Naughty Boy feat. Sam Smith – La La La
2013 · Directed by Ian Pons Jewell
8.8M Likes
Best comments
1.“Sees random kid covering his ears saying 'la la la'... agrees to walk 216,320 miles with him.”
More comments
- 2.“I covered my ears and said 'la la' to my mother... she threw a slipper at me.”
- 3.“I tried this while my dad was yelling at me... *Belt has joined the server*”
The story
A little boy in La Paz gets screamed at by a grown man, so he plugs his ears and sings until the noise goes away. That's the whole engine of this video, and it works like a fairy tale. Director Ian Pons Jewell wrote it for one kid: Franco Miranda, a boy he'd met while shooting a government corporate video in Bolivia. Franco had never acted. He nailed the audition anyway.
From there it turns into a Bolivian Wizard of Oz. A shaman hands the boy a chow chow puppy. He picks up a Cement Man (based on local stories of a drunk's lost soul buried in a building's foundation), a dancing traffic cop wrapped in wool, and an ice cream seller who gives the Cement Man a heart. The crew shot it in four days across La Paz, the Salar de Uyuni salt flats and the Cerro Rico mine at Potosí, where the boy faces down El Tío, the demon of the mine, and drowns out his spells.
The song was the first UK number one for both Naughty Boy and Sam Smith, and it topped the charts in 26 countries. The video won Best Video at the 2013 MOBO Awards and the VEVO Best New Artist prize at the UK Music Video Awards. More than 1.3 billion views later, plugging your ears and humming still beats arguing.
