Watch Paul McCartney's New Video "Dance Tonight," Starring Natalie Portman

The most obviously interesting thing about the Michel Gondry-directed video for Paul McCartney's new single "Dance Tonight" is that it stars A-list sprite Natalie Portman as a gleeful, mischievous phantom delivered to Sir Paul's country house in a box containing a mandolin. Portman's mercurial I'm-there-but-also-not quality makes a song that at first seems to be a relatively simple ode to joy ("everybody's gonna dance tonight, everybody's gonna feel alright tonight") seem darker and more desperate, like it's about wanting to join a party one can't quite get to. Check it out. It's weird. In a good way.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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