Thursday, August 09, 2007

I Want My Music Television vol. I


As I mentioned in the last Don’t Download These Videos, I have retired the name to avoid any confusion on the quality of the videos featured. I had actually planned on calling this feature I Want My Music Television until the “Weird Al” Yankovic inspired me to go with something different. And I promise that I Want My Music Television will be a Chocolate Rain free zone. I won’t even feature the John Mayer Remix. Even though there is a name change I advise you to watch the videos before you read my reviews if you don’t want me to spoil things. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available, if not the link goes to YouTube where you can watch the video in full screen). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.


D.A.N.C.E. - Justice



When the nominations for this years VMA’s were released there were very few surprises because MTV in recent years has traded nominations in exchange for the big names to perform, present, or at the very least walk the red carpet. Really the only big shock this year was this video from Justice which after watching it definitely deserved it. Granted I doubt the song will be getting an award anytime soon.


Young Folks - Peter Bjorn and John



The only other surprise this year, to a less extent was this wacky song and video by Swedes Peter Bjorn and John for Best New Artist. When I first heard the song I though we had this year’s Crazy, but alas the song has yet to catch on despite anyone who has heard it has inevitably found themselves whistling the song including Kanye West who sampled the song on a recent mix tape. Mmm, sounds like a great surpise guest performance at this year’s festivities.


Hold On - KT Tunstall



In the two and a half years I have been reviewing albums, there have only been four that have gotten the prestigious Extreme on my Terror Alert Scale. KT Tunstall scored one of them with Eye to the Telescope (see Her Face Is the Map of the World). So she has a lot to live up to with her new disk Dramatic Fantastic coming out in September. Unfortunately the first single really isn’t as good as anything on her first album. Maybe the song will grow on me and there are better songs coming. As for the video, I guess I was too harsh on her choice of wardrobe for Live Earth because it was much better than her futuristic getup here.


During my discussion on the Monster Single of the Year for this year’s VMA’s I mentioned that Rockstar by Nickelback should have been nominated and mentioned I would talk about it later. This was because I was saving my thoughts for this post so I feature the video. Except between then and now Roadrunner Records has taken down all the videos down. Just another case of Record People being Shady. Of course the big irony is Roadrunner Records being all uppity on copyright infringement considering that they stole their name from a cartoon. Hopefully Loony Tunes takes that irony even further by suing the record company. But anyways. If you want to catch out the video you can view it at iFilm (unfortunately they won’t let you embed it) and here are my original thoughts on the video:

Let’s get this out of the way first: Nickelback sucks massively. They are everything that is wrong with rock music today. They pander to bored housewives who at one time tried to get a hand on a member of Poison and now resign to driving their hoodlums to their soccer games but listen to Nickelback now because they are safe enough to listen around those hoodlums or at PTA meetings. With that said, despite being played every time I have turned on the radio for the past two months, I still chuckle every time I hear Rockstar. And the video makes me like the song even more. I don’t know why but whenever band get other people to lip sync their songs it is always entertaining, especially when they thrown in a token old chick, yet the dude from ZZ Top reprises some of his lines. Then the video even throws in random cameos from Wayne Gretzky, Paul Wall, Chuck Liddell, Kid Rock, Nelly Furtado, Grant Hill, Ted Nugent, and even Faith the Vampire Slayer makes an appearance (Eliza, where have you been, we miss you). But the best cameos are the semi-ironic ones with Gene Simmons, who embodies the sarcastic tone of the song as well as Hef’s girlfriends as the song doesn’t put the Playboy bunnies in such a good light.

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