I wanted to interview Chris Janson about his latest video for his new love song “Done.” But it turns out, in life and in backstage dressing rooms, Janson and his wife are a package deal.
So when the Jansons were in Chicago on Sunday night (Dec. 8), the three of us sat down to talk about what was really going on behind the scenes of the video.
And after talking to them for a while, it was obvious that what was happening was just them being them.
“’Done’ is my favorite video because it’s 100 percent about her and about us,” Janson said, “and I just like the feel of that.”
The beachy black and white video was shot at the Janson’s house in Seaside, Florida, with Sam Siske directing. Janson wrote the song with Mitch Oglesby, Jamie Paulin and Matt Roy.
No video treatment even needed to be written, Janson told me. “It had to be Kelly. There was never any hesitancy on that. I would never put my hands or eyes on another woman. I just wouldn’t make a video otherwise.
“Or I just wouldn’t have been in the video,” he added, saying that if Kelly wasn’t playing the wife, he would’ve hired an actor play to the husband.
Kelly concurred that the video for this song came naturally. “The video is just so us,”she confirmed. “The house is our happy place. It’s the dream house we finally bought. We had three days off to be at beach, so we took one afternoon to shoot the video. And it was really just us spending the day at home, frying some bacon, and the whole thing was relaxed and sexy and real. It was like we finally had some time alone, but with other people in the room.”
That made it sort of awkward, she admitted, to be rolling around in bed and dancing in the middle of the room. And when I asked her about the part in the video where Chris brings her a glass of wine as she’s watching the waves roll in, I assumed that was more fiction than fact. I mean, who does that after almost ten years of marriage? Chris. Chris does that. And more. “He is the most thoughtful human ever. He still leaves notes by my bed or on my pillow if he’s gone for the day,” she shared.
Janson echoed that sentiment, telling me that what the video doesn’t show is things they wouldn’t do in real life.
“We just wouldn’t do things we wouldn’t normally do,” he said.
“You only get to be married once — that’s it — so you better do it good.”
