on videos, movement, and the unlocking of songs

Prologue

(song at 0:26 if you're not up for Rick Ross and/or Ciroc):

1

Humans argue all the time about the value of music videos, and whether or not a good video can ever truly become part, and ultimately alter the fabric of the song itself (well, at least the kind of humans who read blogs all time). Like, without its inseparable and fucktastically amazing video, would anyone really give a shit about some Korean rapper? More importantly, should they? (...if you were still wondering the answer is yes).

But regardless of all that shit, this reporter would like to put us on a totally different track of internetified zeitgeistotronic-arguo-discussion as to exactly what a music video has the power to do.

2

Music videos,and the shots in them, exist on a spectrum. One one end, you have music videos that is pretty much just a bunch of shots of the musician/band. Closer to those old school promotional videos bands would sometimes makein the 60's and 70's. [1] Often these will just be footage of them performing live, or in a studio, or just a room or something.

On the other, you got the crazy "music video-y" shit. What. Don't give me that; you fuckers all know what I mean. And while I didn't exactly research this claim, I would say this probably grew out of the explosion of resources and popularity of the music video world that started in the 80's. Sometimes these are just absolutely spastic malarky, but generally they tell some kind of story that is somehow tangentially related to the song. [2]

3

Oh god that got tangenty. Anyway, I just want to talk about the stuff on the former side of the spectrum. The most basic, and perhaps important aspect of the music video. The thing a standalone song actually cannot do. And that is to show you what the damn band actually looks like.

And it shows you how they move.

4

The Gunplay video up there is, minus some, uh, funky editing, is pretty simple. Dude standing there rapping. But it's the way that dude is standing there rapping that makes him, well, Gunplay. The sneer, the hilarious way he rolls his eyes and looks up to see how gods grace is--hell, I could write you a fucking essay just charting the positons and movements of his hands (double barrel gunz at 1:32 ftw)--him losing his shit on the molly lines and then coming back down to name drop fucking Amar'e Stoudemire (which leads me to believe Gunplay hasn't seen a Knicks game in the last year)

5

Most rap videos (especially from the 90's [3]) are like this. Pretty basic. Which really works for the genre, and not just for budgetary reasons, since the charisma/perceivable swag of the rapper is often the most important aspect of the music.

After all, there's a reason that even with with all the money he's been gettin' from the fuckin start that could conceivably be blown on some crazy Hype Williams shit, Rick Ross still makes videos where he just stands around rapping (okay and sits a lot, but it is Rick Ross we're talkng about.)

6

We'll get off rap in a second, but here's just a few more examples. Ab-Soul's hilarious manifesto "Gone Insane" generally makes me dance around, shake my hands, make silly faces, and just generally bob around all drunken master-style. But when I played it for a friend, I could see he just wasn't feeling it--wasn't moving to the weird, fun, funky rhythms of Ab-Soul himself. [4]

"It's better if you see the video" I found myself saying. And that's when I realized, all that weird shit I do when I hear this song listed above? You know who else does that? Fucking Ab-Soul himself:

It's not that the song is actually made better by the video, or that it's worse with out it, but that by allowing us to see how Ab-Soul himself is physically affected by the music, we can just gain a different and maybe better understanding of the song that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

Cause look, we don't always appreciate a song right away. Sometimes its just not to our tastes, but sometimes you're just missing something. And Movement such an innate part of music (cue faux-anthropological bullshit about dancing around fires or whatever) that often, you'll find, just seeing the artist flopping around to the music coming from inside them is what ultimately unlocks whatever its going to do inside you. [5] Like, maybe you find Danny Brown kind of annoying. But when you see the dude, you might realize, oh, this dude is entertaining as fuck.

7

But actually, onto the non-rap! Take for example, this Shiina Ringo song, "Yattsuke Shigoto" (which apparently translates to: half-assed job). Just casually listening to it, you might get a pretty standard RAWK vibe, albeit with a pretty interesting bassline and some good singing. But watching the video:

The song title translates, from what I can tell, to "half-assed job", which makes sense. Here is a badass badass mofo rocking the kimono, wailing away, but all through that impenetrable air of not giving a fuuuuuck, so that when some sort of emotion/energy does break through--peep the crazy eyes at 1:30--it punctuates the feeling/attitude of the song in a constantly developing way, leading up to those brief flashes of crazy at 2:28 and 2:33, and culminating with the creepy whites-of-the-eyes-only-stare at 2:40. Oh, and not to mention breaking out the fucking fan at 1:57?

The point of all this is not that I am kind of in love with Shiina Ringo [6], but simply that the way musicians movements and expressions develop over the course of a song can tell us its story in a different, kind of primal way we couldn't have experienced otherwise.

8

Not to belabor the point here, but the same kind of thing happened to me with Swedish pop-gician Robyn. I wasn't a huge fan of this song, that all the other hamsters were constantly bumpin, but then I saw the video, and well:

CALLLLL YOUR GIIIIRLFRIEEEEEND

9

Ultimately, I guess, what I am trying to say is while you can't judge a book by it's cover, sometimes a cover can help you find a new way of understanding book. And it's not even just videos--some things that have made me understand and even love music I hadn't been into at all before include: the album cover, an interview with the artists, seeing it used in a movie, blasting on a highway, hearing it headphones in the rain, listening in a different city, watching people dance it in a club, hearing it LOUD, watching a friend react to parts of it I'd never noticed, hearing a cover, actually playing on an instrument myself, hearing a live version, and most of all, reading what others have to say about it. Reading reviews, reading criticism; traveling back in the day with reading Ellen Willis, Studs Turkel, and Lester Bangs, an interneting it up today with AMG, Dark Forces Swing, or Passion of The Weiss.

My point is this: whether you like something or don't, look around. Discover about it. [7] Unlock as much as you can.

'cause, why not?

--h.s.t.

___

[1] to awkwardly hilarious results

[2] Or, y'know, there was that time Michael Bay directs a music video for Meatloaf. Which feels like it really explains... something.

[3] When they also all seemed to take place in the exact same grimey ass warehouse,* but that's a story for another day.

*yeah peep that early Jay-Z

[4] okay in fairness he was also driving at the time, but still

[5] feel free to crush that one

[6] although that is also true

[7] LIKE BY READING THIS BLOG FOR EXAMPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!