Music videos are an essential addition to the entire packaging of a song, and there have been many brilliant videos to date. Here’s a short writeup of my favourite music videos which deserve a mention.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication
The video is all about the various band members stuck in a video game, with occasional video footage in between. The guys rollerskate on roads, fly through the air, skateboard over the snow and indulge in all the activities you’ll find in an average video game. Brilliant conceptualization, and a must watch video.
Soundgarden - Black-Hole Sun
Firstly, this is one awesome number. Secondly, the video is mindblowing.heh.
The guys stand in a field with all their gear and sing the song. As the mood changes, so does the ambience, which turns dark and thunderingly ominous. A few clips of some people shown in the vid are amazing - each emotion gets distorted to extremities and the climax portion where the lead guitar takes over is much like doomsday.fabulous.get your hands and ears on this one.
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
A very common choice, and its in my book one of the best videos for the simple reason that the song and the video go hand in hand to portray the 90s American youth generation and their mindsets so very aptly. You see Cobain in a dimly lit room with Novoselic and Grohl playing to a packed house full of teenagers, who are in total chaos. In between an old guy with a funny expression plays around with a large broomstick. Cobain walks in and out of the spotlight and his face is barely visible sometimes. All adds up to the frustrated idea-less euphoria of a generation of teens for whom Cobain was their hero.
Pink Floyd - Another Brick In the Wall - II
A video that could only be directed by the legendary band themselves.
All those who’ve heard the song instantly recall the young kid getting ridiculed by his teacher in class for writing poems, and the teacher getting humiliated at dinner table by his mom. Switch to all the kids in the class wearing masks trudging along a machine and dropping down only to be extracted as some kinda sausage. I can visualize this video in my dreams, and hats off to them for such a plot .
We don’t need no education.
John Lennon - Imagine
The song is the stuff of legend. I got a T-shirt which bears the words made famous by Lennon:-
You may say I’m a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one.
The video is so simple it’s brilliant. Lennon and Yoko Ono are in a white room and Lennon’s singing as he’s playing a piano. Later on in the song, Yoko Ono walks up and one by one, opens all the windows in the room, letting in all the light. She goes back beside her husband, smiles meekly and gets an affectionate peck at the end of the song. Look at Lennon’s face when he ends the song at glances at Yoko.
A simple way to portray a great message.
Eminem - The Real Slim Shady
One of the few Eminem songs I have heard, and the video is hilarious.
The song is set in a mental asylum, where Slim Shady(Eminem) is an inmate. What follows is a total laugh riot, what with the fat bosomed nurses, crazy fellow inmates and Britney Spears comic lookalikes. Lots of fun to watch, and the song is cool as well.
Metallica - Turn The Page
I have mentioned this before, go watch this video if you think all loud music videos are senseless headbanging stuff.
The song is a remake of an old Bob Seeger song, but with more gusto.
The video revolves around the lives of a mother and her young daughter. The mom lives in a motel, works in the daytime as an exotic bar dancer(while her kid mopes in the green room), and works as a pr*stitute after dark.
The video is a masterpiece - you get to hear what the mom’s character thinks - she says so in an interview to the camera -’I can be what society wants me to be and I can bring up my child exactly the way anyone else can.’
At the end of the video, her child walks on her mom being brutally beaten after a nightly session with a’customer’ in the next room. Education, anyone?
Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet
I have mentioned this song a few times before and I don’t mean to get repetitive, but this beautiful song is amazingly picturized as well.
The strangest romantic video you’ll ever see, and I haven’t understood it till today. Romeo is a weird looking guy with round glasses and tight pants, Juliet looks like a made up bimbo who’s chewing gum and has a tear in her eye for some reason.
She stays atop a ledge from where she looks down on Romeo. Then the cut-scene shows a group of people watching a movie on a screen which has vague shadows walking across, and Romeo goes in and out of the theatre, dancing all the way.
The song is so beautiful, and the video so strange you’ll want to see it again and again. I think that’s why I consider it a great concept! But seriously, its so unlike the mushy stuff I expected it to be, it’s in my list.
Enigma - Sadeness
I don’t know whether anybody has seen Enigma’s videos, but the video of this lovely trance number is supremely transcendental, much like a Pink Floyd video.
Nothing much to it other than some trees, a wide landscape and breathtaking shots over oceans. But there is a raw energy to the video and it has this amazing power to pacify you. Check it out in case you haven’t.
Guns n Roses - November Rain
My all time favourite video.
The video revolves around the marriage of Axl Rose to a girl(the girl in the video was his wife at that time), and her consequent death soon after. How well the song is picturized against the video is a thing to behold. At exact moments, the tempo and mood of the song changes, it’s visualized to perfection with reference to the sequences that occur. The high points in the video are the part where Slash goes out of the church while the marriage is taking place to play the fabulous lead in the middle of a barren land in his fantastic posture, the rain starting amidst the marriage ceremony and a guy spills red wine in his attempt to scurry to drier land, and the funeral procession leading to Axl kneeling in the rain before the tomb and the awe-inspiring lead of Slash playing in the background which totally numbs your emotions. Sheesh!
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Not much new stuff here maybe, but I’m a classicist when it comes to anything’Best’. Hope the review makes for an enjoyable read.
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