This video was directed by Ace Norton, who was several videos to his credit. Watching this video, I was immediately reminded of the work of Ben Wheatley, though the video predates all of Wheatley’s features films, with the exception of Down Terrace. The guns firing at the balloons brought to mind Free Fire. The image of a man tied to a line reminded me of A Field in England. And the video’s dystopian tone felt almost identical to the dystopian tone of High-Rise.
I’ve shown this video to a few people and most of them have replied with, “What the fug did I just watch?”
Well, it doesn’t matter to me whether anyone else agrees or not. I like this video, specifically because it is so bizarre. Why should music videos make sense? This is a video (and a song) that creates a definite mood. It plays out like a dystopian nightmare and really, when was the last time that a dystopia ever made any sense? If the world followed any sort of logic, it wouldn’t currently be on the brink of destruction.
When the 8-bit world is being invaded by a bunch of spiders wearing sombreros, who else can you depend on to save the day other than Alvin Risk and everyone’s favorite internet meme, Nyan Cat? Of course, it’ll also involve a lot of heart, a lot of dancing, and a spinning pizza. No one should be surprised.
This video was created by Nyan Cat’s creator, Chris Torres. I think it’s kind of adorable.
For many of us, today is a bittersweet day. My sisters and I lost our mom nearly nine years ago and today reminds us of how much we miss her and will always miss her. At the same time, today is also my niece’s ninth birthday and I know mom would be so proud of how her granddaughter has been raised.
Our music video of the day is also bittersweet. Tracy Bonham’s Mother, Mother imagines a mother/daughter phone conversation in which the daughter assures her mom that life is great while secretly wishing that she could admit that it’s not. I don’t think there’s anyone alive who can’t relate to Bonham’s desperation as she shouts, “Everything’s fine!”
There are actually two videos for Mother, Mother, both of which were directed by Jake Scott. The first one features Tracy Bonham singing on television while her mother (played by Bonham’s real-life mother) cleans up around the house.
The second version is a bit more positive. To be honest, despite my instinct to naturally embrace the darker version of any work of art, I actually prefer the second video. Maybe it’s because I like playing dress up and I can relate to screaming while jumping around in a closet. Who knows?
I, I can’t get these memories out of my mind And some kind of madness has started to evolve I, I tried so hard to let you go But some kind of madness is swallowing me whole, yeah
I don’t smoke because 1) I have asthma, 2) I have a predisposition to addiction, and 3) I’m so obsessive compulsive that if I did start smoking, I would become the biggest chain smoker in the world and I’d end up being one of those women you see in anti-smoking commercials, popping out her fake teeth and pointing at the hole in her throat. That’s not for me.
That said, if I ever do start smoking, it’ll probably because of this song and this video. Seriously, just the opening bass line makes me want to light up. And then the video itself proves that smoking is pretty photogenic when the cigarettes are being held by beautiful people.
The song, itself, was written by Matt Bellamy after he had a fight with his then-girlfriend, Kate Hudson. According to Bellamy, he was reflecting on the fight and thought to himself, “Yeah, she was right, wasn’t she?”
As for the video, it features two lovers on a train, dealing with their own issues while a riot rages around them. The two lovers are played by Erin Wasson and Max Silberman, both of whom are achingly pretty. (For some reason, the usually reliable imvdb insists that the man on the train was played by Emile Hirsch. Sorry, that’s definitely Max Silberman.)
Of course, the idea of two lovers in the middle of a protest immediately makes me think of this famous picture, which was taken in Vancouver during a riot:
And, of course, there’s this Ray-Ban advertisement:
(If the majority of protesters looked as good as the people in the video and these two pictures, I might even be inspired to go to a march or two.)
(Also, be happy that I resisted the temptation to include a picture from that Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial. I came really close to doing it but, in the end, I couldn’t do it. I was born a Coke drinker and I’ll die a Coke drinker. Pepsi tastes too much like Vermont for me.)
This video was directed by Anthony Mandler, who has directed several videos for everyone from Jay-Z to Taylor Swift to Justin Bieber. (The imvdb credits him with 74 videos.) The gorgeous cinematography is credited to David Devlin.
Mario Contini, who is credited as being 1st Assistant Cameraman on Madness, was later the director of photography for Saint Motel’s My Type.
What to say about A Whiter Shade of Pale? This is one of the essential songs. I grew to love it as a result of it showing up on the soundtrack of some of my favorite movies. If you’re watching a film that’s set in the 60s, chances are that you’re going to hear A Whiter Shade of Pale at some point. (The song is also used to haunting effect in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves.) To be honest, even before I knew the song’s title or that it was originally recorded in 1967 by a group called Procol Harum, I knew that organ melody.
A Whiter Shade of Pale was one of the biggest hits of 1967. John Lennon reportedly loved it so much that he would often play it over and over again in his limousine. I don’t blame him. It’s good driving music. There’s a lot of debate as to what exactly the song is actually about. Who or what are the Vestal Virgins meant to represent? Who is skipping the light fandango? What’s up with feeling seasick?
Here’s what lyricist Ken Reid told Songfacts about the song’s meaning:
“It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It’s about a relationship. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. It’s got a thread running through it….I feel with songs that you’re given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale,’ and I thought, There’s a song here. And it’s making up the puzzle that fits the piece you’ve got. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into.”
As for the video itself, this is actually the second video that was made for A Whiter Shade of Pale. (Of course, in 1967, they were called promotional films and they often played on a type of jukebox known as a scopitone.) The first video featured footage of the band walking through the ruins of a castle and playing the song. It also featured a few quick cuts of Vietnam War footage. This was considered so controversial that Top of the Pops banned the video from airing. Hence, a second, far less political video was filmed.
(Apparently, a third video was filmed in the 80s. It featured Harry Dean Stanton and, since it’s on YouTube, maybe we’ll feature it at some point in the future.)
Anyway, I really like the video above. It’s a real time capsule, even if it is bereft of references to Vietnam. I like the fact that the members of the band appear to be struggling to keep a straight face throughout most of the video.
Today’s music video of the day is Saint Motel’s My Type. I don’t have too much to say about this one, beyond the fact that I like the retro feel of both the song and the video. This is a fun song to dance to and that’s certainly something that this video captures.
This video was directed by A/J Jackson, Saint Motel’s lead vocalist. Jackson has said that he was going for a cross of “early 70s cigarette ads and New York street photography.” Myself, I like to think of the video as being an outtake from a lost Joe Sarno movie.
This video’s cinematographer was Mario Contini while Cody Fusina is credited with production design.
As we all know, music video of the day has always been and always will be Val’s baby. Starting with If You Don’t Know Me By Nowin June of 2016, Val has shared and analyzed over 300 music videos! It’s become one of my favorite of our regular features here on the Shattered Lens.
As most of you know, for health reasons, Val is taking a temporary break from this feature. Until Val comes back, I figured that I might occasionally share a video or two. Admittedly, I do not have Val’s encyclopedic knowledge of music (and I should admit that my musical taste pretty much begins and ends with EDM) but what Val and I do share is a deep appreciation for a little Canadian show called Degrassi.
See, it was that love of Degrassi that led me to the video below. Earlier tonight, I was rewatching Death of a Disco Dancer, the third episode of Degrassi’s fifth season. In this episode, Paige is upset that her friend, co-worker, and classmate, Alex, doesn’t seem to care about going to college. When Degrassi hosts a college fair, Paige attempts to entice Alex to attend by offering her a joint.
“Will you go if you’re high?” Paige asks.
“I’ll go if you’re high,” Alex answers.
The two of them duck into an alley and light up the joint. What follows is perhaps the best three minute montage in the history of Degrassi as a very stoned Paige and Alex walk through the fair, giggling at all the Canadian college recruiters. It’s all good fun until Paige discovers that a friend of her mother’s is at the fair. Uh-oh!
Anyway, I’ve always loved the song that plays during the montage. It’s called Upfront With You and it’s performed by a Canadian band called Universal Honey. After watching the episode tonight, I looked the song up on YouTube and that’s when I came across the video that was made for it in 1996.
Now, despite doing a handful of Google searches, I can’t tell you who directed or worked on this video. I can tell you that Universal Honey has been around since 1992 and the band is made up of Leslie Stanwyck and Johnny Sinclair. (Before Universal Honey, they were both in a band called The Pursuit of Happiness.) Up Front With You is off of their first album, Magic Basement.
Not surprisingly, this is a Canadian band. One of the great things about Degrassi is that it exposed me to a lot of Canadian bands that I, as an American, might otherwise have never heard of.
The video starts off with The Darkness onboard their version of the ZZ Top spaceship car.
Rough Boy by ZZ Top
Then Justin Hawkins emerges from a heart-shaped bath before something that reminds me of Grimace dries him off. That’s followed by Hawkins reminding us that he is a fan of Queen.
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
You can also see in the background that he either made a sculpture based on this…
I Want To Break Free by Queen
or borrowed some of the furniture from the Korova Milk Bar used last by Rob Zombie in 2002.
Never Gonna Stop by Rob Zombie
This was a few years before Zombie would get Alex DeLarge and Michael Myers to sit down and discuss masks.
Then it’s time to introduce the rest of the band, and play some guitar before Hawkins gets beamed down to a planet to fight a giant crab. I guess the Gorn were too good for this music video.
Star Trek: TOS — Arena
However, we do get a cameo appearance from the rock.
Star Trek: TOS — Arena
Of course Hawkins dodges the rock like Captain Kirk did, and with the power of a Bohemian Rhapsody reference…
he throws it right back. They’re working with a limited runtime. Hawkins doesn’t have the time to make a gun.
Then Hawkins runs through decontamination before turning to point down the corridor to show off their gigantic Marshall Stack.
I’m sure they were added later, but I’m still going to call this for The Animals and say that hot flames of fire were roaring at their feet. I have no idea if this one was a reference to Spill The Wine by The Animals, but it is the first thing I thought of when I saw the scene. Plus, out of the middle of the flames does comes this red-colored Orion girl.
Meanwhile, back on the bridge, the band prepares for their final reference.
A space creature latches itself onto the ship like in that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Star Trek: The Next Generation — Galaxy’s Child
Unlike Star Trek: The Next Generation, they turn on their instrument phasers and blast the thing to dust.
Then we get a thumbs up from Hawkins…
before their ship crash lands on a planet in the video for their song Friday Night, which picked up right after this one.
Every January, I list my fourteen favorite songs of the previous year and, every January, I include the same disclaimer. My fourteen favorite songs are not necessarily the fourteen favorite songs of any of the other writers here at the Shattered Lens. We are a large and diverse group of people and, as such, we all have our own individual tastes.
If you ever visited the TSL Bunker, you would be shocked by the different music coming out of each office. You would hear everything from opera to death metal to the best of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. And then, of course, you would reach my office and you would discover that my taste in music pretty much runs the gamut from EDM to More EDM.
Now, usually, I do try to listen to a variety of music. You can go to my Song of the Day site — Lisa Marie’s Song of the Day — and see that I do occasionally listen to other types of music. But, I have to be honest. 2016 was not a year that inspired me to really leave me comfort zone. If anything, music provided me with some much needed consistency in an otherwise chaotic year. 2016 was a year that made me want to dance until it was all over and, for the most part, my favorite songs of the year reflect that fact.
Before I list my 14 songs, I should make something else very clear. These are my 14 favorite songs of 2016. I’m not saying that they’re necessarily the best songs of 2016. I’ll leave that debate for others. Instead, there are the songs that I found myself listening to over and over again. These are the songs made me dance. These are the songs that made me sing. A few of these songs relaxed me when I needed to be relaxed. One of the songs made me cry but I’m not going to say which one.
It might make you cry too.
Or it might not.
That’s the beautiful thing about art. Everyone experiences it in their own individual way.
Here are my 14 favorite songs of 2016:
14) David Bowie — Lazarus
13) Afrojack & Hardwell — Hollywood
12) Cedric Gervais (ft. Juanes) — Este Amor
11) Matoma (ft. Becky Hall) — False Alarm
10) Radiohead — Burn the Witch
9) Gorgon City (feat Vaults) — All Four Walls
8) Penthox — Give It Away
7) Britney Spears — Clumsy
6) Martin Garrix (feat Mesto) — WIEE
5) Tiesto, Oliver Heldens (feat Natalie LaRose) — The Right Song
A pair of immaculate white sneakers, being worn by the lead singer of The Talking Heads, David Byrne, walk out onto a bare stage while an unseen audience applauds. Byrne places a radio on the stage beside him and says, “I have a tape I want to play for you.” Accompanied only by a drum machine and an acoustic guitar, Byrne launches into a performance of Psycho Killer that ends with him lurching across the stage like a marionette that is losing its strings.
So begins the greatest concert film of all time, Stop Making Sense.
As Psycho Killer comes to an end, Byrne is joined on stage by bassist Tina Weymouth. While Byrne and Weymouth perform Heaven, the black-clad stage crew sets up a drum kit behind them. Drummer Chris Frantz comes out for the third song, Thank You For Sending Me An Angel. The fourth member of the Talking Heads, Jerry Harrison, appears on stage for Found A Job and is then followed by several touring members of the band, including legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarist Alex Weir, percussionist Steve Scales, and backup singers, Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt. It’s not until the concert’s sixth song, Burning Down The House, that the entire band is on stage.
Pieced together from three separate shows performed at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, Stop Making Sense showcases one of the most important bands of the 80s at their absolute best. Eschewing any candid footage of the band backstage and only occasionally showing any shots of the audience, Jonathan Demme keeps the focus on the music and David Byrne’s amazing showmanship. Even more than the music, what really makes Stop Making Sense stand out is Byrne’s physicality. During one instrumental passage, Byrne even runs around the stage in circles before jumping back to his microphone without missing a beat.
Though the entire band is in great form, Byrne is almost always the focus of attention. The only time he’s not is when he goes backstage during a performance of Genius Of Love by Weymouth and Frantz’s side project, The Tom Tom Club. During that time, Byrne is changing into the “big suit,” the costume that continues to define the Talking Heads to this day.
Along with Burning Down The House, highlights include Life During Wartime,
Swamp,
Once in a Lifetime,
and Stop Making Sense‘s most famous moment, David Byrne performing Girlfriend is Better while wearing the iconic “big suit.”
Stop Making Sense is a fun, exhilarating, and sometimes exhausting concert film and, given all the bad feelings that exist between Byrne and the other three members of the band, it’s probably as close as any of us will ever get to experiencing The Talking Heads live.
For tomorrow’s movie a day, I’ll be explaining why Blue Chips always makes me think of England.
Through the Shattered Lens 