Music Video
Directed by Alan Ferguson, Simpson filmed the music video for the song over about 48 hours on December 6– 7. The desert scenes were filmed on the first day in Acton, California, while the indoor straitjacket scene was filmed on the second day in Burbank, California. Kenna, a co-writer of the song, played a reporter in the video. In an interview with Billboard, she described the video as having surrealist influences, mentioning Salvador Dalí and Being John Malkovich. Her boyfriend (now ex-husband) Pete Wentz described it as "probably the weirdest video I've seen of hers" and said that it, like the song, "has this kind of multiple personality". The video for the single premiered on December 19, and Simpson appeared on the December 20 episode of MTV's Total Request Live for the video's premiere on the show. Simpson described the video as being "ambitious" and "like an art piece" and said that it involves going into "another world and never know what's real". The "Outta My Head" music video had been streamed over two million times as of March 2008. By early September, the video had been viewed more than five million times on YouTube. As of July 2009 the video has been streamed over six and a half million times, making the video her most watched video on the social network YouTube.
The video begins with Simpson lying on a couch in therapy; her therapist, apparently based on Sigmund Freud, has fallen asleep. Soon the walls of the office melt away into a surreal desert landscape (including a Dalí-esque melting clock), where another, dark-haired version of Simpson sits atop a floating Rubik's Cube and the giant head of a statue in Simpson's likeness lies on the ground. There are also frequent flashes of Simpson on the couch in therapy again, this time in the desert rather than the office. Simpson is pursued by people but trips and falls to the ground. Afterwards she listens to a recording and begins singing along, but soon she is surrounded by interviewers, photographers (one of them having a camera for a head), and autograph-seekers, and she faints. When she awakes, she finds she has been tied up by tiny people(a reference to Gulliver's Travels); when she breaks free, she again awakes, this time in a bedroom. The bedroom wall is rolled away to reveal a studio set where another version of Simpson is singing and dancing in a what seems to look like a dress by Gareth Pugh, similar to Kylie Minogue's video of "In My Arms". As the real Simpson watches from her bed, where an interviewer appears and begins asking her questions, the robot Simpson eventually malfunctions and begins to explode, falling to the ground. Simpson tries to escape from this scene, fighting off interviewers and cameramen, but is captured by doctors from a mental institution and taken away in an ambulance. In her room, Simpson, now in a straitjacket, finds herself again surrounded by interviewers and cameramen; this time she bounces off the walls and spins around in the air as the video ends.
Read more about this topic: Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)
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