OK Go – Skyscrapers

What is it like to dance inside a rainbow? (For some people, including yours truly, it’s hard enough answering the question what is it like to dance?) This music video is a departure from OK Go’s typical adventures in physics, and I much prefer this to their last noisy endeavor. “Skyscrapers” is no less visually arresting. Although there are two people dancing, the highlight of the mv appears to be the woman (as the top comments make clear), as the man somehow blends into the background more effectively. Or perhaps that’s the point of the video. Maybe it’s the point of dancing in general. The woman dancer, Trish Sie, has a brother in OK Go and has worked with the band on a number of their mvs, including their treadmill-themed breakout video, and now is her time to shine! Make sure to watch until the very end for an unexpected plug…

SHINee – Sherlock

After a painful (for fans) but well-deserved 1.5-year break, SHINee has finally returned with a new album (their Japanese one doesn’t count, didn’t even bother downloading it), and while it’s not as mind-blowing as Lucifer was, Sherlock is still an interesting new direction. The song in this music video is actually a mash-up of two other songs from the album, which is weird. I guess they liked the intro from the first song and the chorus of the second song..?

There’s some semblance of a storyline — Jessica plays a white collar criminal who coincidentally resembles an old statue? — but it’s lackluster, and frankly, the mv would’ve been the same with or without her (and the pitbull). Let’s talk about the dance. SHINee’s choreography is usually pretty solid, but I can’t watch this one without laughing. What…what is with the confidently high-stepping from one corner of the room to another?? There’s not much of a centralized style, either (unless you count neutrals?). The boys look very cute in their vintage ~detective wear, but during the dance sections, it’s like a free-for-all that may or may not be showcasing each member’s individual style. Taemin, for example, appears to be going through a Woodstock phase.

John Legend – Tonight (Best You Ever Had) ft. Ludacris

In the past month, no music video has made my toes curl in delight like this one. I just want to bask in the perfection of all that is John Legend, his smooth skin, beautiful body, and of course, that flawless voice. I love Ludacris, but his voice doesn’t really put me in the mood for loving. Regardless, this song is potent. It’s definitely the best audio-visual experience I ever had today. (My memory isn’t good enough to be sure of anything from further back in time.)

“Tonight” is on the soundtrack of Think Like A Man, out next month and promising to be inane and sexist (against men), which I suppose hasn’t hindered the movie industry so far, I suppose. I don’t recognize the models in this mv but John Legend’s love interest doesn’t seem to be his fiancé Chrissy Teigen, unless I’m blind.

Labrinth – Last Time

By choosing his stage name by deliberately (←presumably) misspelling what is probably already a commonly misspelled word, Labrinth is not doing the world a favor. I do, however, appreciate that it makes him easy to google — trying to find lyrics by obscure bands named Rose or Truck is a near-impossible feat. I suppose the name Timothy McKenzie was too square of a moniker for a cool dude like Labrinth.

What to make of this music video, in which a young boy goes for a stroll down the disco-ball-brick road with a muscular, naked blue alien who has a tail? This is a hot mess. It’s risky to use CGI in mvs, but there’s a way to do it well, and this is an example of a pandemonium. For example:

The stuff of nightmares.

What…what is that??? Is it supposed to help us enjoy this song? It’s like those creepy rubber alien toys of my childhood have come to life to perform a flash mob in the middle of an acid trip. Some of the CGI elements are enjoyable, like the bouncing elephants and pumping skyline, but putting everything together like this is like watching the experiment of someone who has just learned to copy and paste CGI in a video. Make it stop!

The Dillinger Escape Plan – Parasitic Twins

Man, nobody of note is releasing music videos these days (slightly related: do you think making lyric videos has spawned a new job sector, or does some poor A/V intern get saddled with the task of slaving over Adobe After Effects for  24 hours? I’m not sure how to feel about this relatively useless trend, though I’m leaning toward positive if it’s creating much-needed jobs…), so I’m branching out into the interesting genre of mathcore, a style of heavy metal I had never heard of until an hour ago. (I thought heavy metal only came in one style: heavy.) But if all mathcore is like this song, then I think my teenage self would’ve gotten along with it quite well.

The band members of The Dillinger Escape Plan (spoiler alert: Johnny Depp dies!) do not appear to be featured in this video as anything except Easter eggs, which is a great alternative to the typical “watch us lip-sync the whole song in a desert somewhere because that is an exciting way to waste 4 minutes of your life!” kind of rock videos. The mv itself is about finding love in a stencil plate-making factory. Ms. Plate-maker shows Mr. Smarmy DEP Marketing Guy a bit of her world, and he in turn introduces her to his. A truly post-industrial fairy tale if there ever was one.