Rumors of the demise of the music video have been greatly exaggerated. While MTV has mostly opted out of airing the mini-movies, the Internet has brought music videos roaring back into both popularity and importance. In the YouTube age, all a band needs to make an effective video is a good idea, eye-catching visuals and the ambition to pull it off.
In the great tradition of year-end lists, we’ve collected the best combinations of song and sight pleasure. Whether they’ve stirred up conversation, controversy or copycats, each of these music videos has left a lasting impression. So get comfortable in your cubicle and prepare to lower your day’s productivity by watching the 9 best videos of 2012…
The electronic jam of “Oblivion” isn’t the most obvious single off of Claire Boucher’s exhilarating album, Visions, but once you watch the video for the track, the selection makes more sense. Boucher (better known as Grimes) looks ebullient as she bounces around in the seemingly spontaneous video, ensuring that all eyes on her, despite the football game/dirt bike rally/weight lifting going on in the background. The unlikely combination of strong football-fueled masculinity and the incongruous image of the petite Boucher happily dancing and ignoring her surroundings creates an overwhelmingly positive image of female empowerment. Add gorgeous cinematography to the track’s good-natured vibe and you have a video worthy of a year-end “best of” list.
8. Drake, “HYFR” (Feat. Lil Wayne)
The video for Drake’s “HYFR” (which stands for “Hell Yeah, F—–g Right”) starts with a statement: “On October 24th 2011 Aubrey ‘Drake’ Graham chose to get re-bar mitzvahed as a re-commitment to the Jewish religion … the following is a clip displaying the event that took place.” We don’t know how much is real (surely, the home movie footage of baby Drake) and how much is for show (the face cake and the panda mask, right?). What is clear is that when you’re a world famous rapper with a flawless flow, rapid-fire rhyming and have friends like Lil Wayne, you can make everyone drink both Patron and Manischewitz at your bar mitzvah.
7. YN Rich Kids, “Hot Cheetos & Takis”
“Hot Cheetos & Takis” is a song about snack food sung by seven kids in an afterschool program. While on paper the tune has all the makings of a forgettable novelty number, the track is insanely catchy with the truly talented kids from a Minneapolis YMCA after-school program spitting out verses set to an irresistibly foot-tapping (and chip-crunching) beat. We recommend cranking it up on New Year’s Eve and ringing in 2013 watching a bunch of kids rap about their favorite convenience store snacks—while drinking champagne and eating Hot Cheetos, of course.
Danny Brown, “Grown Up”
The incredibly talented hip-hop artist Danny Brown took a page out of Biggie Smalls’ “Sky’s the Limit” playbook and cast a mini-me version of himself in this video for his seemingly autobiographical song “Grown Up.” The stand-in kid, played flawlessly by Dante Hoagland, replicates Brown’s style—complete with missing front teeth, bangs and swagger as he rides a bike with training wheels through the streets of Detroit. The video is strangely sweet for Brown, whose stellar album XXX lives up to its adults-only title.
5. Jack White, “Sixteen Saltines”
AG Rojas has a knack for nihilism. His video for Earl Sweatshirt’s “Earl” nailed destructive adolescent angst, and he does it again in the former White Stripes frontman’s “Sixteen Saltines.” The bizarre and occasionally terrifying video—warning: parts of which are extremely hard to watch—is equal parts mesmerizing and cringe-worthy. Set in aLord of the Flies anarchist world where youth run wild, terrorizing the town, chugging cough syrup, getting face tattoos, playing strange and violent games and ultimately capturing White, the video is delirious and dark, but so is the song—the second single on White’s Grammy-nominated solo album Blunderbuss.
4. M.I.A., “Bad Girls”
Director Romain Gavras takes all the live-fast-die-young absurdities of rap videos—speeding cars, dazzling stunts and provocative women—and transports them to a bombed-out desert, where they are quickly rendered into nothing but gimmicks in a stunning satire. The result is a chaotic cavalcade of insane feats, wacky dance moves and, as is typical of M.I.A., a deeply political streak running through it. The most arresting image is of M.I.A. nonchalantly filing her nails on top of a car as it careens on two wheels, which is simultaneously invigorating, frightening— and completely bad ass.
The Texas band, perhaps best known for scoring the Friday Night Lights television series, has made a name for themselves with their heartbreaking, expansive sound. So it makes sense that their videos are as dizzyingly beautiful as their music. The video for “Postcard From 1952” from Take Care, Take Care, Take Care is filled with mesmerizingly slow and somewhat mysterious shots. But that’s what you should expect when one of your co-directors was the second unit cinematographer for Terrence Malick’s head-spinning opus, The Tree of Life. The seven-minute tear-jerker of a video is set in beautiful, haunting slow-motion as we see scenes of a child’s wonder, a mother photographing her child, a young couple’s kiss. It sounds like a Hallmark commercial, but plays like the sweetest memento of life’s magic.
2. Aimee Mann, “Labrador”
The video stars John Hamm as an overbearing version of director Tom Scharpling—portraying him as a greasy huckster video director who wants to do a shot-for-shot remake of ‘Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry.” (Students of the ’80s will recall that Til Tuesday was the group Mann fronted before her solo career.) In the video Mann balks at the concept, but claims she was tricked into signing a contract and is now obligated to go forward with it. The result is exactly what you’d expect: A mind-blowingly hilarious shot-for-shot remake of “Voices Carry” with Superchunk/The Mountain Goats’ drummer Jon Wurster standing in for the vaguely abusive boyfriend and a cameo by Ted Leo in an atrocious wig. The laugh-out-loud video is the perfect antidote to “Labrador,” the somewhat depressing song off of Mann’s Charmer LP about a hopelessly one-sided relationship.
1. PSY, “Gangnam Style”
Without a doubt the video of 2012—racking up close to a billion views on YouTube since it was posted in July—“Gangnam Style” features PSY riding an invisible horse through the streets of Seoul’s Gangnam district. The catchy song paired with social satire and tongue-in-cheek vibe has spread so quickly it reminds us why videos are called viral. The video has not only doubled the value of Psy’s father’s company but has sparked an (occasionally lethal) dance craze, aptly called “the invisible horse,” and catapulted PSY (a.k.a. Jae-Sang Park, a South Korean performer and reality TV judge) to international super stardom. It has even hatched its own cottage industry of mash-upsand imitators with groups as diverse as political candidates, Eton students, prisoners, Navy midshipmen and Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei.
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