As JENNIE continues to ramp up the promotion of her debut album, Ruby, it’s only right that a second single from the album, “Love Hangover,” should get an accompanying video. Directed by Bradley & Pablo, the story begins (like most good stories) at a funeral. One where Charles Melton (perhaps still best known for playing Reggie Mantle in Riverdale), in the role of her on-again, off-again boyfriend, gives the eulogy, “Uh, the love Jennie and I had made us both feel so alive. I’d like to believe I can keep Jennie alive with all our memories that made us, us. Going to the drive-in, fancy dinners, our bowling competitions.”
In between those little “remembrances,” Bradley & Pablo flash to the scenes of JENNIE and Charles doing said things—during which we see an explosion behind JENNIE and Charles at the drive-in, JENNIE choking on a piece of food at that fancy dinner and hurtling forward in the lane of the bowling alley as she tries to throw the ball.
All of which is to say that JENNIE kept (and keeps) getting hurt in the relationship. And yet, it/she just can’t seem to die. Even despite both parties knowing better. Which is perhaps why Charles concludes his small tribute with the declaration, “I won’t let her die…again. But…I will try to let you go.” Unfortunately for both of them, JENNIE “reanimates,” as it were, while being lowered into the ground in her baby blue satin-lined coffin. An overhead shot of her “awakening” then finds her casually cooing (in a decidedly Selena Gomez-reminiscent lilt), “Fight me, fight me, fight me/You made me so unlike me/I don’t wanna talk, come behind me/Know you ain’t the one, but you might be/Who sent you, who sent you, who sent you?/Who sent you ‘round again?” (in a certain respect, it channels Taylor Swift demanding, “Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?” on “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”).
Bradley & Pablo then cut to the drive-in scene mentioned/visually alluded to before, with JENNIE not only continuing her full-fledged “coming to life,” but also showing us that things tend to get explosive/apocalyptic when these two come together. Mainly because it’s apparent that the universe is of the belief that they’re no good as a match, and wants to make its opinion obvious by bringing a Godzilla-like creature to life from the giant movie screen the pair is watching from the “safety” of their car. As this starts to happen, JENNIE keeps painting the picture, “I’m so, I’m so shady/I don’t really mind when you play me/Wanna switch it up, go crazy/I ain’t gonna leave ‘til you hate me/Who sent you, who sent you, who sent you?”
Whoever it was, they have a sadistic sense of humor. And are, thus, probably yukking it up as they watch JENNIE choke at the restaurant to the tune of Fike’s verse lamenting, “I can’t leave this bitch/I had to single, double, triple back/She gon’ leave me, but she wants to keep me on, what’s up with that?/I ain’t really got time for all that shit right now/I’m a baby father/And all those jokes she told at dinner last night ain’t had me dead/I was playin’ possum.” All of this said as Melton gives JENNIE the Heimlich maneuver, at last dislodging the piece of food (an olive) that got stuck in her throat. But, to emphasize the point that the very thing that’s slowly killing us is also the thing that keeps finding its way back in, the martini olive that gets launched into the air circles around the room, at one point hitting a Cupid-esque mini statue, before returning right back into JENNIE’s windpipe. Sort of like a bullet. Or an arrow, for those who prefer the Eros correlation.
The whooshing movement of the olive is wielded as a transition into the next scene, during which Charles throws a strike at that same bowling alley we were shown during the funeral. Because, obviously, none of their relationship activities, let alone their relationship, can be buried. Rising like a phoenix from the ashes every time. And yet, it is the hangover metaphor that works best in that, while, in theory, the pain of a hangover should help in reminding of the pratfalls of getting completely blotto (or, in this case, “drunk on love”), instead, it just makes one want to keep drinking/stay drunk in order to avoid enduring the full extent of the unavoidable (and inevitable) agony.
Hence, JENNIE’s half-lamenting, half-resigned chorus, “We say it’s over/But I keep fucking with you/And every time I do, I wake up with this love hangover/You got me pourin’ for two [no, that’s not a pregnancy reference]/I swore I’d never do it again/Until you came over/I started lying with you/And every time I do, I wake up with this love hangover, ah-oh/I swear I’ll never do it again” (this aspect of the song also possesses a dash of Olivia Rodrigo’s sentiments on “bad idea right?”).
But, quelle surprise, of course she does—channeling Britney when she shrugs, “Ah, shit, I did it again.” This being part of the symbolism of JENNIE getting sucked in—bowling ball still in hand—toward the end of the lane where all the pins are, drawn like a moth to a flame into the abyss of her love obsession. Even going so far as to surrender to pathetically and unabashedly repeating, “Call me back, call me back, call me back” before full-stop announcing, “Yeah, you know I’m gonna do it again.”
And then, in one of the final scenes of the video, JENNIE and Charles are at an amusement park (at last, a novel tableau the audience wasn’t teased with at the beginning). While Charles’ back is briefly turned, the heart-shaped balloon JENNIE is holding ends up floating her higher and higher into the sky, until she’s all the way up in space (by this point, having been rendered into a stop-motion animation version of herself).
The hangover metaphor is, thus, interspersed with the notion of being brought back down to Earth as her love bubble (or love balloon, if you prefer) bursts and she ends up landing in the very coffin we were first introduced to her in, doomed to forever repeat the same cycle of toxicity. Of course, some anti-romantics/polyamorists would argue that monogamous relationships can know no other way.
