Synopsis
Hoobastank perform on a football field while high school students sit at desks around them, creating an intentionally strange classroom-in-the-open setting. The video intercuts the performance with images of students and yearbook-style portraits, emphasizing the world of school memories and social hierarchies. Its visual concept reflects the song's taunting message to someone who ignored the band before success but might later claim to have known them. The contrast between ordinary student life and the band's public performance gives the video its sarcastic edge.
Factoids & Trivia
- "Remember Me" was released in 2002 as the third single from Hoobastank's self-titled debut album.
- The single reached No. 23 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart, giving the band another substantial alternative-rock hit after "Crawling in the Dark" and "Running Away."
- Two versions of the recording exist. The album version has a longer intro, while the video version opens with a shorter guitar introduction.
- Doug Robb has described the song as being connected to the experience of people who overlook you before you become successful, then suddenly act as if they have always been close to you.
- The yearbook imagery reinforces the song's concern with memory, reputation, and the way people rewrite their connection to someone after that person's circumstances change.
- Robb later recalled that the record company wanted a more conventional romantic video for the song. The band rejected that approach, helping lead to the deliberately offbeat football-field and classroom concept.
- The clip belongs to the early major-label era of Hoobastank, when the group was moving from its Southern California club background into regular music-video rotation.