Written By: Hallie MadenskiMost people don't even watch music videos anymore and there are two main reasons for this. One is that they are hard to find on TV - as of late, MTV and VH1 only show music videos late at night or in the morning.
Other channels that play them are not free and therefore inaccessible to the average person. Another reason for the lack of viewing is that music videos are not as valid anymore. Mainstream music videos usually don't tell much of a story these days, not one you'd care about if you had a wit of sense.
The videos of today seem to be oozing primordial sex appeal. It's practically cavemen beating women over the head. Beating them over the head with poisoned vocoder vocals and the same old 'boom boom' beats.
We all know MTV used to be a music channel, and now they are specialists in partially-scripted reality TV train-wrecks. Same with MTV's counterpart, VH1. As early as the mid 90's, MTV was criticized by the public, as well as the artists themselves, for not playing as many videos. By 1997 MTV had gotten wind of this and actually cared enough to do something about it. They incorporated the shows MTV Live, Total Request, Say What?, and 12 Angry Viewers. Total Request soon merged with MTV Live to form the popular video countdown show Total Request Live also known as TRL. Punk'd and Jackass aired in 1999 taking yet another plunge towards reality TV programming. This was seemingly harmless at the time.
2007 was a dark time for music videos, video programming was scaled down and reality was scaled up even more. Shows like My Super Sweet 16, Next, Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County, The Real World and The Hills had permanently polluted MTV's image. Taking the lives of rich people and making them seem dramatic and difficult proved unrealistic. My Super 16 is a show solely about spoiled girls getting what they want for their birthday. The formula was always the same. Child wants nicer car than parent originally wants to buy. Parent is urged to reconsider and eventually caves to child's horrid needs. End of show features surprise visit by mildly famous rapper.
All this leaves a wretched taste in my mouth, I want to spit at my TV and mash my eyeballs out with eggbeaters. A need to avoid MTV at all costs had washed over me. I do fall prey to some bad reality shows. Flavor of Love, I Love New York and Rock of Love all proved themselves as number one guilty pleasures but otherwise I was disenchanted with these so-called music television channels.
There was a time I craved MTV like a diabetic craves Peanut Butter Cups. I didn't grow up with TV, and it wasn't until 1998 that I really got to enjoy music videos through friends that had cable. TRL was my crack; all the bad pop stars and real rock musicians mixed together, as opposed to emo, pop and the penis-head crooning of Daughtry and similar artists. The few videos that do see the light of television are mostly vomit-inducing. I've watched some lately and I've concluded that these are some of the worst I've seen in the past few years...
10. Britney Spears - Break The Ice. Using anime to fill in for Britney when she was clearly too crazy to appear in this video was smart. Having it not relate at all to the song... not so smart.
9. Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling. Satire? I wish.
8. Bon Jovi featuring Leanne Rimes - Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore. Featuring the wonderful line "Make love to me baby till we ain't strangers anymore." It's going to take a long time for these two to make love until they don't feel like strangers. Their chemistry is almost as non-existant as this video's budget.
7. Greenday - 21 Guns. The incredible shrinking man, Billy Joe Armstrong, fails to live up to past glory. Another video with things breaking and falling apart? Really?
6. Jay Sean featuring Lil' Wayne - Down. This video is so 'one-dimensional' it makes a piece of paper feel like a 3-D movie.
5. The Killers - Human. Brandon Flowers wearing feathery shoulder pads? Eagles soaring symbolically? Tigers in the desert? Need I say more?
4. Miley Cyrus - The Climb. I didn't know Alvin and the Chipmunks had a new CD.
3. The Click Five - Catch Your Wave. Rabid fans chasing an obscure boy band? Did I get sent back to 1998 when I fell asleep watching the Miley Cyrus video?
2. New Kids On The Block - Summertime. OMG! LOL! WTF?!?
1. Jonas Brothers - Burnin' Up. OK... I could have picked any Jonas Brothers video, but this was the first that came up on Youtube. It might not even be their worst video, but I'm not willing to watch more. It features the late great David Carradine, future stripper Selena Gomez and usual badass Danny Trejo. Making a mockery of 007? Leave that to Daniel Craig.
Once I'd listed the worst recent videos, I wanted to emphasize that there are still a lot of good videos out there. Check out "Mojo" by Peeping Tom, "Monster Hospital" by Metric, "Perfect Situation" by Weezer, "Lovegame" by Lady Gaga, "Oscar Wilde" by Company of Thieves, "Sex is Not the Enemy" by Garbage and "Empire" by Kasabian. Madonna's video for "Celebration" is pretty classy as well, using sex appeal in the way that is so obvious and hilarious it isn't insulting to my intelligence.
13 comments:
The Killers? Green Day??? Seriously man, you're fucked.
you are a fucking spaz,bet you can't make good music fucktard
click 5 rock ! and also the rest on your retarded list.
no way Green Day is there. that's just fucked up.
Greeb Day, does suck now, they became an EMO band and cashed in.
green Day, does suck now Poser
Green Day, Sold out a longtime back, and their videos are just an EMO'S wetdream, and lets not talk about Brandon Flower's!
Nevermind Green Day... I whole-heartedly agree with #1 - The Jonas Hoes are awful! (not a typo)
that is the funniest list ever, i crapped myself.
I love the Jonas Brothers they are sexy, are you jealous of their bodies?
omg, the Click Five are hot too, who do you like Mariln Mansen? Or Rob zumbie?
Wow, bitter much? Obviously you haven't seen or heard The Click Five's new songs, videos, or albums. And I bet you don't even know they have a different lead singer now or that their music style has changed. And seeing as their hit single "Jenny" off their album "Modern Minds and Pastimes" was #1 for 5 weeks in a row and never fell, were named band of the year for 2008, won the Knockout Award from MTV for having the biggest impact on Asian youth and beat out 5 other American bands for it, AND sold out the Olympic Stadium in Beijing (yes, the same one the last Olympics were held at) to 15,000 people, they're doing pretty dang well. Not to mention their new single "I Quit! I Quit! I Quit!" off their upcoming album hit #1 for 3 weeks straight. And the fact that they go out of their way to be personable with their fans and keep us involved, and do lots of charity work as well, they're better people than most of these other artists out there and have earned their fans loyalty, because they know that's the smart thing to do. They gave up their whole Christmas season to tour Asia to help raise awareness of and put an end to human trafficking, and the drummer is running in the St. Jude marathon this December.
Go ahead and Google any of these facts, you'll find they're true.
H -
Good article. I agree with most of them. I'd bump Green day up to 5 and drop killers down to 6 or 7...
-K
21 guns of green day has won 3 VMAs recently, just so you know. and fucckkk, it's billie not billy.
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