Before they were messing around with your gym equipment and wasting time in abandoned warehouses, Chicago-based alt rockers OK Go were doing something very pedestrian by their standards: Imploring some wanton audience to put things in perspective.
An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song (or AICLOS, for those of you acronymically inclined) has always been about exegesis of the trivial: Those nonsensical lyrics you just can't get out of your head from a ditty no one cares about. OK Go has rendered that mission difficult, as it is quite impossible to divorce the band from their ingenuity in crafting visual representations of their music that stun and get people talking. Don't believe me? Walk into the next bar you come across and ask the patrons about OK Go's debut album, and they'll sit there, mouths agape. Ask them about those guys that made that music video on a treadmill, and you'll get laughs and pats on the back.
OK Go has taken an era where the music video has been rendered pointless, thanks to MTV's constant marathon of teenagers doing awful things, and embraced the viral nature of today's video content. One could imagine them shooting themselves out of cannon at bullseye comprised of vials of infectious diseases, if only for a couple thousand more hits on YouTube.
"Get Over It" is the band's first official music video, and its nod to the band's future half avant-garde, half bored Americans at work audience is a super slow-motion ping pong game in which the melody halts entirely. Seriously. That's it. The rest of the time they're playing their instruments and having random objects thrown at them.
Like OK Go's other songs, the visual representation has nothing to do with the lyrical content of the song, which is ostensibly a rant to a friend of either gender for complaining about things that are beyond your control and to simply enjoy what pleasures you have in life. Whether one of those pleasures is a ping pong game or a faithless wife is something you'll have to decide for yourself.
Of course, without reading the lyrics and instead simply reading the title of the song, one could surmise that OK Go's been pulling a fast one on us for the last several years. Their nonsensical videos could simply be a commentary on how seriously the music industry was taking itself, though considering these guys shortly postdated things like this, it's hard to take that position seriously.
Maybe I shouldn't be reading too much into the music of a band that named itself after the thing you say while impatiently waiting in line for the waterslide.
Showing posts with label music video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music video. Show all posts
Monday, July 1, 2013
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Shallow End Presents: An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song "Every Other Time" by LFO
Today we take a look at that band from the "Always Save" tier of the late '90s boy band boom, LFO. As is custom on the Inexplicably Close Look, we're not interested in the group's megahit "Summer Girls," or even that entry on Jennifer Love-Hewitt's resume that just has to be screaming do-over, "Girl on TV" (though I've seen a few episodes of "Ghost Whisperer," and I must say perhaps Ms. Love-Hewitt would be better served returning to the realm of staring meekly into the camera as some has-been croons in her face...).
No, today we cast our gaze on that third and perhaps least entry in LFO's 15-minute oeuvre, "Every Other Time." While "Summer Girls" performs the perhaps forgivable feat of sending the mix between pop culture, hip hop and white guys in untucked dress shirts back fifty years ("Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets"? Really? There's no method in that madness...), "Every Other Time" performs the much more impressive feat of sending women's rights back to Susan B. Anthony days.
Let's take a look at the relationship dynamic that is explored in the song. Its title comes from the singer's admission that he's in love with his significant other on odd-numbered occasions. So, at the very least, we're dealing with an individual who's remaining with his partner either out of convenience, or a sincere lack of knowledge about what the phrase "so in love with her" actually means.
And these other occasions are not marked by indifference. Oh no, that would almost be forgivable. The give-and-take between these two is downright reprehensible, and the lack of lyrical talent only makes their dramatization in verse more painful for the listener.
"Keep it up home girl, don't you quit, you know the way you scream is the ultimate"
Yep, that sounds like a physically healthy relationship.
"Sometimes she's wrong, sometimes I'm right"
Dr. Freud would agree.
"But then I think about the time that we broke up before the prom and you told everyone that I was gay, OK"
Who knew that a girl who exclusively dresses herself in ridiculously marked-up clothing from a certain retailer would react in such an immature way?
You know, when you come to think of it, the entirety of this group's library reflects some kind of incompatibility to connect with women on a fundamental level. "Summer Girls" is about a girl that stays about just long enough to wallpaper the closet before moving on, and not having the bad sense to bring Chinese take-out to chow on after sex. And "Girl on TV" is perhaps the finest sonnet to objectification I've ever heard in a pop song (OK, I take that back, my mind intentionally skipped over that classic "Back that Ass Up" from Juvenile).
What you're left with, after all of this, are a trio of glossy, cartoonish prep-boys that fear commitment on a very fundamental level. I mean, if you can only love some one "every other time," and you think that's a sufficient way to connect with another individual (I believe they use the wonderfully trite image of two dolphins swimming around in each other's hearts), well — perhaps you're well suited to that bubble-gum sheen of the late '90s. Or you'll sound like one of those curmudgeons from the early '20s, too.
Or maybe I'm looking too closely.
No, today we cast our gaze on that third and perhaps least entry in LFO's 15-minute oeuvre, "Every Other Time." While "Summer Girls" performs the perhaps forgivable feat of sending the mix between pop culture, hip hop and white guys in untucked dress shirts back fifty years ("Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets"? Really? There's no method in that madness...), "Every Other Time" performs the much more impressive feat of sending women's rights back to Susan B. Anthony days.
Let's take a look at the relationship dynamic that is explored in the song. Its title comes from the singer's admission that he's in love with his significant other on odd-numbered occasions. So, at the very least, we're dealing with an individual who's remaining with his partner either out of convenience, or a sincere lack of knowledge about what the phrase "so in love with her" actually means.
And these other occasions are not marked by indifference. Oh no, that would almost be forgivable. The give-and-take between these two is downright reprehensible, and the lack of lyrical talent only makes their dramatization in verse more painful for the listener.
"Keep it up home girl, don't you quit, you know the way you scream is the ultimate"
Yep, that sounds like a physically healthy relationship.
"Sometimes she's wrong, sometimes I'm right"
Dr. Freud would agree.
"But then I think about the time that we broke up before the prom and you told everyone that I was gay, OK"
Who knew that a girl who exclusively dresses herself in ridiculously marked-up clothing from a certain retailer would react in such an immature way?
You know, when you come to think of it, the entirety of this group's library reflects some kind of incompatibility to connect with women on a fundamental level. "Summer Girls" is about a girl that stays about just long enough to wallpaper the closet before moving on, and not having the bad sense to bring Chinese take-out to chow on after sex. And "Girl on TV" is perhaps the finest sonnet to objectification I've ever heard in a pop song (OK, I take that back, my mind intentionally skipped over that classic "Back that Ass Up" from Juvenile).
What you're left with, after all of this, are a trio of glossy, cartoonish prep-boys that fear commitment on a very fundamental level. I mean, if you can only love some one "every other time," and you think that's a sufficient way to connect with another individual (I believe they use the wonderfully trite image of two dolphins swimming around in each other's hearts), well — perhaps you're well suited to that bubble-gum sheen of the late '90s. Or you'll sound like one of those curmudgeons from the early '20s, too.
Or maybe I'm looking too closely.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Shallow End Presents: An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song "Some Postman" by The Presidents of the United States of America
In an effort to post with this blog with increasing frequency, and because of a new-found awareness of the obscurity of my music taste while running with an iPod in the cold weather, I've decided to delight you, dear Shallow End reader (all three of you), with some of my thoughts on the random-ness that comes across my shuffle screen. This will be a semi-regular feature (read: whenever I'm not pulling my hair out about a quantitative reading assignment) so stay tuned!
This edition of the inexplicably close look centers on that kooky mid-90s favorite alt rock band, The Presidents of the United States of America. You'll remember them as those guys who wrote that song that Weird Al covered into a Forrest Gump spoof. Well, soon after the trio went on an indefinite hiatus for reasons unknown to this blogger. Perhaps the gents didn't want to be lumped in with the scandals of the second half of the Clinton presidency. Or people started buying their peaches at organic wholesalers.
In any event, the Presidents returned in 2004 with "Some Postman," returning to that odd world in which many of the band's songs take place where apparently the mail carriers are malevolent and Smurfs are 30-feet tall. The angst-filled power pop ditty is told through the eyes of an upset lover whose melodramatic missives are being intercepted by a disturbingly voyeuristic postman. Think Newman, but one who exclusively eats chocolates meant for another.
The song, perhaps self-consciously, is riddled with anachronisms. We're supposed to expect that lovers, in the age of sexting and Skype, are still trusting their love notes to employees of the federal government? And that said employee is clocking in at 6 a.m.? And ignoring the obvious breach of political correctness (why can't a female post carrier be pilfering my sonnets)? The band seems to come to terms with this just before the final verse, as a mournful cry of "1993!!!" follows the chorus. If only, Presidents. If only.
Of course, we could be missing the point entirely. Perhaps the postman is, himself, fictional. And the Presidents are singing out the uncertainty of love. Maybe that lover crying waiting for the package wants to believe there's some mean, hound-dog evading man in a safari hat hoarding her box of chocolate roses from Danny, who's totally committed to her but also wishes to finish his dissertation in a town full of young co-eds longing for a slightly older and grizzled art history Ph.D. candidate. Perhaps some postman is simply a Love in the Time of Cholera-esque metaphor about the idyllic nature of love and the inability to every truly know that it is being returned to you.
Or maybe I'm looking too closely.
This edition of the inexplicably close look centers on that kooky mid-90s favorite alt rock band, The Presidents of the United States of America. You'll remember them as those guys who wrote that song that Weird Al covered into a Forrest Gump spoof. Well, soon after the trio went on an indefinite hiatus for reasons unknown to this blogger. Perhaps the gents didn't want to be lumped in with the scandals of the second half of the Clinton presidency. Or people started buying their peaches at organic wholesalers.
In any event, the Presidents returned in 2004 with "Some Postman," returning to that odd world in which many of the band's songs take place where apparently the mail carriers are malevolent and Smurfs are 30-feet tall. The angst-filled power pop ditty is told through the eyes of an upset lover whose melodramatic missives are being intercepted by a disturbingly voyeuristic postman. Think Newman, but one who exclusively eats chocolates meant for another.
The song, perhaps self-consciously, is riddled with anachronisms. We're supposed to expect that lovers, in the age of sexting and Skype, are still trusting their love notes to employees of the federal government? And that said employee is clocking in at 6 a.m.? And ignoring the obvious breach of political correctness (why can't a female post carrier be pilfering my sonnets)? The band seems to come to terms with this just before the final verse, as a mournful cry of "1993!!!" follows the chorus. If only, Presidents. If only.
Of course, we could be missing the point entirely. Perhaps the postman is, himself, fictional. And the Presidents are singing out the uncertainty of love. Maybe that lover crying waiting for the package wants to believe there's some mean, hound-dog evading man in a safari hat hoarding her box of chocolate roses from Danny, who's totally committed to her but also wishes to finish his dissertation in a town full of young co-eds longing for a slightly older and grizzled art history Ph.D. candidate. Perhaps some postman is simply a Love in the Time of Cholera-esque metaphor about the idyllic nature of love and the inability to every truly know that it is being returned to you.
Or maybe I'm looking too closely.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Change in the Sofa: A Look Back at the Music Video
Later this summer, MTV will resurrect perhaps its most popular and controversial original series of all-time, Beavis and Butthead. While MTV hasn't released much information about the form in which the series will make its return (let's hope, for the love of God, Hollywood's current crush with "gritty reboots" doesn't find its way into this revival. I don't think I could stomach a Cornholio with a painkiller addiction and a Butthead driven to revenge-fueled madness after being laid off of his job following the housing bubble burst), it is highly likely several staple features of the show will return. Chief among these necessary elements, of course, should be the duo's hilariously-misinformed criticism of contemporary music videos.
But, have you taken a look at the stable of potential fodder for MTV's poster-boy idiots this year? Let's try and overlook the fact (like MTV's marketing department has done for years) that the medium has been rendered culturally irrelevant as a result of the format switch of the station in the early 2000s that is an easy target for hack stand-up comedians throughout this fine country. The music video, as an art form, has lacked any kind of significance since about 2002, placing the medium in the same category as fax machines, pay phones, and the Seattle Mariners. Prior to MTV's complete abandonment of the staple element of its brand since the early 1980s, however, there were several technical achievements in music video production that elevated the medium, at its height, to a level of certifiable artistic pursuit that in many cases exceeded the quality of the songwriting itself. This post celebrates those videos during the heyday of their cultural significance, beginning with perhaps the finest example of how a music video could transform a pop music hit into a cultural phenomenon.
Michael Jackson
"Thriller"
From Thriller, Epic Records, 1982
Director: John Landis
Michael Jackson's Thriller featured several memorable music videos with "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," but it was his decision to develop this long-form video with its own self-sustained narrative (and the most-mimicked dance sequence in the history of popular music) that stands the test of time as perhaps the first big push in what a music video could be. No longer did we need to have a rock band performing in an abandoned warehouse, or (perhaps more popular in the early 80s) crazy-looking artists simply crooning into a camera as their shellacked hairstyles bobbed up and down on cable-ready television sets.
A-Ha
"Take on Me"
From Hunting High and Low, Warner Bros., 1985
Director: Steve Barron
Embedding disabled for this video. Click link to watch on youtube.
There were actually two versions produced for this 1985 breakout hit, but it is Steve Barron's version that introduces animation in a uniquely stunning way for the period that was often poorly imitated (see: Paula Abdul's "Straight Up") but not duplicated until the early 2000s (as we'll see later). The story told in the video itself may have little (if anything) to do with the content of the song, and I'm still not certain where the evil biker gang fits in, but damn if the rotoscoped music clip hasn't penetrated deep into the fabric of our collective popular culture consciousness.
Peter Gabriel
"Sledgehammer"
From So, Geffen, 1986
Director: Steven R. Johnson
Peter Gabriel and Steven R. Johnson channeled their inner Tim Burton and produced this stop-motion masterpiece in the midst of some rather vapid hair band fare that populated much of the music video scene of the mid-1980s. I'm not sure if they intentionally filmed the stutter-step dance moves of Peter Gabriel or they put some of those mo-cap balls on me during my moves on the dance floor at prom. Either way, the video simultaneously oozes cool and inspires nausea.
Pearl Jam
"Jeremy"
From Ten, Epic Records, 1992
Director: Mark Pellington
Apparently, by 1992 we'd tired of zombies, Dr. Katz-style sketchy animation and mouths that morph into clay bullhorns to scare children with music videos, so Eddie Vedder and Mark Pellington turned the camera on the legion of angst-y teens created by the new grunge movement. What resulted remains, to this day, one of the most haunting psychological portraits in the medium that brilliantly captures the raw emotion of just one of many of the instant classics that found their way onto Ten. The controversy created by "Jeremy" kick-started the confrontational career of the grunge era's last great legacy on today's music scene.
The Beastie Boys
"Sabotage"
From Ill Communication, Grand Royal Records, 1994
Director: Spike Jonze
From the "Police Squad!" homage in the video's opening seconds to the grainy video effects driving home that 1970s vibe to the stone-faced selling of the parody by the Beasties, "Sabotage" has classic satiric video written all over it. Throughout the years, the group has produced some hilarious videos with varying degrees of success. This is their "Citizen Kane," folks.
Weezer
"Buddy Holly"
From Weezer (The Blue Album), Geffen, 1994
Director: Spike Jonze
Perhaps it's a little vanilla to list two Spike Jonze videos back-to-back, from the same year nonetheless, but you can't include a list of great music video concept ideas and leave out the Fonz. I mean, let's leave aside the technical accomplishment of the video, which was mind-blowing back in 1994 (this is before Lucas went back in and changed the Gredo/Han Solo thing, remember? Putting Rivers and the boys on the set of "Happy Days" convincingly simply for a music video made me feel, as a seven year-old snot-nosed kid, as though I were the Indians and Spike Jonze the Spaniard had just made fire jump from his hands right in front of me). Joanie loves Chachi, but I love this video (cue laugh track).
Jamiroquai
"Virtual Insanity"
From Traveling Without Moving, Sony Soho Square, 1996
Director: Jonathan Glazer
You have to give English acid jazz band Jamiroquai props for a few things in this video. The first would be totally pulling off that plush Abraham Lincoln imitation cranial wear. The second would be capturing the essence of their album title in a nice, neat four minute video package. Finally, actually making something called "acid jazz" relevant in a way that didn't involve illegal drugs, a soundproof garage, and a complete DVD set of the Battlestar Galactica series.
Korn
"Freak on a Leash"
From Follow the Leader, Immortal/Epic, 1999
Director: Todd McFarlane
So, clearly Korn went a different direction with the animation than A-Ha did some fifteen years prior. Props to them for having the stones to hire acclaimed comic book artist McFarlane, who apparently laid the groundwork for the film "Eight Crazy Nights" with the character models. I'll admit, I wasn't a huge Korn fan, but I was a big supporter of any one who had a chance to knock off certain boy bands from the number one spot on Total Request Live, which I watched every afternoon when I got home from school (I still love you Carson! Even though you're only on at 2:30 AM and I honestly couldn't care less about your 2,345,763rd interview with Fred Durst). That's a nice profile of your fan base, too, Korn. Do I need to bench 250 just to get a pre-order of your new CD?
Fatboy Slim
"Weapon of Choice"
From Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, Skint/Astralwerks, 2000
Director: Spike Jonze
I imagine the pitch for this video went a little something like this:
Fatboy: For this video, I just want a guy dancing in a lobby. He's wearing an old timer suit, with slacks that rest just in the sub-lingual area. Midway through his foxtrot, gravity gives way, and he starts dancing on the ceiling.
Label: Hmm. I like it, but in order for it to be fully enjoyable during an acid trip, we're going to need the perfect man to play your dancer.
Fatboy: Christopher Walken just got done shooting "Catch Me if You Can." He should be available.
Label: Here's a blank check. Make this damn video.
The rest is history.
Gorillaz
"Clint Eastwood"
From Gorillaz, Parlophone, 2000
Director: Jamie Hewlett
This video taught us that it could be possible for pop stars to develop a massive following in spite of being not strictly human. It is a theory that continues to be tested today with the success of Lady Gaga.
The White Stripes
"Fell in Love with a Girl"
From White Blood Cells, XL, 2002
Director: Michael Gondry
What more should we have expected from the brilliant mind that gave us "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and the slightly-less intelligent same mind that gave us "The Green Hornet"? The White Stripes always had a knack for producing fiendishly cool music videos, and the length of their first single that exploded off White Blood Cells in 2002 gave them the outlet necessary to unleash this dizzying feat of childhood engineering over the top of what is essentially a straightforward old-time rock and roll love song. When I tried to recreate it in my room, all I ended up with was something that looked like a house and four swallowed red bricks.
Johnny Cash (Nine Inch Nails cover)
"Hurt"
From America IV: The Man Comes Around, American Recordings/Universal Music Group, 2003
Director: Mark Romanek
Perhaps the best praise for Johnny Cash's final music video should come straight from the lips of the original songwriter, Trent Reznor, in an interview with Alternative Press in September 2004:
"I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure."
Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Can't Stop"
From By the Way, Warner Bros., 2003
Director: Mark Romanek
Embedding disabled by request. Click link to watch video on youtube.
RHCP has been known for some rather interesting visual interpretations of their hits ("Scar Tissue," "Otherside," and the trippy Crazy Taxi-looking "Californication"), but this accompanying short for the third single off an extremely underrated album in their oeuvre is perhaps the most arresting. Where can I snag a fluorescent backpack, Anthony?
Yellowcard
"Ocean Avenue"
From Ocean Avenue, Capitol, 2004
Director: Marc Webb
Okay, so it's a tad too derivative of both "Run Lola Run" and "Groundhog Day," but if you can make the complicated premises of those two films work in less than four minutes over a standard pop song, you've got to be doing something right, correct? Doesn't the lead singer look like a guy you stuffed in a locker in seventh grade? Oh, no, that's right. That was me.
Beck
"Girl"
From Guero, Interscope, 2005
Director: Motion Theory
Beck may have hit his songwriting peak with "Odelay" in 1996, but his best music video came almost a decade later. Taking a page (see what I did there!) out of MAD magazine, the video features some interesting city planning choices. An otherwise forgettable love pop-py love song becomes a type of real Escher-ian nightmare.
Vampire Weekend
"Oxford Comma"
From Vampire Weekend, XL/DGC, 2008
Director: Richard Ayoade
I'm not a huge fan of the avant-garde, or the one-take camera trickery, but for some reason in this video the two fuse together to create an enjoyable interpretation of a single I preferred to "A-Punk," which ultimately rocketed this New York indie band to fame in the summer of 2008. It could be the clear Strokes influence on the guitar riff or the use of the Futura font (also employed by Kubrick, Wes Anderson, and the animated series "Doug"). Whatever the reason, "Oxford Comma" seems to have the artistic creativity, inspiration and style that endears it to the video shorts of yesteryear. And yes, the punctuation decision in that last sentence was very consciously-made.
Obviously, there are many other great videos that visually or conceptually elevated the form. Let me know what some of your favorites are below!
But, have you taken a look at the stable of potential fodder for MTV's poster-boy idiots this year? Let's try and overlook the fact (like MTV's marketing department has done for years) that the medium has been rendered culturally irrelevant as a result of the format switch of the station in the early 2000s that is an easy target for hack stand-up comedians throughout this fine country. The music video, as an art form, has lacked any kind of significance since about 2002, placing the medium in the same category as fax machines, pay phones, and the Seattle Mariners. Prior to MTV's complete abandonment of the staple element of its brand since the early 1980s, however, there were several technical achievements in music video production that elevated the medium, at its height, to a level of certifiable artistic pursuit that in many cases exceeded the quality of the songwriting itself. This post celebrates those videos during the heyday of their cultural significance, beginning with perhaps the finest example of how a music video could transform a pop music hit into a cultural phenomenon.
Michael Jackson
"Thriller"
From Thriller, Epic Records, 1982
Director: John Landis
Michael Jackson's Thriller featured several memorable music videos with "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," but it was his decision to develop this long-form video with its own self-sustained narrative (and the most-mimicked dance sequence in the history of popular music) that stands the test of time as perhaps the first big push in what a music video could be. No longer did we need to have a rock band performing in an abandoned warehouse, or (perhaps more popular in the early 80s) crazy-looking artists simply crooning into a camera as their shellacked hairstyles bobbed up and down on cable-ready television sets.
A-Ha
"Take on Me"
From Hunting High and Low, Warner Bros., 1985
Director: Steve Barron
Embedding disabled for this video. Click link to watch on youtube.
There were actually two versions produced for this 1985 breakout hit, but it is Steve Barron's version that introduces animation in a uniquely stunning way for the period that was often poorly imitated (see: Paula Abdul's "Straight Up") but not duplicated until the early 2000s (as we'll see later). The story told in the video itself may have little (if anything) to do with the content of the song, and I'm still not certain where the evil biker gang fits in, but damn if the rotoscoped music clip hasn't penetrated deep into the fabric of our collective popular culture consciousness.
Peter Gabriel
"Sledgehammer"
From So, Geffen, 1986
Director: Steven R. Johnson
Peter Gabriel and Steven R. Johnson channeled their inner Tim Burton and produced this stop-motion masterpiece in the midst of some rather vapid hair band fare that populated much of the music video scene of the mid-1980s. I'm not sure if they intentionally filmed the stutter-step dance moves of Peter Gabriel or they put some of those mo-cap balls on me during my moves on the dance floor at prom. Either way, the video simultaneously oozes cool and inspires nausea.
Pearl Jam
"Jeremy"
From Ten, Epic Records, 1992
Director: Mark Pellington
Apparently, by 1992 we'd tired of zombies, Dr. Katz-style sketchy animation and mouths that morph into clay bullhorns to scare children with music videos, so Eddie Vedder and Mark Pellington turned the camera on the legion of angst-y teens created by the new grunge movement. What resulted remains, to this day, one of the most haunting psychological portraits in the medium that brilliantly captures the raw emotion of just one of many of the instant classics that found their way onto Ten. The controversy created by "Jeremy" kick-started the confrontational career of the grunge era's last great legacy on today's music scene.
The Beastie Boys
"Sabotage"
From Ill Communication, Grand Royal Records, 1994
Director: Spike Jonze
From the "Police Squad!" homage in the video's opening seconds to the grainy video effects driving home that 1970s vibe to the stone-faced selling of the parody by the Beasties, "Sabotage" has classic satiric video written all over it. Throughout the years, the group has produced some hilarious videos with varying degrees of success. This is their "Citizen Kane," folks.
Weezer
"Buddy Holly"
From Weezer (The Blue Album), Geffen, 1994
Director: Spike Jonze
Perhaps it's a little vanilla to list two Spike Jonze videos back-to-back, from the same year nonetheless, but you can't include a list of great music video concept ideas and leave out the Fonz. I mean, let's leave aside the technical accomplishment of the video, which was mind-blowing back in 1994 (this is before Lucas went back in and changed the Gredo/Han Solo thing, remember? Putting Rivers and the boys on the set of "Happy Days" convincingly simply for a music video made me feel, as a seven year-old snot-nosed kid, as though I were the Indians and Spike Jonze the Spaniard had just made fire jump from his hands right in front of me). Joanie loves Chachi, but I love this video (cue laugh track).
Jamiroquai
"Virtual Insanity"
From Traveling Without Moving, Sony Soho Square, 1996
Director: Jonathan Glazer
You have to give English acid jazz band Jamiroquai props for a few things in this video. The first would be totally pulling off that plush Abraham Lincoln imitation cranial wear. The second would be capturing the essence of their album title in a nice, neat four minute video package. Finally, actually making something called "acid jazz" relevant in a way that didn't involve illegal drugs, a soundproof garage, and a complete DVD set of the Battlestar Galactica series.
Korn
"Freak on a Leash"
From Follow the Leader, Immortal/Epic, 1999
Director: Todd McFarlane
So, clearly Korn went a different direction with the animation than A-Ha did some fifteen years prior. Props to them for having the stones to hire acclaimed comic book artist McFarlane, who apparently laid the groundwork for the film "Eight Crazy Nights" with the character models. I'll admit, I wasn't a huge Korn fan, but I was a big supporter of any one who had a chance to knock off certain boy bands from the number one spot on Total Request Live, which I watched every afternoon when I got home from school (I still love you Carson! Even though you're only on at 2:30 AM and I honestly couldn't care less about your 2,345,763rd interview with Fred Durst). That's a nice profile of your fan base, too, Korn. Do I need to bench 250 just to get a pre-order of your new CD?
Fatboy Slim
"Weapon of Choice"
From Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, Skint/Astralwerks, 2000
Director: Spike Jonze
I imagine the pitch for this video went a little something like this:
Fatboy: For this video, I just want a guy dancing in a lobby. He's wearing an old timer suit, with slacks that rest just in the sub-lingual area. Midway through his foxtrot, gravity gives way, and he starts dancing on the ceiling.
Label: Hmm. I like it, but in order for it to be fully enjoyable during an acid trip, we're going to need the perfect man to play your dancer.
Fatboy: Christopher Walken just got done shooting "Catch Me if You Can." He should be available.
Label: Here's a blank check. Make this damn video.
The rest is history.
Gorillaz
"Clint Eastwood"
From Gorillaz, Parlophone, 2000
Director: Jamie Hewlett
This video taught us that it could be possible for pop stars to develop a massive following in spite of being not strictly human. It is a theory that continues to be tested today with the success of Lady Gaga.
The White Stripes
"Fell in Love with a Girl"
From White Blood Cells, XL, 2002
Director: Michael Gondry
What more should we have expected from the brilliant mind that gave us "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and the slightly-less intelligent same mind that gave us "The Green Hornet"? The White Stripes always had a knack for producing fiendishly cool music videos, and the length of their first single that exploded off White Blood Cells in 2002 gave them the outlet necessary to unleash this dizzying feat of childhood engineering over the top of what is essentially a straightforward old-time rock and roll love song. When I tried to recreate it in my room, all I ended up with was something that looked like a house and four swallowed red bricks.
Johnny Cash (Nine Inch Nails cover)
"Hurt"
From America IV: The Man Comes Around, American Recordings/Universal Music Group, 2003
Director: Mark Romanek
Perhaps the best praise for Johnny Cash's final music video should come straight from the lips of the original songwriter, Trent Reznor, in an interview with Alternative Press in September 2004:
"I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure."
Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Can't Stop"
From By the Way, Warner Bros., 2003
Director: Mark Romanek
Embedding disabled by request. Click link to watch video on youtube.
RHCP has been known for some rather interesting visual interpretations of their hits ("Scar Tissue," "Otherside," and the trippy Crazy Taxi-looking "Californication"), but this accompanying short for the third single off an extremely underrated album in their oeuvre is perhaps the most arresting. Where can I snag a fluorescent backpack, Anthony?
Yellowcard
"Ocean Avenue"
From Ocean Avenue, Capitol, 2004
Director: Marc Webb
Okay, so it's a tad too derivative of both "Run Lola Run" and "Groundhog Day," but if you can make the complicated premises of those two films work in less than four minutes over a standard pop song, you've got to be doing something right, correct? Doesn't the lead singer look like a guy you stuffed in a locker in seventh grade? Oh, no, that's right. That was me.
Beck
"Girl"
From Guero, Interscope, 2005
Director: Motion Theory
Beck may have hit his songwriting peak with "Odelay" in 1996, but his best music video came almost a decade later. Taking a page (see what I did there!) out of MAD magazine, the video features some interesting city planning choices. An otherwise forgettable love pop-py love song becomes a type of real Escher-ian nightmare.
Vampire Weekend
"Oxford Comma"
From Vampire Weekend, XL/DGC, 2008
Director: Richard Ayoade
I'm not a huge fan of the avant-garde, or the one-take camera trickery, but for some reason in this video the two fuse together to create an enjoyable interpretation of a single I preferred to "A-Punk," which ultimately rocketed this New York indie band to fame in the summer of 2008. It could be the clear Strokes influence on the guitar riff or the use of the Futura font (also employed by Kubrick, Wes Anderson, and the animated series "Doug"). Whatever the reason, "Oxford Comma" seems to have the artistic creativity, inspiration and style that endears it to the video shorts of yesteryear. And yes, the punctuation decision in that last sentence was very consciously-made.
Obviously, there are many other great videos that visually or conceptually elevated the form. Let me know what some of your favorites are below!
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