Thomas Rhett’s Slow Down Summer Video Stings With Passing Seasons

Love’s four seasons are the star of Thomas Rhett’s vibrant new music video for “Slow Down Summer.” The action follows a young couple, living carefree until cooler weather crests over the horizon.

Colorful scenes of summer and fall are contrasted with the dead of winter during this music video, directed by P. Tracy. Rhett spends his time at a piano as the weather around him shifts from an idyllic spring or summer green to autumn’s oranges and reds and finally, winter’s white. He’s dressed appropriately for each, and the picture-book feel to his sequences complement the pop-friendly value of this song, the first from his upcoming Where We Started album.

The video’s two stars are a young woman and man, in love or something like it. Their timeline together is finite, however, something she seems to recognize as she picks up the first dead leaf. From there it’s a mix of flashbacks, from his car and her bedroom, plus scenes where each of them is alone, looking back with a sad fondness for a romance that passed through their hands like sand.

There’s an attempt to rewind and relive it all — at one point the leaves seem to be floating upward — but time only moves one way.

The video closes with Rhett at his piano amid the early summer sequence. He sits down at the piano and instead of playing the song again from the top, chooses to shut the lid.

After just four weeks, “Slow Down Summer” is nearing Top 20 status on radio airplay charts. There is no firm release date for Where We Started — a press release promises early 2022 — but previously Rhett said it’d be the first of two albums released next year.