David Guetta has long been known for creating anthemic collaborations veering on the dangerous side of being too unpalatably cheesy to listen to–yet he has, until now, managed to carefully toe that line. From “When Love Takes Over” (featuring Kelly Rowland) to “Titanium” (featuring Sia), there has been no shortage of the “feel good” vibes regarding matters of love that Guetta has help infect the dance floor with–even though Calvin Harris basically usurped his precedence around the time Rihanna’s “We Found Love” came out in 2011 (Avicii, who rose to prominence circa the same era, on the other hand, seemed to offer a totally separate, different sort of douche bag DJ vibe).
Perhaps, however, with the advent of his fifties, Guetta has lost his ear for what people want to hear on a dance floor (and even in the pathetic privacy of their own “homes”) altogether. Thus, we have a near parody in terms of trumpeting being addicted to attachment: the sixth single from his seventh album, titled, oh so originally, 7 (even Beyoncé caught on to that idea by her fourth album with 4). On said single, “Don’t Leave Me Alone,” Anne-Marie (who sings the type of songs that would make you think she’s much younger than twenty-seven) seems to gleefully prostrate herself to her non-interested object of affection with the overly urgent, “Don’t you ever leave me, don’t you ever go/I’ve seen it on TV, I know how it goes/Even when you’re angry, even when I’m cold/Don’t you ever leave me, don’t leave me alone.” I mean, first of all, what the fuck does being cold have to do with getting left behind? Like you need this person next to you all the time to steal his body warmth in addition to his will to live?
Despite having only released one album (earlier this year, in fact), Anne-Marie is no stranger to bathetic subject matters, as evidenced by such tracks as “2002” (yes, year song titles are really trending, aren’t they?) and “Then,” always favoring the exploration of her self-fulfilling prophecy of being abandoned, predictably disappointed by some two-dimensional cliche of a man who got too bored (or too distracted by another vag) to stick around. Likely, this is why Guetta thought of her when considering who to feature on a song called something as unabashedly codependent as, “Don’t Ever Leave Me.” In fact, it’s worse even than a ditty as retro in sentiment as every man’s worst nightmare of overkill devotion, “I Will Follow Him.” It has nothing to do with the fact that Anne-Marie is a woman either–for the same level of patheticness also didn’t work for Peter Cetera on “If You Leave Me Now” or Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus on “Don’t Leave Me.” Though, it’s true, women do talk about being left far more frequently (hear also: Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” Lana Del Rey’s “Music To Watch Boys To“–on which she states, “So I play my music, watch you leave”).
The video itself lends an added touch of desperation as an alone in real life Anne-Marie takes to using virtual reality to ensure that she can find somebody to love, as Jefferson Airplane once insisted we all do (though it’s unclear if maybe they met just somebody to love for the night, considering the late 60s were very loose in terms of monogamous definitions). To further heighten the overall comicality of her neediness, a poster in her room ironically reads: “No Gods No Masters.” Yet, in deifying this concept that a relationship is her god, Anne-Marie enslaves herself to someone else’s whims and, therefore, inevitable disappointment. Even in the virtual world, where, no matter how many landscapes they “enjoy” together, the third act outcome will always be the same as it is in life: he leaves. It is simply encoded in the “average” male (average, in this instance, being a generous way to say: all of them).
So yes, in the end, quelle surprise, she does end up alone, even driving away her virtual reality partner from being so goddamned needy and into it (openly admitting to obsessively reading every text thread over and over in between saying shit like she doesn’t know if she could live without him–even though Mariah already has the monopoly on that emotion). To really drive home that point of being abandoned in a state of coldness and aloneness (like Natalie Imbruglia described), we get a final scene of her against the backdrop of the artificial snowy mountains looking around for her virtual man as though he might actually return to someone who kept insisting so desperately that he stay. One supposes it’s a salient statement on “analog” feelings being just as much of a problem in manufactured reality. But then, hasn’t Black Mirror already taught us that in a far less irksome way?
