I don’t swim and I have a morbid fear of drowning but I still absolutely love jet skis. I’ve only been on one a handful of times and every time I was the passenger as opposed to the driver but still, it was a blast. Of course, I was scared senseless the whole time but still. It’s kind of like riding a motorcycle, except you’re in the water and you can pretend like you’re in a movie or something. As this video shows, jet skis are very cinematic.
When I watch this video, I immediately think of despair.
The sleazy motels. The empty swimming pools. The landscape of endless emptiness. It’s all very American and yet it’s also a world that’s inspired some of the greatest American films ever made. Just look at some of the shots and tell me that you don’t see the spirits of Harry Dean Stanton and Dennis Hopper hanging around in the background. There’s a beauty in the ugliness of it all.
I imagine I’ll be up and listening to this song at 5 in the morning. As for the video, I always love these sort of post-apocalyptic warehouse-style music videos.
To be honest, the main reason that I picked this for today’s music video of the day is because it’s rare a day passes by that I don’t describe myself as being “a 90s bitch.”
Reportedly, this song was recorded at a time when both Aino Jawo and Caroline Hjelt were going through difficult break-ups. From Songfacts.com:
The song doubles as a kiss-off to the Icona Pop duo’s then boyfriends. “We were going through similar stuff, with dating pigs, and things were not going our way. And when that song came along, we just felt it, and we wanted people to feel our anger,” Jawo explained to MTV News. “We felt the song was a strong song, and … we just wanted to get the song out and get the pigs to hear it. You know who you are.”
“Now, we meet them on the street when we’re back home, and you’re like ‘Hi!’ and they’re like ‘hi,'” Hjelt added. “And we’re like ‘Hahaha, thank you for the inspiration.'”
Continuing our look back at 2014, below you’ll find 14 of my favorite songs of the past year. Now, you should understand that I’m not necessarily saying that these are the best 14 songs of the year. Instead, they’re just some of my personal favorites. These are the songs that either made me want to dance or that I inevitably found myself singing off-key while I was in the shower. These are the songs that got stuck in my head and which I found myself singing whenever I was stuck in traffic.
These are 14 of my favorite songs of 2014.
(By the way, click on the links in this sentence if you want to see my favorite songs of 2013, 2012, and 2011.)
14) Everything is Awesome — Tegan and Sara featuring The Lonely Island
13) Mess Is Mine — Vance Joy
12) Summer Nights — Kaskade featuring The Brocks
11) Chandelier — Sia
10) Take Ü There — Jack Ü (featuring Kiesza)
9) Blank Space — Taylor Swift
8) Runaway(U & I) — Galantis
7) Blue Sky Action — Above & Beyond featuring Alex Vargas
And finally, here’s my pick for the worst song and video of last year. In the past, I’ve defended some of the notoriously awful songs that have been produced and promoted by Patrice Wilson, just on the basis that they were, at the very least, memorably weird. Friday remains one of my favorite singing-in-the-shower songs and it’s fun to sing when you’re trying to annoy people on Monday. Chinese Food is — well, Chinese Food sucked but I do love Chinese food so I could at least relate to the song. But then, in 2014, came both the song Sush Up and the video featuring 11 year-old Alison Gold playing a sexualized criminal who gets electrocuted in the electric chair. And, of course, Patrice shows up to rap. And seriously — BLEH!
While I’m not going to share the video for Sush Up because it’s really creepy and icky, I will share another video that’ll make my point about Patrice Wilson.
Tomorrow, my look back at 2014 will continue with 20 good things that I saw on television in 2014!