#50videos 40/50
Pffft, Celine? But this Celine video is Memento in structure. Threading her thru a school production of Romeo & Juliet, it opens at the end & ends at the beginning, which force-reinterprets every development to take on some other meaning.
I've written a story like that myself once.
#50videos 39/50
Ariana Grande won me over this year as she became withdrawn and superficially not as good as before. You think she just pulled an old movie reference, but her writing's so intricate. She lets you dunk on WCBF, then put out BDA a year later to let the emotional recoil slap you around
#50videos 38/50
The friendless has feelings too, and I can rarely hear this song without tears welling up, because Luke sings a very expressive "between you and I." Like Toto itself, the video is very all-American in ways good and bad, reasonably fun to experience on a 29" Trinitron upon release.
#50videos 37/50
At the peak of her solo career, Meja was presented as decidedly a very cerebral, incisive woman of cosmopolis, an urbanista. In this context it's a fitting and brilliant stroke to present this song through a boxing match, choke full of delightful commentary on punch-drunk love.
I have to be honest and say, I'm having a bit of an amnesia about the remaining 13 songs of the #50videos that I must've thought of at the beginning.
In the meantime, enjoy this example of how the Japanese used to allocate very skinny budget to their music videos.
youtu.be/HlLaqtkXnCQ
#50videos 36/50
I'm traveling for a month. Today, failing to find a local stock cube at the 4th grocery store, this song flashed through my head. It looks deceptively of its time, but it's really a lot like any person's Insta account documenting the randomness of their travels. Ahead of its time.
#50videos 35/50
Ace of Base put out a pair of singles next to each other, both written by Jonas, that gets to the real heart of who they are. The green-screen video(s) are appropriately zany, with all the green screens, facial morphing, finger-pointing and laughing and what we now call NEETmaxxing.
#50videos 33/50
I hate Morrissey. He's a poser. But the beauty of this song is, it sounds post-modern but it's entirely traditional, it completely reveals him as something other than his postures. Boy just wants to sing old-school to a bunch of big horns. Celibate Moz is merely an alt-Michael Buble
#50videos 32/50
The Japanese often chose to be stingy on the music video budget, and so it was for this song, written in Japan by a big-in-Japan artist and became a J-dorama theme song. But, what a lovely presentation, making abstract very simple "vacance" scenes tying into Shibuya-kei aesthetic
#50videos 31/50
Speaking of which, Roxette is where Jonas Åkerlund's directing career began. His first music video job was for Marie's 1992 single "so long as there's light ahead of me," elegantly incorporating visual elements from the album campaign which is a graphic design tour de force.
#50videos 30/50
Also unexpectedly sexy for me is Berlin-based Tom Lüneburger, although that's not why you're getting multiple vids in this thread. The video is a two-parter with a footnote. Tom is very good with his limited budget, but he's kinda stopped being so elaborate now
youtu.be/-98hfDZMIS4
#50videos 29/50
My interest in David Gray is for some reason (same moon sign?) always a little bit erotically driven, and this album era was him at his sexiest. You know I'm not the only one, if they chose to slap him front and center, on the cover, in the video lol.
youtu.be/utLCu-Mpnqo
#50videos 28/50
I first caught this in 1991, in the mornings between my mother's suicide attempts and the school bus' arrival. in a few minutes I'd leave for school not knowing if I'll have a mom to come home to. And, this would come on our local cable TV and sear that aesthetic into my brain.
#50videos 27/50
Great documentary-style footage of the famous (katoey/ trans) muay thai boxer Nong Toom living with an adopted son, purpose-filmed for this song. The director Tinge Krishnan thought that would fit the song's soundscape, and she's right on the money.
#50videos 26/50
A pulp fiction video that, for all its drawbacks, is very effective with a complete emotional arc.
"if I jump, I would fly, but only till the pavement arrived"
"you make me feel like 15, I couldn't kiss, I had no tricks
but I knew how to fly, at least for a little while"
#50videos 25/50
Perhaps I just love this style of filming, but I think a lot about what kind of picture is "right" for music videos, and this hits the spot like a tall drink of water. It's one of many for sure (Sade's Never As Good As the First Time, etc) but it just says so much with so little.
#50videos 24/50
I confess, I didn't like Sophie Muller for 20 years because I hated her relation and work with No Doubt, but this one for Eurythmics (her first?) is such a good video. It's got a woman's touch in being less deft but also a little softer.
#50videos 23/50
Loving this song for 34 years, I never realized the video, too, is a high watermark of civilization. The way every shot is carefully framed and calculated; camera moves to reflect the sea. What must've been stock footage hook into studio set. They don't make it like this anymore...
#50videos 22/50
Mat Kearney had a phase where he brought his wife "to work," which paralleled J-pop mega-producer Tetsuya Komuro constantly putting himself out front with the pop diva(s) he was producing/dating. The "we've gotta be in the art together" is strong. I think I might know why...
#50videos 20/50
A song that by itself elevates the artist several ranks up, coupled with a video that does exactly the same. The result of this double whammy is we can't have any more of Martika, because she has completely "flagshipped out." Thy will be done, as in fully cooked, finito 🙃
#50videos 19/50
is a song about death set to the visual metaphor of emerging from a sea of grief.
"surely the tide that turned against us
crashing and beating us down
has the energy to reinvent us"
No it doesn't, like most things out of Germany these days, it's not real. But, whatta thought ;)
#50videos 18/50
Dégénération is my dumb reach Mylène Farmer song. Great wordplay: "sexy coma, sexy trauma" leads into getting railed on a sex sling, like a plane suspended in a wind tunnel, wondering "where's my ppl gone?" - Dégénération becomes a portmanteau, "the Désenchantée generation."
#50videos 17/50
Mylène Farmer's video for À l'ombre features Olivier de Sagazan, whose art is to deface with mud & paint a new face, not unlike Adrian Ghenie's portraits (pic 3). Mylène even lets Olivier poke her eyes out to great effect... if only Laurent hadn't been so frantic with the jump cuts.
#50videos 16/50
Old astrology likes to talk about Virgo (Mylène's and my sun sign) as a virgin-or-whore dichotomy. Here the video shows you both, then shows you they're one and the same. Everybody - with absolutely no exception - is whoring themselves to try and survive or go places.
#50videos 15/50
There's really no need for Rachel Zegler, because we already have Mylène Farmer and the dwarves in one of her signature videos: Tristana. Mylène and Laurent loved making these short films, placing her delicate aura in context with the macabre, occult, forbidden and psychological.
#50videos 14/50 (nsfw today)
The video for Je Te Rends Ton Amour (I give you back your love) was banned on French TV for being religiously-themed, and likely for this cut of Mylène Farmer in a pool of blood, naked & covered in blood.
She was blind but now can see, now that she'd been violated.
#50videos 11/50
Even on a small budget, Will Young has a wisecracking video for you. My Love is just Will (usually with abs) pretending to be a fat, old, unshaven sloth, dancing badly on purpose, asking if you'll accept his love - the forever dilemma of every gay man in the sauna, including me.
#50videos 10/50
My 8th world wonder is Will Young's music video for Who Am I? - Never has green screen seen better use, grafting him w/bad wig into old footage as a children's TV presenter. (Blue Peter)
Love is child's play. Cause we are born innocent, believe me Adia, we are still innocent.
#50videos 09/50
Will Young is one of the top 5 or 10 definitive, quintessential video-centric artists in popular music. Most of his videography convey a sharp, inventive, English sense of irony that elaborate the song perfectly on a silver platter.
He's an absolute giant in the music video space.
