The music video, released about six weeks after the song on August 14th, 2015, also further strengthen the song’ s message by depicting three different families dealing with loss, poverty, and imprisonment. In the first family, a soldier, played by Adam Levine, is leaving his wife and daughter(“ Princess”) to return to military service. The man and the woman in the second family are fighting because of the bills they have to pay. In the third family, the father and daughter are separating due to the daughter’ s arrestment. Though all families seem to struggle from obstacles in life, eventually, they are shown overcoming these hardships with love. The soldier and his family embrace and salute each other a tearful good-bye. The man and woman hug and dance in reconciliation and encouragement. The daughter flies into her father’ s arms and the two hug tightly. When she gets on the police car, her father follows her and tries to catch a last glimpse at her through the car’ s window until the very end. Such waiting, forgiving, sharing the pain together, and believing the person despite everything, is only possible when there is true love.
True love, as expressed in the song, is one that is unconditional and unchanging despite the various‘ If’ s’ in life. Sadly, the statistics are portraying the society drifting in the opposite direction as people are starting to look for people to love who meet their requirements. Such love dies out as soon as those requirements become unfulfilled due to unemployment, bankruptcy, arrestment, and other misfortunate events.“ If I got locked away / And we lost it all today / Tell me honestly, would you still love me the same?”, Adam Levine asks, a little melancholically to my ears, for he would surely know that in today’ s world, the answer for most people would be‘ no.’ When faced with the excruciating situations the song is describing with‘ If’ s’, conditional love prevalent nowadays will break quickly and easily.
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