The music video for 90s shoegaze icon Slowdive’s “Don’t Know Why” begins on an effervescent note, with a husky roaming through a meadow at dawn. The military drums and swirling guitars kick off, and Rachel Goswell's breathlessly fast and indistinct vocals begin to evoke a sense of rushed bliss: 'Put it all behind you/ Put it in a song, yeah/ I don't want to know about it/Put it in a corner/ Somewhere I can't find it/ I don't want to think about'. A close listen reveals that she is actually fleeing the remnants of a breakup: '(Bury all the magic)/ Hide it in a story/(Bury all the treasure)/ I don't wanna know about'.
The scene changes before Neil Halstead takes over the lead vocals, to a young couple attempting to enjoy some quality time together on a cloudy, cold and forlorn beach. Halstead's vocals carry the burden of envy with sublime acceptance, while foreshadowing the fuller treatment that his failed relationship with Goswell produced in "Sugar For the Pill": 'I don't remember much about it all/ Just saw you loving someone else/ And swallowing that bitter pill/ My shabby heart was acting out/ You know I don't want no one else".
Director Grant Singer describes the video as “a triptych about memory, about being lost and abandoned", and noted that it "is less about logic and more about a feeling". The final part of the video sees the young female lover morose and alone in her apartment. She heads out to purchase some food from the store, but this mundane act of purchasing sustenance takes a tragic turn when the storekeeper refuses to serve her. The final events of the video appear questionable and possibly xenophobic (several foreign men pinning her down to the floor and attempting to drag her out of the shop), but its inclusion highlights the rage and self-destruction that would otherwise be overlooked in favour of the song's mesmerizing moments of ambient escapism and melancholy: 'Threw it all upon a fire/ Took the fight to someone else'. It appears that even the most artful treatment of lost love will earn itself a few casualties.
