Boy Band Icons Of The Past Inspire The Wanted’s “Walks Like Rihanna” Video Concept

Video Still From The Wanted's "Walks Like Rihanna

Mercury/Island Records boy band The Wanted released the music video for their new single “Walks Like Rihanna” this week.  It depicts the guys of the group in a music video planning meeting, when the video’s director walks in and stops them in their tracks. This is because they feel that she “Walks like Rihanna.” While they remain consistently impressed with her, she proceeds to describe different settings for them to consider shooting.  The catch is, that the scenes she’s describing to them all come from classic boy band videos of the past.

As she’s describing her video pitches, the scene’s transition to The Wanted impressively pull off their own, very on point interpretations of memorable videos from groups like *N Sync, Backstreet Boys, and Take That.  They flawlessly create iconic imagery and choreography from “Bye Bye Bye”, “I Want It That Way”, and “Back For Good.”  Then at the end, their hottie director with the mesmerizing walk realizes that it’s better for The Wanted to be themselves, and joins them dancing around in a warehouse setting to cap it all off.  It is fun from start to finish.

The only thing we would nitpick is, that although the girl playing the director hottie is stunning, she looks nothing like Rihanna, so the name drop loses a bit of its swag.  We would have loved to see the Pop star play the director character.  The star power would have catapulted the video to a whole other scale, and provided her a fun opportunity for PR away from her tabloid oriented personal life, and recent break up with controversial singer Chris Brown.  Both The Wanted and Rihanna are part of the Island Def Jam family. Therefore, in our eyes it would have been a win win.

Chances are this fact wasn’t lost on the group or their all-star manager Scooter Braun. Maybe we’ll get a better look at what brought the video together when their Ryan Seacrest produced reality show The Wanted Life hits the E! Network in June. “Walks Like Rihanna” comes from their new album Third Strike. Cheers.

The Wanted

“Walks Like Rihanna”

From: Third Strike

Mercury/Island Records

*N Sync

“Bye Bye Bye”

From: No Strings Attached

Jive Records

Backstreet Boys

“I Want It That Way”

From: Millennium

Jive Records

Take That

“Back For Good”

From: Nobody Else

RCA Records