Synopsis

Kathy Mattea brings the playful car song to life with a colorful, retro-styled video built around a classic Oldsmobile. She performs with an exuberant band while the automobile takes center stage as both prized possession and source of comic swagger. The visual treatment matches the song's affectionate humor, celebrating the romance of old cars, loud engines, and small-town racing bravado. Rather than treating the vehicle as mere transportation, the video presents it as a larger-than-life character in Mattea's spirited tribute.

Factoids & Trivia

• "455 Rocket" was released in 1997 as the first single from Mattea's album "Love Travels." The song was written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.

• The car featured in the video is identified as a 1959 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Sport Sedan.

• Mattea described the song as an unusual "chick/car song," reversing the more familiar male-centered muscle-car fantasy. She was drawn to Welch's intelligent humor and the affectionate twist in the lyric.

• The video helped highlight Mattea's comedic personality, a side of her that she associated with her childhood admiration for Lucille Ball.

• "455 Rocket" won the 1997 Country Music Association Award for Music Video of the Year.

• The recording itself was largely built around the first take. Mattea said the musicians played with unusual abandon because they did not think the performance was being recorded, giving the track a loose, spontaneous feel that suits the video's unruly energy.

• A surviving account of the recording notes that drummer Jim Keltner drops his drumsticks and laughs at the end of the song.