Yesterday around noon I was in a rush. I didn’t have time to make a decent lunch, so I went to Burger King instead. While I was waiting to order my #3 meal from the staff member whose life ambition was to take the ‘fast’ out of ‘fast food’, I noticed a large LCD screen playing music videos.
The video playing featured an unhappy man wearing a large amount of oversized, shiny jewellery (‘gangsta bling’, I’m now reliably informed) and pink Star Trek sunglasses, despite the video being filmed in a bright studio. I assumed he was unhappy from his lyrics, which went something like ‘yo, mutha, dawg, diss me and my hood’. I couldn’t understand most of what he singing about, but it seemed like he was pretty upset at someone for casting aspersions on a member of his family, and basically his answer was to ‘pop a cap in their ass’. Hmm. He helped convey his message through several young women in ridiculously high boots and uncomfortably tight shorts, if the scraps of material covering their nethers could be so named, who all moaned in unison whenever Mr. Star Trek muttered ‘yo’. The choreography of the video and these dancers was in all honesty very good, especially the scene where the women suggestively gestured the stripper poles, and the singer nodded smugly to the camera: ‘uh-huh’.
The next song was pretty much the same. OK, the sunglasses were different, the lyrics featured ‘crips’ and ‘bloods’, and the dancers were wearing heels and bikinis / pieces of red twine. But, the ‘yo’, ‘diss’, and ‘cap-popping’ was still there, along the general concept of wrong-doing, hand-waving, and revenge.
After that came a Cure video, from around 1986 I think, ‘Close to me’. It’s a catchy and chirpy song, despite the lyrics being typically Cure-esque, and it’s very recognisable on the radio. Seeing it in on the BK LCD TV made me remember why I used to love music videos. They used to supplement a song, rather than being the only way to sell it. My friend Stuart used to say, and rightly so, that any song should be able to stand on its own two feet, with a good video being a bonus rather than a necessity. Technically, I used to remind Stuart, songs don’t have feet, but his point is nonetheless valid.
In the ‘Close to me’ video, there are no women wiggling and jiggling booty, unzipping their tops slowly while mouthing ‘sug-ahh’ to the mind-numbed viewers. None of the Cure are women (although Robert Smith has been known to wear a bit of makeup from time to time – see image to your right), so the video didn’t really sell records on sex appeal. There were no dancers, nor dancing, nor wild ‘homy’ gestures. There just wasn’t room. You see, the Cure had quite a clever idea for their video. They filmed it in a box. A small one.
The whole band were crammed into this not very large crate – they were literally packed in against each other, shoulder to knee, to arm, to foot, to head – ‘Close to me’ … get it? They even played their instruments throughout the song. Not full size instruments, but miniature versions of the instruments they normally play. For example, the bass player is making do with what looks like a coat hanger and a large rubber band. Again, there wasn’t the room. God knows how they managed to get a camera inside to film it all. There’s even a twist towards the end of the song when the crate gets pushed off a cliff and into the sea. I won’t spoil it, watch the YouTube instead.
That’s what seems to be missing from many music videos today. There’s sex, and sex sells, and a bit of violence, and some identify with that, but sadly there’s little humour. No fun. No cleverness. And when the video ends, the disposable song is disposed of. Kind of like my soggy burger wrapper as it slid into the waste bin. There’s nothing of any substance to put a smile on your face for even a short while.
There’s nothing.
Save for a reminder that for their videos, bands of today need to think outside of the box.
Kollectamaniac 