I love music videos - watching them, writing about them and making my own on extremely limited budgets. Great videos are part of the reason I like pop music.
I know this blog has a rubbish name but to be honest you're all lucky I didn't call this something like 'Video Filled The Internet Fnar'.
Disclaimer:
Unfortunately some record companies don't like other people embedding their videos in order to give them more publicity, so I apologise on their behalf if any of the videos I post are no longer available.
Feel free to go to Youtube.com and complain about this daft precedent (or just search for the video there instead).
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This video reminds me of my first playgroup, where they hung pictures of toys on all the chairs so you’d remember which chair you’d put your coat on. I picked the Rupert The Bear chair (unaware of the quasi-racist undertones said bear invoked) and almost immediately regretted it when I saw that my chum Em had picked the Big Yellow Teapot chair. Dammit.
Anyway, to extend the metaphor I hereby deduce that SMD are flicking through their brightly coloured chair decoration options but the Big Yellow Teapot remains out of their reach. Dunno what they’re complaining about - today I would be ultimately satsified with a pack of Peter Tosh top trumps and look no further for my coat-depositing needs.
Best of 2000: Remember when Pink actually had pink hair? Well ok, me too, but that was NINE YEARS AGO dudes, arrrgh. It’s very strange seeing her with different make up and the ‘don’t go there girlfriend!’ shoulder-jiggle dance here: she’s almost like a different person except every so often you get a glimpse of the swagger and belligerent facial expressions more commonly associated with 2009 Pink (minus the yelling).
To finally rid us of any doubt that this is our own bolshy Aleica, her actions speak much louder than her voice. This particular video gets really rather good around 1.26 when Pink’s no-good (ex?) gentleman friend rings her up asking for a lift, and our heroine goes all Tampax advert/Matrix stuntman on us. That’ll learn ‘im.
Oh dear, someone else who didn’t get the Neon memo. You’d think Hannah would be keeping abreast of matters, what with rolling around in all those newspapers. Much as I like her blue gloves, Hannah somehow fails at life here: it’s as if Heidi Sugababe decided to have cosmetic surgery to look more like Linda Robson from Birds Of A Feather. That thought upsets me.
Best of 2000: and I really mean it this time - this song is by far and away my favourite dance track of 2000, which I have been near-constantly playing ever since. As a break from the normal suitcase chasing business, the video features Thai female kickboxing match! I love the break-down in the second round where Red Corner looks out for the count but doesn’t give up because it is TIME TO BURN MUTHAFVCKER. There’s even a heartwarming ending! Bam, bam, bam, ba-BAM!
The BBC Glastonbury coverage currently has a choice of Tony Christie, Status Quo or Tom Jones (anyone wanting to watch an act that began recording in the 21st century is probably there already).
As I type, Jones has just finished his set with ‘Kiss’ and the red button is now showing his former duet partner Cerys from Catatonia waving a shoe at a stuffed Flat Eric, so let’s have some graph paper action from twenty years ago. Unfortunately today Jones is still attempting the dance moves last seen at 1.56 and ends up looking like he’s got severe back pain.
A sneak peak at the London 2012 Olympic site in Stratford reveals fine progress being made by Benassi Construction Inc. Project Manager Ci-Ci, Foreman Melissa Elliott (insert ‘all in my grill’ joke here) and their highly choreographed workforce seem to have a slapdash attitude to health and safety: I’m certain no-one is wearing steel-toe-capped boots here but the range of protective eyewear is pretty comprehensive.
Another huge video event that warranted a special timeslot on Channel 4 for its premiere. We’d all pretty much forgotten that Michael and Janet were even related at this point - Janet trying to be as normal (and sociable) as possible, and Michael as far away from normality as possible, preaching from the top of a mountain, leaving him wide open to ridicule.
So it was almost a relief to see them both bored to tears in their little space capsule, like fractious children on holiday in a remote log cabin - Janet idly inspecting her fingernails whilst Michael leaves muddy footprints across the ceiling, the two of them playing Pong and constantly elbowing each other out of the way, Janet trying to piss standing up at 2.52. Just a normal day with the Jacksons At Home. But in space.
I’m ultimately a child of the 90s and *this* is the MJ I remember: ridiculous high budget videos filled with big game animals and citizens of many countries.
Much as I love the video to Thriller there’s nothing quite like seeing Michael run through a burning cross only to meet Macaulay Culkin rapping “I’m not gonna spend my life being a colour” on the set of Sesame Street.
This video was such a huge event when I was a kid (as was anything containing Macaulay Culkin) - I was so impressed by the morphing heads at the end that the ‘controversial’ coda where Michael turns into a panther and smashes up a car (see it on the full version here from 6.22, which also has more MC at the beginning) paled into the background - especially since they couldn’t show that bit on Newsround.
Benny Benassi has just remixed this, but the original video is much better: Dame Davey B has built a radio studio decorated with smashed-up Rubik’s cubes (even more impressive considering this was 3 years before Rubik’s cubes were invented) and proceeds to throw a hissy fit (probably after playing something at the wrong speed - we’ve all been there). Best bits: 2.21 (dancing in pink jumpsuit), 3.42 (ripping down curtains), 3.56 (swivelly chair).
How many different colour combinations of the same t-shirt can you spot? Is that Charlotte Church being chopped up in the background there? Is Quik drinking a double decaff latte? Is this the best hiphop song of the year? Or have they merely stolen the idea off Lil’ Mama like it was her lunch money or something?
