Today’s music video of the day is Coming Up Roses, Elliott Smith’s first solo music video.  Elliott Smith would go on to become one of the most influential indie musicians of the 90s, though he never seemed to get the recognition that he deserved when he was alive.  Even his Oscar nomination for composing Miss Misery for Good Will Hunting was overshadowed by all the bombast surrounding Titanic and My Heart Will Go On.

This is a simple video, one that will look familiar to anyone who has ever seen an indie video from the 90s but it feels very appropriate for Elliott Smith and his style of music.  This video was directed by Ross Harris, who was himself a former child actor.  Remember Joey, the little kid who was invited up to the cockpit in Airplane?  That was Ross Harris.

Here are the lyrics for Coming Up Roses, composed by Elliott Smith:

I’m a junkyard full of false starts
And I don’t need your permission
To bury my love under this bare lightbulb

The moon is a sickle-cell
I’ll kill you in time
Your cold white brother alive in your blood
Like spun glass in your sore eye

While the moon does it’s division
You’re buried below
And it’s coming up roses everywhere
You’ve gone red roses fall in love

The things that you tell yourself
They’ll kill you in time
Your cold white brother alive in your blood
Spinning in the night sky

While the moon does its division
You’re buried below
And it’s coming up roses everywhere
You’ve gone red roses

So you got in a kind of trouble
That nobody knows
It’s coming up roses everywhere
You’ve gone red roses.