody would toss an apple at me.

And then somebody does!

So she eats it, in an extreme close-up:

…wait a second, wait a second. Apples are not made of glitter! APPLES ARE NOT MADE OF GLITTER!

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?

OH GOD, THE GLITTER IS COMING FROM INSIDE HER MOUTH!

Okay, I’m gonna be frank with you guys: this is either a really lame superpower or the weirdest STD I have ever seen in my life.

Also, honey, could you not spit that out like that? Anyone who’s worked with glitter knows that it gets EVERYWHERE:

WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU?!

It even makes it’s way to the still-empty venue Cobra is playing at.

Oh hey, look! Somebody showed up for the concert!

Wait. Wait.

SHE CAN SPIT GLITTER TOO?

Or are we supposed to think that by eating an apple and awakening her glitter powers, the first girl has been transformed into this blonde with more managable hair?

…no, wait.

Blue-girl’s still running around sprinkling glitter everywhere. Fuck the WHAT?

…in closing: Ryland with glitter.

Disagree with my thoughts on the video? Well, watch the whole thing for yourself right here.