POPSCREEN: Gavin DeGraw

Gavin DeGraw is the Maxim to Aerosmith’s kiddy porn. His new video, “In Love with a Girl,” features O.C. babe Kristen Cavallari in what looks like a strikingly toned down version of 1994’s “Crazy.” She plays a department store worker who hides under the cashier during close-down to let her boyfriend in after-hours for a night of G-rated megastore fun. The video is a mash-up of scenes from the couple’s crazy night in various departments and shots of DeGraw and company singing and performing beneath a garish chandalier while constantly smiling. The intended concept of the video, in my best judgment, is “Gavin DeGraw is doing a girl. Gavin DeGraw is going rock ‘n’ roll.”

The video climaxes a little over a minute in, when the sultry Cavallari grabs a video camera and makes her way to the department store show beds, where she grinningly flops down. What next, you ask? A pillow fight—not the metaphorical kind, a real, jump-up-and-down, pillow fight. Despite all the build-up, DeGraw shows that he won’t go farther than what the average 10-year-old is allowed to watch on YouTube, and the rest of the video is filled with naughty behavior appropriate for “The Little Rascals.”

This is why this music video fails as a rock video, although it makes a decent pop video: it fits all ages, showing a clean-cut singer-protagonist and a blonde TV star with a girl-next-door appeal. But the viewer is left feeling much like the girl in the video, waiting for satisfaction that DeGraw simply can’t deliver. Eventually, the video looks like a tribute to Aerosmith, only without the daring, the cutting-edge feel, or the freshness that made their love story videos epic. “In Love with a Girl” takes the pain and the sex out of love and makes it look like a ride in a shopping cart. In one sentence, DeGraw lost sex, love, and rock ‘n’ roll in the department store.

—Roy Cohen