There are few music videos I'd rate as quite so silently haunting as that of "In Demand", a hit for Scottish pop rockers Texas, released in late 2000 to plug their new compilation album, The Greatest Hits. The video was directed by Vaughan Arnell, noted at the time for his collaborations with Robbie Williams (the psychological scar-fest that accompanied "Rock DJ", where Williams is seen to rip out hunks of his own flesh and muscle and throw them to his screaming cannibal fangirls? That was Arnell's), and depicts an overnight drive from London to Brighton being undertaken by band frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri. Spiteri rides in style, in a chauffeur-driven Bentley Azure, and with actor Alan Rickman (just a year before his tenure as Severus Snape began) as a fellow passenger who intermittently caresses her (no seat belts on either of them, though? Tut tut...). Things reach a tantalising climax when they stop to refuel at a Shell garage and engage in a spontaneous tango out there in the forecourt, before resuming their journey and arriving at Brighton in dawn's early light. At this point, the nocturnal travellers go their separate ways, with the suited Rickman (somewhat incongruously) retrieving a backpack from the boot of the vehicle and heading for a decrepit apartment block, leaving a doleful Spiteri to continue on to her unknown destination with only her chauffeur for company.
This Smooth Radio article sheds some light on how Rickman came to be involved in the project, although there isn't really a whole lot to the story as author Georgina Ramazzotti describes it. Rickman liked the band's output and was willing to be in the video, is the gist of it. There is a heartening epilogue to the alliance, in the acknowledgement that Spiteri and Rickman remained friends in the aftermath, up until the latter's death in 2016, and that the "In Demand" video was not Rickman's only contribution to the Texas catalogue; he also provided vocals for the band's 2015 recording, "Start A Family". The most inflammatory aspect of the article would be Ramazzotti's assertion that the video is currently "forgotten", which...well, it would be to my chagrin if so. Arnell's video is simple but effective - visually captivating, and with the presence of an equivocally contemplative Rickman giving it a persistent air of beguiling uncertainty. Perhaps it's an easy video to take for granted because Texas in general seem somewhat taken for granted these days; despite their various chart successes in the 1990s and into the new millennium, they were an offbeat band to factor into the contemporary music climate, for reasons summarised in Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review of The Greatest Hits: "They may have been able to gain momentum from Britpop, but they didn't really belong, since their sensibility was far too soulful and classy, borrowing equally from the smooth soul of the '70s, Americana fascinations, and, in a roundabout way, the sophisti-pop of the '80s."
The song itself is fairly upfront about its own meaning, with the lyrics detailing the aftermath of a bitter breakup; the protagonist indicates that the relationship did not endure because her ex was not inclined to take it seriously, although now that she has moved on and found a new, more stable partner, they seem to be having second thoughts on the matter. The protagonist chews on the implication that it took their jealousy of a third party (the fact that she is "in demand") for her ex to realise what a catch she truly was, while making it plain that she isn't looking backwards. Muddying the waters slightly is her admission that "when I fall asleep, I see that winning smile", suggesting that she does, on some level, harbor her own wistful fantasy vision of how things might have worked out under different circumstances - although she counters this with the assertion that, "When my dreams just move along, you've lost the race by miles", maintaining that it is, fundamentally, only a fantasy. Nevertheless, the pining, melancholic nature of the tune means that the song is not quite the triumphant kiss-off suggested by the lyrics, with tinges of underlying regret tempering the protagonist's affirmations of having emerged as the winner of the scenario. The first mystery, in terms of how this bolsters our understanding of what's going on in the video, is which participant in this tetchy love triangle Rickman is intended to represent - are we to see him as the third party or the ex? The aforementioned Smooth Radio article seems pretty confident that he's the latter, but I will admit that - in spite of how the video ends - my gut reading was always that Rickman is the doting new partner, and the unseen pilot of the helicopter apparently pursuing them in the second verse represents the voyeuristic intrusions of her jealous old flame..as to an extent does our own inquisitive spectatorship. I guess I'm basing that largely on Spiteri's tendency to nuzzle Rickman and gaze elatedly into the camera whenever she sings about being "in demand", implying that her current position, in the backseat of that Bentley with Rickman, represents the peak of her emotional prosperity, and implicating any onlookers (the viewers, the camera, the helicopter searchlight) as outsiders who can gape upon their one-to-one nirvana but can't get in. I'd also note that Spiteri is seen whispering in Rickman's ear during the song's taunting remark, "There's a side you'll never know", while the helicopter watches from above, aggressively probing but firmly excluded from their private exchange.
What really intrigues me about the video is the interplay between the kind of sultry dream space suggested by Spiteri and Rickman's fairy tale backseat ride - the sumptuous effortlessness with which they glide from Point A to Point B - and the mundane realities that infringe on it. There is, presumably, an intentional irony to the climax, in which the couple experience their most intimate moment in a location as thoroughly banal as a Shell garage in the middle of nowhere (or in Bordon, Hampshire, to be precise). The garage itself makes for a curious ballroom stand-in, a garish onslaught of unlovely reds and yellows littered with signage promoting humdrum consumption, and yet the glare of the forecourt lights seem as hypnotic as any mirror ball. It calls attention to the fact that, a couple of hokey shots of the full moon notwithstanding, the blackness of the characters' world is punctuated mainly by artificial lighting from various sources (streetlights, car headlights, motorway signage), by turns magic and monotonous. Night becomes an open canvas in which the couple have the deserted road predominantly to themselves, with only the occasional freight vehicle travelling in the opposite direction to remind us of the lonely drudgery of nocturnal travel happening on the sidelines of their narrative. The appearance of the helicopter yields the only inkling of prospective antagonism en route, while a squad of motorcyclists travelling their way offer a moment of affinity - they are the only fellow travellers, other than Rickman, with whom Spiteri exchanges any kind of amicable interaction, and the manner in which they flock around the vehicle gives them the appearance of a protective brigade. As for the significance of the Shell garage, I am put in mind of Edward Hopper's Gas, with the garage providing a last refuge for our amorous night owls before they're forced to venture into a forbidding unknown - or in their case, the Brighton seafront in the bleak light of day. The darkness and the journey provide a dreamscape - perhaps the very fantasy space alluded to within the lyrics - the adventure of the open road sheathing the couple in an interval of of idyllic connection, with the emergence of dawn and their inevitable return to civilisation signalling the need to come back down to reality, and to contemplate the diverging roads ahead of them. Rickman, looking notably less kempt the instant he dons his rucksack, leaves the Bentley and Spiteri and disappears into a greyer reality; she rides on, mobilised by her emotional urges but visibly wounded by her companion's departure.
If we interpret the journey as signifying the forward momentum of Spiteri's life, and her time carpooling with Rickman as indicative of the duration of the characters' relationship, then the video can be read as an ode to the exhilaration but also the potential impermanence of such connections, however powerfully felt in the moment (in that regard, the concept is quite similar to the Cartoon Saloon short, Somewhere Down The Line). As with the lyrics of "In Demand", it is built on the recognition that the highs of any relationship may eventually culminate in the need to move on, emphasising the track's unspoken mournfulness of over its proclamations of survival. And if Rickman isn't the suitor Spiteri has spent the duration rebuffing, then I guess it speaks of the precariousness of whatever lies ahead for her, and the inherent but unavoidable risks of starting over.
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