i watched a bunch of new and old music videos and here are my thoughts
Sometimes, the baby goes to bed, a martini is stirred/poured, and it's time to watch a bunch of music videos. I like to follow a trail of breadcrumbs, one video reminding me to watch another one.
"GO" - Blackpink
I started at the new Blackpink song "GO" because it was on my homepage of recommendations. The aesthetic is kind of a New Age take on the Michael/Janet Jackson "Scream" video, all futuristic and abstracted, a little bit dare I say... Megalopolis? Did Neri Oxman consult on this thing? Ever since I got into Blackpink, I've known them to have lots of complex dance routines in their videos, and this had nothing of the sort: an intracultural reset. Cirkut is cornering the market on brain-scratching, fucked up lil synth sounds...and Chris Martin from Coldplay co-wrote this song, which makes me think that after Coldplay's 10th album, he should consider starting anew as Dark Coldplay. Industrial Coldplay (Walk-In Freezer?). No more positivity and rainbows. Some Nine Inch Nails shit. Think about it, Chris Martin.
"Hung Up" - Madonna
We had a no-television-before-school rule for a really long time, but by high school, it was generally approved to watch if you were ready in a reasonable amount of time. Four sisters, one bathroom...I would wake at the ass crack of dawn so I could enjoy a bowl of cereal and read my horoscope and watch the VH1 morning countdown...so I think I've seen the "Hung Up" video about 500 times. But I watched it anew with admiration of Madonna's physique. When I was 15 I was like, big whoop, she does yoga, wow. At 36, when my knees sometimes make audible sounds during normal activities, I look at 47-year-old Madonna doing Cossack squats and think, holy magoley, she is truly a paragon of working out.
"Aperture" - Harry Styles
A pleasant vaporous cloud of a song, but I'm putting a hold on all music videos set in dull offices and liminal spaces until we can figure out what's going on. Even when he's being zany, I just don't quite believe it. I feel like he knows what his fans are going to go cuckoo over and is happy to dole out chum accordingly. "Aperture" is now the fourth 'prestige pop' song I can think of in the past couple of years that references the idea of "letting the light in"—Boygenius did it on "Leonard Cohen," Lana Del Rey did it twice on "Let The Light In" and "Kintsugi"—and I guess at least Harry didn't call out (Sincerely) L. Cohen specifically, so that's nice. Leave something to the imagination. LET THE DARK IN
"Money" - Cardi B
Maybe my favorite Cardi B video? The strip club as an aesthetic halfway point between the art museum and the bank...so gaudy and aggressive...the breastfeeding...the hats?! Juxtaposed with the shot of Cardi looking ethereal at the piano, whose ivories do not get tickled, but rather BONKED. It cracks me up that Cardi changes the usual "nothing in this world that I love more than checks" to "nothing in this world that I love more than KULTURE!!" I feel like this is an honest representation of motherhood, in that you had your previous existence with its whims and customs, and then an alien dumpling crash-lands into your life and all of a sudden, AAAH, the whole priority tree gets shifted around. Cardi exemplifies the 2010s 'having it all' mentality, baby and money and crazy hats.
"We Found Love" - Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris
Part of Chris Osborn's millennial canon! I wish I remember the first time I watched this one but it was almost assuredly on a banged-up white MacBook in my senior college apartment. I think Rihanna in the oversize denim jacket with the video projections laid over her is the coolest she has ever looked, and this is a woman who looks cool most of the time.
This is one of the most Tumblr music videos of all time and I feel like I can't even write a blurb about it without writing a whole dissertation where I try to tackle the aesthetics of the early 2010s, the way people were trying to be Fantastical but Real, the last gasp of technology providing a friendly way of self-documentation before those HORRID PHONE CAMERAS arrived to surgically remove all of our auras, but in an era where you could still be accused of techno-narcissism if your selfie didn't also include a bashful caption about daring to post a selfie...or was that just me? Anywayyyy [Calvin Harris organ doot doots get louder and louder]...
"Click Clack Symphony" - RAYE feat. Hans Zimmer
An orchestral Hans Zimmer collab with percussion from the clacking of high heels that is all about shaking off your doldrums and going out with the girlies is already Molly bait, but a music video where a tiny RAYE must scale an enormous wall by using stilettos as pitons (yeah I did google the rock climbing term for this practice, sue me) and then parasails over the English countryside on a giant floating musical note...damn, I'm all in. I support RAYE and all of her activities. "WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!" was a late-breaking fave of last year. Her "Prada" song is excellent for cardio activities. I'm excited for her new album even though it's called This Music May Contain Hope. Listen, sometimes bad album titles happen to good people.
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