The Vids Are Alright

One Republic - All The Right Moves.

Ryan’s Top Tips for Up-n-coming Bands #973: “Don’t agree to play any gig promoted by a nine-year-old Dickensian urchin. You are unlikely to get a soundcheck and the rider won’t have a single M&M in it!!”

Ludacris - Stand Up.

Best of 2003: Backing dancers in wheelchairs, telekenisis of giant beer bottles, having your nappy changed by the girl you were chatting up moments before. Just a normal night out on the tiles for Ludacris, who is of the opinion that wearing silver-painted human statues as necklaces is probably a better use for them than just leaving them hanging around outside Covent Garden tube station.

Mariah Carey - I Want To Know What Love Is.

Mariah must have sung a few pre-sporting event national anthems in her time, but I understand that this does not necessarily entail that she knows what a baseball stadium looks like. Or what a national anthem is. Thusly we should forgive Mariah for believing that baseball stadiums are normally computer-generated in nature. She’s probably played Wii Sports, right?

What we cannot forgive her for is the terrifying child at 1.16. I half expect Mariah break into ‘Ave Satani’ when he glares in our direction.

Puddle of Mudd - Spaceship.

Many excellent science fiction productions have overcome their relative lack of budget and/or special effects wizardry by confining the action to a grimy interior or an abandoned quarry, relying on plot and characterisation to gloss over the fact that the lead character has just run along the same corridor three times (all those zero-gravity-simulation aeroplane rides can’t be very carbon neutral anyway).

In their latest video, Puddle of Mudd have paid their own subtle, thoughtful tribute to this genre (I haven’t actually turned the sound up on this yet but I assume it sounds something like this), with a genuine wobbly model shot at 2.53 and some one-dimensional space vixens. “Oh Wesley, show me some more of this Earth thing called ‘post-grunge’!” Bleurgh.

Justin Timberlake - Rock Your Body.

Best of 2003: The sight of lovely little Justin dancing in front of a giant Lite-Brite set always fills me with a warm glowing comfort. I know nothing is going to jump out and scare me (even his spiky beatboxing middle 8 is fluffy round the edges), everything is smoothly executed yet covered in pretty lights - the overall feeling is like walking home near-comatose from the pub on Christmas Eve, admiring the tasteless, twinkly decorations and not even realising it’s freezing cold through your happy beer jacket.

The video’s last minute is the heavenly counterfoil to Atomic Kitten’s satanic ‘Whole Again’: the infinite Justins slowly rotating for my viewing pleasure aren’t disposable clones but precious component parts which I can save up each week to build my own whole Justin-inna-box to play with on Christmas morning.

Leona Lewis - Happy.

It’s the morning of the wedding! While she’s getting ready, Leona’s having a think back to when she first met the groom, hanging out with him and his mates, going out on the lash, inviting him over to meet her family and so on. For some reason though her family don’t seem that bothered about the impending nuptials - her dad is slumped infront of the telly and her mum’s doing the ironing. I SENSE A TWIST.

Beyoncé ft Jay-Z - Crazy In Love.

Best of 2003: You all know this one, but I can’t let 2003 go by without mentioning it.

Beyoncé is 21 years old and about to conquer the world, setting aside Destiny’s Child and taking centre stage on her own. Her superstar boyfriend shows up to help her out, but by the time he arrives she’s already stopping traffic and showing us what she can do: for example, her impressive ability to go from confident strut to sitting cross-legged on the floor within a split second at 0.30.

But first, a quick nod to her old life: between 1.06 and 1.40 she’s hanging out as one of the girls, relaxed in a baseball cap, trackie bottoms and messy hair, popping bubblegum in a street alley without a care in the world.

Then presumably on request of his missus, Jay-Z sets fire to his car with a version of Beyoncé inside - the helpless, weak, ordinary Beyoncé of old (who needed a group to support her) is up in flames! Long live the new, fur-clad phoenix Beyoncé! But despite his loving gesture, B barely looks at J and even reprimands him with a flick of her stole. She doesn’t need him either, and even neutralises his actions by kicking open a fire hydrant.

(Btw I’m utterly fascinated by Beyoncé’s and Jay-Z’s relationship - especially the version we see in their collaborations. I’ll collect my thoughts and write more about this at some point.)

By now the transition is complete: between 3.00 and 3.56 Beyoncé is a high-fashion catwalk diva in a harsh industrial setting, fiercely asserting her power and dominance over the other dancers - paler imitations. Even her dance moves are more precise than before - the girl that was wiggling her bum with her mates a few minutes ago is now just a pile of ashes. “I’m not myself… baby I DON’T CARE!” The new Queen B is here to stay, and I’m still in awe of her every time I watch this.

Rihanna - Russian Roulette.

Literal interpretation of (very good) song yadda yadda. I am far more concerned about the dreadful flesh-tone corset that RiRi has borrowed off Madonna. NO-ONE looks good in a flesh-tone corset. I cannot stress this enough.

Perhaps said corset is Rihanna’s REAL punishment for murderating the dude out of Grey’s Anatomy, and those stern-looking guards are pumping ‘4 Minutes’ in through that expensive stereo system to enhance the horror. No wonder Rihanna is wishing she’d been the one that had died instead.

(apologies for the dreadful sound quality btw - you might want to mute this and listen here instead)

Kid Sister - Right Hand Hi.

And the 2009 award for Most Anonymous-Looking Backing Dancers goes to the excellent Kid Sister, who has rounded up the local goth fencing team for this video. Contrast be damned!

Melisa may have a high level of ungual awareness but she doesn’t seem to have noticed how bad her roots have got (way worse than my sorry inch of mousey blonde). She can just about get away with it in two dimensions, where the crimped bits just look like part of her jacket, but when she steps off the hoarding and onto the street it’s quite clear that she’s well overdue a splash of hydrogen peroxide on her barnet.

Will Young - Hopes And Fears.

OMG Will is up the duff! There’s so many things to think about - remembering to take his folic acid, shopping for maternity t-shirts, buying extra Marmite and finding a good lawyer to sue the ass off the father if he doesn’t keep up his child support.

It’s a tough experience to go through on his own, so I hereby volunteer to Be There for Will: hold his hand, fluff his pillows and do short sharp breathing exercises etc. Also this means I get to help choose a name! Front-runners are currently ‘Millie’ for a girl (lucrative) and ‘Billy’ for a boy (even bigger!).