Today’s music video of the day is Fiona Apple’s Criminal!
I can actually remember the first time that I saw this video. I was 11 years old and I was like, “So, that’s what you do when you’re a teenager!” I subsequently had so much fun as a teenager that I kept having fun even after I grew up. So, I guess it can be argued that this video amounts to 4 minutes that basically determined the rest of my life…
Criminal was directed by Mark Romanek and he has said that he wanted to capture a sense of voyeurism with this video. He certainly accomplished that. Fiona Apple has said that Criminal is about “feeling bad for getting something so easily by using your sexuality.” Myself, I think people tend to pay so much attention to the fact that Fiona’s in her underwear for most of the clip that they miss the video’s rather sly sense of humor.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s probably debatable whether or not today’s music video of the day is actually a music video. The fictional Canadian band Downtown Sasquatch performed What I Know at the end of the Rock and Roll High School episode of Degrassi. The video below is taken from the end of that episode.
But, you know what? I think this does qualify as a music video. It’s certainly shot like a music video and, to a large extent, it reminds me of something from the pop culture fueled imagination of Spike Jonze. In some ways, it’s even better when viewed out of the context of the rest of the episode. So dammit, it’s a music video!
Add to that, I love this song!
As for Downtown Sasquatch, they were the most popular band on Degrassi and they went through several lineup changes. Fortunately, What I Know was performed with the first and best lineup.
On bass, we have Marco Del Rossi (played by Adamo Ruggiero), whose epic coming out story played out over five seasons of Degrassi.
On lead guitar, we have Jimmy Brooks (played by Aubrey Graham, though he’s now better known as Drake). Since this took place during the third season of the show, Jimmy could still walk. This would change during the fourth season of the show when he was shot in the back by Rick Murray.
On drums — Spinner Mason (Shane Kippel)! How important a character was Spinner to Degrassi? He was so important that, despite the fact that he started the show a year ahead of all the other characters, it still took him seven seasons to graduate from high school. Seriously, some of us were wondering if Spinner was going to end up celebrating his 40th birthday in Mr. Simpson’s media immersion class. Incidentally, just a season after Downtown Sasquatch’s performance here, Spinner would be involved in the prank that would eventually lead to Rick Murray shooting Jimmy in the back. However, Jimmy and Spinner would eventually reconcile and start a T-shirt business called Squatchwear.
And finally, we have our lead singer and founder of Downtown Sasquatch, Craig Manning (Jake Epstein)! A bipolar photographer and a musialc genius, Craig not only started Downtown Sasquatch but he also impregnated Manny Santos and broke the hearts of not only Ashley Kerwin but Ellie Nash as well!
Speaking of Ashley (Melissa McIntyre) and Ellie (Stacey Farber), they’re both sitting in the audience and watching Downtown Sasquatch perform. If you look closely, you’ll notice that they’re both wearing t-shirts that depict Craig burning in Hell.
Today’s music video is Elektrobank by The Chemical Brothers and it just happens to go along perfectly with my current series of Back To School reviews!
This video takes place at a high school gymnastics competition and it stars none other than one of my favorite directors, Sofia Coppola! Well, actually, if you want to get technical, some of the video’s best moments features Sofia’s stunt double. But still, she gives a great performance.
This video was directed by the great Spike Jonze, Sofia’s future (ex) husband.
Val is usually the one who does our music video of the day feature but she’s taking a few very deserved and well-earned days off so, for the next few days, I’m going to be filling in for her!
So, I figured I’d start things off with this 2002 video of No Doubt’s Hella Good! There’s no big reason behind why I decided to go with this video, beyond the fact that I really love the song and it was directed by one of my favorite filmmakers, Mark Romanek! This was filmed over three days in Long Beach, California and Romanek based it on a Vogue fashion shoot from the 1990s, one that featured the models on wave runners!
As for me, I’m feeling hella good so let’s just keep on dancing…
As a kid, this music video was simple and uplifting. It’s about a little girl who is laughed off stage because she is dressed like a bee and can’t really dance. She wanders around meeting more and more people who don’t really understand her. Then after reaching her lowest, she finds a place with others like herself. Recently I read a comment on the music video. There is another way you can think of it.
A little girl is laughed off stage because she is dressed like a bee and can’t really dance. She wanders around meeting more and more people who don’t understand. Then after reaching her lowest, she finds peace in killing herself. She opens a pair of heavenly gates with other people in an Elysian field like place that is filled with other people the world rejected to the point where they severed their ties with the harsh world as the music video depicts.
Personally, I think it is a bit of both. It is meant to be uplifting in that it does show the little girl eventually finding a place filled with people who accept her for who she is. I also think it is a cautionary tale about how people who are different from some sort of non-existent norm can be so marginalized by the world that they are pushed to an extreme limit where we lose them. They may find a wonderful place where they are with others of their kind, but what makes them unique leaves the world devoid of what they had to offer.
The fact that lead singer Shannon Hoon died three years later of a cocaine overdose lends credence to this interpretation. The timing of the lyrics and the lyrics themselves also point towards this as well. It’s bittersweet.
Samuel Bayer of Smells Like Teen Spirit directed the video.
Heather DeLoach played the little girl. She has done a handful of things over the years such as Camp Nowhere (1994) and The Beautician and the Beast (1997).
Jeremy Stuart edited the music video. He did a handful of music videos. I couldn’t find an entry on IMDb for him seeing as his name is rather generic.
I think this music video can speak for itself, and doesn’t need my help.
I will bring up the crew though.
Director Edd Griles did some of Lauper’s most famous music videos including Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. He was also the executive producer on this one.
Roz Block was a producer on this video. This seems to be the only video Block did.
Mike Negrin shot the video. He seems to have worked primarily on Billy Joel videos, but did a few others as well. Since then, he has mainly done television, which included shooting The Spirit of Christmas (2015) that Lisa reviewed last year.
If you look closely then you’ll see wrestler “Captain” Lou Albano who played her father in the music video for Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I’ll bet Catrine Dominique who played her mom in that video is in here somewhere too, but I’m not 100% sure.
It’s my birthday today so I chose to spotlight Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant. Among other ties to the song, I too am a goody two shoes. It also happens to fall in line with the last two music videos I did as something that is so much fun to sing along to while you watch it.
One of the most interesting things to me about this video is the use of repeated actions throughout it. It matches the lyrics and title, but it also fits with theories I have read for why temporal overlaps exist in early films. They say that perhaps it wasn’t a mistake, but a double your pleasure, double your fun thing. I know I enjoy seeing Adam dive across the table, then multiple times across the bed with actor Caroline Munro lying in it.
Munro has been in numerous things, but is probably best known for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Of course all things are connected, so it turns out actor and music video director Daniel Kleinman who is this video also happened to direct the music video for Sheryl Crow’s song for the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) made two decades later.
We also get a cameo from the Jailhouse Rock (1957) set and a clever use of a mirror, which doubles the image. The Jailhouse Rock set can also double as a copy of every set used in an early cinema film called Peeping Tom that was remade endless times. The butler even turns out to be a peeping tom. We also get an iris shot of Adam that is repeated with the shot through the keyhole near the end.
There’s a bunch of interesting stuff going on in this video.
Since it is my birthday, let’s amp it up, and triple our fun with two more performances/music videos for Goody Two Shoes.
For whatever reason, I happened to pick out two fun music videos in a row well in advance. I have up to the beginning of November already planned out.
This is a song like Walking On Sunshine by Katrina And The Waves that probably everyone has heard before. It’s a simple video filled with video effects and plenty of sexual innuendo filling the screen. The band even had some controversy over a picture of the lead singer given her age at the time it was taken. There is a rather suggestive photo of her floating in the water at the beginning and end of the video. Just like I Know What Boys Like by The Waitresses and Centerfold by J. Geils Band, I hope you just have fun listening to it as I am while writing this post.
Steve Kahn directed the music video. He did only a couple of other music videos, but there is still something noteworthy. I Want Candy was in between a video for Lou Reed’s Women and Bad Manner’s My Girl Lollipop (My Boy Lollipop). I haven’t heard them yet, but it is interesting that all three music videos were done in a row given the titles.
Seeing as the last two music videos we did were quite serious–Jeremy by Pearl Jam and Runaway Train by Soul Asylum–I thought we’d go with one that is just fun. I am not really going to talk about it except to bring up one sad thing and the director.
The sad thing is that this video starts with lead singer Patty Donahue smoking. What is sad about that is she died of cancer on December 9th, 1996. I don’t know if it was lung cancer or not, but it is a shame that her wonderful deadpan vocal delivery is no longer with us.
The director of the video is Ken Walz. He did several music videos in various positions including writing, producing, and directing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun for Cyndi Lauper. He also directed Time After Time for Lauper.
Might as well do this music video now. There’s no “good” time to do it. I never thought too much about the music video till now. It’s montage/collage shots of a kid who obviously has a very unhappy life played by Trevor Wilson. Eddie Vedder stands around as the narrator for the boy’s story. Finally, we have the ending where the kid goes and kills himself in front of the class as clearly shown by the kids holding up their arms to protect themselves from the splashes of blood.
That is what the video is about, but not what some people think it is about. Some people think it is about a kid who brought a gun to school, then shot his fellow students. Others have even tried to use this video as a scapegoat for their actions. I remember once reading about some people who were blaming their actions on The Matrix. Might as well give it a try. People sure ate it up in the 80s when people would blame Satan and Heavy Metal. So why not blame this music video for your actions? I won’t link to it here, but I have come across a site in the past that even though it acknowledges what Ozzy Osbourne’s song Suicide Solution is actually about, they still say they are sure kids have killed themselves a result.
Based on the Wikipedia article on this video, a lot of this nonsense seems to stem from real world school shootings. Enough. The song is about a kid who is so tortured by his life and the people around him that he sadly does what some people do. He kills himself, and in his case, does it in a manner that leaves a message for others. In the case of the story in this music video, it’s killing himself in front of all the kids who made fun of him while his home life was a personal hell, which the song talks about. In particular, the line about cleaning it from the blackboard. I have a feeling more people need to see Frederick Wiseman’s 1968 documentary called High School.
However, you can’t completely blame this on people misunderstanding the music video. The music video came in two stages. They filmed a prototype-like version of it before deciding to film the one above. Well, sort of the version above. The second version they filmed edited out the kid putting the gun in his mouth to commit suicide because of censorship restrictions. That’s why people looked at the kids afterwards and thought it represented them having been killed. Thanks, MTV!
With that out of the way, let me just say that I never particularly liked the music video. I love the song, but just like Smells Like Teen Spirit, it became annoying because it was overplayed. The music video has always been an example to me of why Pearl Jam shouldn’t have been making music videos at the time. Eddie Vedder looks ridiculous while trying to convey some very serious material. Still, it is another essential of the early 90s. It is devastating and heartbreaking. It is also a prime example of how editing–forced or not–without thinking can have serious consequences. It is also a prime example of how censorship can completely transform a work of art into something else for a portion of its’ audience.
Through the Shattered Lens 