“Misery” was released June 22, 2010 by A&M/Octone Records. It’s the first single from their third studio album, Hands All Over, which was released September 21 2010. The song references the demise of a relationship, although the video is more like the long torturous demise of Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine. It was used in the trailer for the 2011 film The Dilemma. It is also on the 2011 Grammy Nominees album.
The video was filmed in May 2010. Russian model Anne Vyalitsyna, who is also Adam Levine’s ex-girlfriend, plays the lead female part in this video. The other members of the band appear as innocent bystanders who end up as victims of the violence intended for Levine.
The video starts with Levine falling from above and hitting the ground. Almost immediately he is jumped on by a woman intent on seducing him. Or killing him as we later learn. She grabs him and pushes him against a chain link fence where they begin making out as he sings. It’s a very sexy scene as they lust on each other; she even bites his lower lip. That’s just the beginning of the violence. Suddenly she headbutts him, knocking him down. He comes back and holds her though and the abuse continues. She hits him in the face and knees him in the abdomen dropping him to his knees where he holds her around her waist as he still sings. He grabs her pants and tugs on them and gets a punch to the face in return. She tries to punch him again but he grabs the punch. But he takes a powerful kick to the face that knocks him several feet backwards this time. He jumps up and tries to run away and as he crosses the street gets hit by a car.
It flashes to the couple sitting at a table where the girl is caressing a knife. She begins poking it onto the table between Levine’s spread fingers in sequence. She goes faster and faster as he sings (and stares at his hand in fear) until she raises the knife up and stabs it into the back of his hand. She throws him on a small round table and they kiss. It then flashes to them in a bathroom where she’s slamming his head into the wall and then it flashes back to the table where they are still kissing. It flashes back and forth like this for awhile as she slams his head with a stall door, throws him into the wall, bangs his head on the sink and holds his head underwater. She kicks him through a glass door on the front of a building and he ends up on his backside out in the street again. He looks up just as one of the other band members gets hit by a car because he was distracted by Levine flying through the glass.
She kicks Levine off of a fire escape and then it flashes thorough a bunch of various scenes of her hitting, kicking, headbutting and abusing him in many ways. This entire time he is still singing of course. He turns and runs when he sees her with a bazooka and another band member gets blown up instead. They get locked in a kiss again and another member gets hit by a car, then she pushes him off a building and he falls, landing on a car. The girl knocks a guy off his motorcycle as he rides by, drags Levine out from under a car and throws a knife at him but once again he runs and the knife buries itself into an innocent bystander’s back. It continues like this until he finally is left lying on the ground and doesn’t get up and the song (and abuse) finally ends.