Music Videos

Music videos seemed like a much bigger deal during the MTV era (of course) with some astronomical budgets in order to get airtime and then there was a late 90s/early 2000s period before youtube really took off where you had your auteurs like Gondry & Chris Cunningham & the Shynola people in europe & Hype Williams doing all those shiny r’n’b & rap videos

Seems like video is something of a forgotten artform with streaming being so dominant these days but there’s some absolutely cracking more recent videos out there making full use of all the computer tech & 4k/8k lushness as well as the more traditional techniques

Here’s a few post-2010 ones that I love

A recent auteur is the amazing Nadia Lee Cohen

Her edgy kitsch is brilliant and quite a bit subversive

This from 2016 is a recent fave

And this (possibly NSFW) from 2017 is …eye catching

The video that inspired this thread though is one that came out 2 days ago

Domi & JD Beck are two teenage jazz protegés of Thundercat. This video is directed by Andersson .Paak and is like a mini Atlanta episode with none other than Mac Demarco in full prosthetics playing the lead role. The whole thing is genius, the concept, the execution, the art direction & of course the music. Brilliant stuff

And this just rules, so basic but simple genius

Also, I was flicking through tidal at the weekend to show this Gondry classic to my eldest

And the algorithm showed me that the Chemical Brothers are still spending money on classy videos. This by Dom&Nic looks awesome on a big 4k telly

Beck is also spending and investing in the video artform too

This by Edgar Wright obviously owes a lot to Gondry (and to the Monkees ‘Head’) but really builds nicely and is very dynamic & visually impressive

And then this is quite the visual takedown of teenage party life with a modern twist on Joan of Arc

So, this thread is for your favourite music videos from any era you like but I am especially interested in more recent stuff

Chat encouraged. What eye candy are you enjoying?

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I’ll be honest, I don’t really like music videos, they’re a necessity of course but I think they influence how you look at/interpret a song and it almost always makes me like a song less (Kate Bush being the main exception).

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Fair enough, but I think you’re missing out on a lot of great art

I mean, a vast majority of videos are bollocks but the artists who are really invested in the artform know how to bring extra layers of meaning and depth to a piece and the technology to make visually stunning video has never been so abundant

It’s all subjective though of course & probably quite genre-specific to a certain extent but there is a wave of wonky psychedelia - post-Flying Lotus LSD & DMT influenced visual media - that I think is fascinating

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Not having access to MTV seeing a video always seemed quite exciting.

I’m always surprised when artists have big budget videos now but I guess the economics is always changing and maybe some artists are making a fair chunk of revenue through YouTube plays, tiktok snippets etc?

Really no idea on anything released in the last 20 years though tbh, just don’t see anything. Last time I saw any music videos regularly was probably about 7/8 years ago when I’d go to a bar that played videos and that was just big chart hits of the time.

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This is surely the absolute summit of the video as a creative enterprise- a fifteen song album where each song is exactly 1 minute long, each accompanied by a completely realised, intricately detailed and wildly creative video.

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YES

This is high art on street level. Love it so much

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Yeah, this has been one of the advantages of being a Tidal subscriber. There’s tons of video & every artist has video playlists on the service. Imagine youtube with no adverts & no side bars to dodgy right wing content. It’s great

Enjoyed this. Reminds me of the Let Forever Be video in mood.

Nice to see people having fun with the format again though.

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Yeah I used to have Tidal and it always surprised me that having videos front and centre was never mentioned when people assessed the different streaming platforms.

Then again I never used the app itself (used via Roon) so not like I was taking advantage of it.

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Girl Rey do nice videos. Seem almost old school. This one riffs on midsommar. I’m guessing it was done with their mates for very low budget, which of course adds to the charm.

and Trouble, which I think was directed by Richard Ayoade, channels Wes Anderson.

All their videos are really a delight though.

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This was one of my fave videos from last year. Love the Nintendo Wii aesthetic.

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Love this one from last year too, some impressive reverse choreography!

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The videos and vibe and surely part of why Wet Leg blew up like they did

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Yeah this was really lovely, would still prefer to listen to it without visuals I think overall.

Always really loved this one

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All of Bob Gallagher’s videos for Gilla Band, but especially this one (CW: nudity and some graphic gore)

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Sometimes all you need to do to make a music video is just do this

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