Brothers Osborne Show Darker Side of Young Love in ’21 Summer’ Video
The video is a little darker than the song initially comes across, but the end treatment was intentional by the brothers.
Grammy-nominated duo Brothers Osborne has released the music video for their latest smash, “21 Summer.” The video, directed by up-and-coming director Justin Clough, captures young love and its coinciding heartbreak (with a twist!).
“‘21 Summer’ is one of those songs that a lot of people can relate to,” said TJ Osborne. “There are moments where so many things change in your life and I think one of the biggest is getting your heart broken for the first time.”
The video is a little darker than the song initially comes across, but the final product was intentional by the brothers.
“We had a lot of different ideas that we bounced around and the direction that we went with was we wanted to get a guy that was just very wet behind the ears and very green, and we wanted him to be with someone that was a little more experienced and darker,” John Osborne exclusively told Sounds Like Nashville during a phone interview. “As the story goes, you have a boy meeting the girl. He’s walking to get a job at a bar, and she picks him up and takes him there. The relationship blossoms from that. They really start hitting it off. He looks very young, he’s got a very unique, very young looking face. She’s absolutely beautiful but there’s something mysterious going on there.”
Mystery turns to intrigue as viewers (and the young man) eventually learn what the girl has been hiding all along. John explained that the unique storyline came from an idea that the Bros manager brought to the table.
“We love collaborating with our manager, John Peets. He’s also a very super creative guy. He likes the things outside the box. His vision aligns with my brother’s and mine 99% of the time. It’s a really good working relationship. We trust him implicitly and referring around some ideas we kind of got there. That was his idea but actually let’s do it this way. We thought it was awesome.”
“We actually ended up without the director coming up with a treatment, and then we found a director that we love, just the visual style of his videos,” he continued. “We took a little bit of creative control when it came to the treatment of video. We were allowed a little more artistic freedoms to pick a director that we really liked just because of the way they shoot and the lighting and stuff.”
The collaboration concluded in a movie-like storyline whittled down to just under four minutes. The end result is a longtime coming for the two, who wrote the song years ago and have always had it in their back pockets.
“‘21 Summer’ is one of the oldest songs that we’ve written as Brothers Osborne. My brother and I have been writing for a long time,” added John of the song they co-wrote with Craig Wiseman. “It has stuck around for a long time. We recorded it multiple times until it got to the way it sounds on the ‘Pawn Shop’ record.”
Check out the video for “21 Summer” above. Pawn Shop, featuring “21 Summer,” “Stay a Little Longer” and “Rum,” is available now.
