Norah Jones Gets Her Revenge In "Miriam"

The dewy sweet girl next door Norah Jones that fans fell in love with in 2002 has been scorned and she wants you to know about it in her new music video for her exquisitely angry "Little Broken Hearts" ballad, "Miriam." As fans of Jones' new summer album already know, the song “Miriam,” is the most chilling she has ever recorded, and the onetime soft-jazz wunderkind throws us another curveball and takes one of her Danger Mouse-produced album's creepiest, most unsettling songs and gives it a full noir treatment.
The deceptively soft-spoken singer has always been known as somewhat quirky and mysterious, both musically and personally. Now it's Jones who is out for revenge and shows dark, twisted side in new album, where she dispatches with the calm niceties and unleashes a vengeful rage and fury few knew she had within her, after her boyfriend's infidelity sent her back into the recording studio. The spooky murder ballad "Miriam" describes the way she murdered her cheating boyfriend and his other woman respectively. Jones starts with what appears to be a nice stroll through the pond, but ends up taking a very dark turn.
"Obviously I care a little bit about what people think, but I try not to," Jones told Exclaim! Magazine "I feel pretty secure in who I think I am and what I know I do. It's not like I do anything crazily different [on 'Little Broken Hearts'], just a couple of songs were a little mean. It's not like I'm such a bad girl. I'm an adult. I'm not a little kid... It's not like I'm pulling one over on people. I am a nice person." The line between quietly soothing and disgustingly creepy has always been a thin one in popular music. A good music video can certainly help such a song over the borderline, as Jones' new clip does here.
Adding grim visuals to the already dark lyrics, the Phil Andelman-directed clip is the perfect visual marriage to the song. The camera moves slowly paced melodies create an uncomfortable sensation and snake-like, producing a video that provides a couple of shocking reveals and a juicy coda feel that song produces. It finds Jones, as a scorned '50s housewife, floats alone in a boat with a blood-speckled oar at her feet. The crime of passion, by a jealous lover, is deliberately laid out, though we never know for sure the method. However, the video solves that mystery.