Genesis - Invisible Touch

*1/2 (out of four)


There's a real smarmy quality to the "Invisible Touch" video - not only are the three members of Genesis mugging to the camera, they're also mugging with cameras. Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and The Other Guy are given handheld cameras with which to film each other, and the results are intended to be high comedy. And lemme tell you - I'm high right now, and this ain't comedy.

Phil spends the video's intro sticking the camera in the face of Mike (minus his Mechanics) and instructing him to "pout for me, pout baby." Mike, meanwhile, is in fact pouting, but that's because he's thinking of his dead dad again. Christ, Mike - your dad got run over by that cement truck, like, 25 years ago. And you even got a number-one hit out of it. Time to move on.

The entire "Invisible Touch" video takes place on a vast soundstage where, obstensibly, Genesis is rehearsing for their upcoming world tour. Band members lip synch on skeleton risers while stagehands play ping pong behind them - instead of serious rehearsal, though, Phil only pretends he's playing the synth drums for like ten seconds then spends the entire rest of the video singing into the drumsticks and performing his own unique, strained brand of physical comedy.

There's a little Phil flasher pantomiming, a little Phil air-traffic controller pantomiming, a little Phil chase-the-cameraman-around pantomiming and a lot of charmless, ham-fisted Phil idiocy. Mike (no Mechanics, remember - and no living dad, either) can't decide whether to play guitar or drums, while The Other Guy has three amazing synthesizers to choose from, and only two hands to play them on. I guess that's the '80s rock band guy's true idea of hell - so many Casios, not nearly enough hands.

Marc Broussard - Home

*** (out of four)




I still turn on regular old VH1 every now and then, during the three-hour sunrise window when they actually play music videos. Most of them are pure crap, of course, and that's kind of the point - VH1 is supposed to make you feel old and button-down and just kind of like you're getting music in a forcefed, mechanical way. A few of the most sanitized Top 40 hits the kids like and a lot of slow songs for the old folks.

That's why it's such a pleasant surprise to happen upon quality, unassuming grown-folks music like this leadoff track from Louisiana soul singer Marc Broussard's album Carencro (named after his hometown). I'd never heard of Broussard until 6:15 a.m. yesterday morning - a quick search of rollingstone.com turned up no reviews at all, and other sites seem to posture Broussard more as a country artist than a rock one.

Sure, "Home" is Southern-fried, down-home, grassroots shit, but it has less twang than soul. Effortless, unassuming soul that conjures up old blues singers and a certain dude who used to sit on the dock of the bay and waste time. Even though Broussard is a slightly chunky, blue-eyed white boy you'd expect to see playing eighteen holes with Uncle Kracker.

Broussard takes us on a bus tour through the South - he sits, guitar in hand, halfway back in the charter bus while passengers bob their heads and the bus heads deeper into Louisiana. (There's a lot of traffic heading the other way, for some reason the video never delves into.) When he finally hops off the bus, Broussard leads a front porch jam session complete with washboard zydeco, and he rocks an underground wood-walled juke joint.

Timing-wise, the insistent, emotional singalong hook "take me home" seems more poignant than ever, given that the dude who's singing it just saw most of his home state get demolished in our country's worst-in-history national disaster. But even if I'd heard this before the Katrina crisis, there would be no denying "Home" is the kind of song that makes me stand up and take notice, regardless of genre. I definitely look forward to hearing more from Marc Broussard.

Terence Trent D'Arby - Wishing Well

** (out of four)


The peak of the "Wishing Well" video comes about nine seconds in, when Terence Trent D'Arby comes sliding into the opening shot. There's just this utterly bored-looking backing band - three white guys clustered together in sunglasses, leather jackets and black jeans, strapped with instruments and stuck in a song where you can't really play them - and in glides D'Arby, sliding straight for the microphone, almost uncontrollably. You really want to buy him a pair of TredSafe shoes so he won't slip on that wet floor next time.

D'arby is a two-hit wonder (this and "Sign My Name"*), Columbia Records' light-skinded, mini-dreaded answer to the '80s mulatto magic of Prince. And, sure, "Wishing Well" is a solid funk-pop novelty jam, but D'Arby looks closer to Milli Vanilli than The Purple One as he does his vertical finger-snap dance, shows off his silver sheriff star on that double-breasted working-woman power suit and charms his girlfriend in black-and-white park bench footage.

"Wishing Well" is one of those videos that, if you've seen the first minute, you've seen the entire clip. It doesn't go anywhere or say anything - really, the only reasons to hang in there are to see what new watered-down James Brown move D'Arby will do next. Oh, and three or four times, the same soundstage view cuts from D'Arby with his bland-ass band to D'Arby with his bland-ass group of dancers in the exact same spot. Two-star music videos don't get much more mediocre than this.


* = He's also noteworthy for providing Beavis and Butthead with a giggle-worthy comeback single in "She Kissed Me" in 1993 ("When I'm bare / She kisses me there")

Van Halen - Right Now

**1/2 (out of four)

At one point just after its release, "Right Now" was considered one of the best videos of all time. Then it became the spokesong for the soft-drink trainwreck known as Crystal Pepsi and was forever tarnished.* Now it just seems like some uber-liberal ad agency's self-righteous public service announcement, a bunch of sleek, disconnected images covered with one-liner slogans, all based on the concept of what's happening in the world "right now."

EXAMPLE: The camera pans down a red-silhouetted set of raised arms dangling the strings of a dancing stick puppet while superimposed somber gray-on-white type reads, "Right now, oil companies and old men are in control."

EXAMPLE: An unused yellow condom on white background with superimposed black type reading "Nothing is more expensive than regret."

Some of these platitudes fit with the song's lyrics (when Sammy Hagar mentions "working so hard," we see one of a trio of migrant Mexican laborers climb into the bed of a pickup truck), while others are just plain cute for the sake of cute.

EXAMPLE: The band, posing in black and white, disperses, and a spotlight arises on the bass player - standing by himself with an upright bass guitar - while the screen reads "Right now Mike is thinking about a solo project."

EXAMPLE: A kindly old lady, awash in bright white light, leans into the camera and smears red lipstick all over, while type flashing black and white type reads "Right now your parents miss you."

It kind of makes me wonder who wrote all these little slogans - I'm hoping it was members of the band and not outside hired help. Director Mark Fenske does manage to juggle a lot of second-unit set pieces and stock footage in with the shots of the band, but somehow "Right Now" never becomes a coherent, fully-realized video. It just kind of moves from one half-baked idea to the next, always living entirely in the present. Which I guess is what the song is supposed to be about.


* = However, tarnished in kind of a see-through way, since it was affiliated with crystal-clear cola and all.

The Game and 50 Cent - Hate It Or Love It

*** (out of four)




"Hate It or Love It" is the only 50 Cent song I really even remotely enjoy or respect - instead of the usual bullshit ego posturing and flat fuck-me-bitch nursery-rhyme club choruses, we get genuine autobiographical information and emotion from 50. Not to mention a half-bad flow that interweaves perfectly with labelmate and hip-hop feud partner The Game, an old school soul-type track from Dr. Dre and a chorus you'll actually sing along to after you hear it a few times.*

The video, from director (or is it a company?) The Saline Project, has present-day 50 Cent and The Game visiting their hometowns - 50 raps from an empty street at night while computer-generated white graffiti pops up behind him, while Game goes back to Compton in the daytime. Compton has more palm trees than I remember.

In between, we see both rappers in the front seats of cars, I guess headed to and from those destinations. 50 has this very song playing on the car's iPod, while Game's car is listening to later-years Hall and Oates for some reason. He's trying to learn the M-E-T-H-O-D O-F L-O-V-E, is my guess.

And we see childhood versions of 50 and Game acting out the song's lyrics. When you listen to "Hate It or Love It," you picture their descriptions of selling drugs and "being strapped like carseats" to keep from getting murdered over a pair of Barkley 95 sneakers (lots of words cut out during that verse**) as happening to, you know, like an 18 year old. Little 50 and Little Game look even younger than the two fourth-graders from Diddy's boy band B5.

The Game actually gets more mic time than 50 Cent - 50 even cuts short his second verse and says "listen to Game." Then Game pops in with a verse about how he bought his Mom a Benz with a red bow on it, how the government spends $30 million apiece on airplanes but won't feed the hungry, how the wood that should be used to make school books is used "to build coffins." Then you see him and 50 Cent sitting side by side on a charter jet in oversized white leather seats, drinking martinis. It seems a little contradictory.

These guys come from such a violent, poverty-ridden background that one of the posse guys from the video shoot already has an "R.I.P." dedication over his face. Somehow in between the filming, editing and release of this video, the dude got shot to death or stuck a knife in his toaster or something. This is a world cozy-living white folks like myself can't possibly understand. I may be in credit card debt, have no car and no health insurance, but I live really fucking comfortably and almost feel guilty about it. Almost.


* = What am I talking about, "hear it a few times"? This song's been out for over a half-year already and has saturated the airwaves - we've all heard "Hate It or Love It" more than a few years. But it's become that rare breed of hip-hop pop I still don't get sick to hear and am actually glad to recognize the opening beats of when I'm out in public and therefore can't control the flow of music.

** = As a public service to you fans of the First Amendment, here's a list of words cut out of the MTV version video, in order:

Shit
Dope
Packs
Niggas
Shit
Guns
Four-five 'em / Kill a nigga
Dumped
Strapped
Bangin'
Nigga
Kill
Homicide
Nigga
Fuckin

Oddly enough, lines about "throwing babies in the garbage" and getting abortions are left intact. Planned Parenthood is one powerful fucking lobby, after all.

Switchfoot - Stars

** (out of four)


Man, these days I can't tell my Switchfoot from my Breaking Benjamin from my Killers from my Hoobastank. Their singles all have that bland, indistinguishable quality. The only thing that makes this "Stars" at all different from everything else on the TGIFriday's Muzack playlist during a random Tuesday happy hour is - this guy cannot stop looking at the fucking stars.

Yeah, the singer gives his bandmates an occasional look to the left and right, and he sings very intently into the microphone at times. He even ends up floating in mid-air, kicking his Converse around and flopping like a fish. But his favorite thing to do, in the whole wild world? Stare at the goddamn stars. Because the stars make him feel like himself.

This guy keeps looking up to the stars even when rain starts pouring down on him and his band and their electrically powered equipment. Hey, man - I know what it's like to lose a CD open-box discount boombox you bought for $34.80 from Best Buy to a rainstorm because you're busy staring at the sky for hours.

This guy's a modern-rock frontman, I was a 25-year-old slacker on mushrooms* during a camping trip, but I know I'll never leave equipment out in the rain because I'm absorbed by nature's light show again. Psychotropic drugs or not.


* = Haven't taken them since, uh, Mom.

Britney Spears - My Prerogative

**1/2 (out of four)





Hindsight being comically clear and all, I should note that, in February 1999, when I reviewed "Baby One More Time," I wrote, "I'll let this one slide, but I'm going to lose a lot of faith in the music industry if the world allows Britney Spears another hit."

Well, "My Prerogative" is the token Brand New Single from Britney's greatest hits album. And, in six-plus years, I've lost a hell of a lot of faith in the music industry.

And who would have thought back then that, several years down the road, the jailbait Catholic-schoolgirl video for "Baby One More Time" would look downright wholesome next to the softcore stripper porn of videos like "My Prerogative."





Britney spends at least half her time in lingerie, wandering a party inside a whorehouse - trying on nipple-damn-near-exposed dominatrix lingerie and brandishing a cat o' nine tails, writhing atop a queen-sized bed in bra and panties, dancing atop the hood of a car that's parked in a pool.

That's right - she strip teases on a car in a pool. At the beginning of the video, Britney guns her white sports car right past the valet parking attendant at the posh brothel party she's going to, jumps an embankment and crash-lands in the shallow end.

And instead of calling for help or checking to see if she has any broken bones, Britney immediately hops on the hood of the car and begins a come-hither dance while leering into the camera. I don't know, if I was a paramedic, I'd consider myself lucky to take that call. Mouth to mouth? Sure thing, Britney. Be happy to save your life.

Coldplay - Fix You

** (out of four)




I liked these guys a lot better when they were among the obscure "Check These Guys Out, Please. Please!" bands on the MTV2 playlist. Back when you were kind of rooting for them to break through because you thought they were better than most. Before they ended up releasing a lot of similar-sounding songs most of your friends' moms liked to put on so they could fall into a peaceful sleep.

You never would have thought they'd end up hitting the stadium-tour circuit and being hyped as "the next U2." Or that lead singer would marry Gwenyth Paltrow - you always figured he'd hook up with Bjork or something at the Bumbershoot alternarock festival in Seattle.

But no... five years after "Yellow," the Coldplay guys have gotten too big for their britches, and they've abandoned the fascinating, avant-garde look of, say, "Trouble" in favor of two solid minutes of Martin walking down a street at night and two more minutes of Coldplay's brand new stadium show. Which, according to critics, is the exact same show every night - even the between-song banter is identically delivered.

You see, Martin is actually walking to his own stadium concert. He arrives mid-song (50,000 AUDIENCE MEMBERS: So just who's been singing this entire time? I'm confused. I want my $44.99 plus seven-dollar convenience fee back), waves a sparkler around, cues the pyrotechnics guy and plays a rollicking solo on the piano. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the next U2.

B5 - U Got Me

*1/2 (out of four)


I can't tell if this boy group's name is a play on the word "before" or just the marketing notion that, hey, Backstreet Boys begins with a B and has five members, so let's call our boy group B5. I'm sure dumber ideas got tossed around the board room.

B5 is actually a P. Diddy creation - or, wait, since he faxed me that press release a few weeks ago, he wants to be called simply Diddy. It's his New Edition, except that two of them are in like fourth grade. (And, I swear, they're getting hit on in the video by girls who have their period and everything, those adorable baby macks.) And the one in the cornrows wants to spend half the song rapping nondescriptly.

"U Got Me," whose title you can't forget because it's printed in huge, free-standing block letters on the back of the set, takes place on a single room of a soundstage. There's a simple white backdrop set and a black backdrop set, and the guys are identically dressed - in shades of black and white. It's all letterboxed, though, because that's a cheap way to make a video look classy.

There's a little choreographed dancing, a little comical macho posturing, a few actual modestly dressed girls and, like I said, the letters of the song title in the background. It's not worth watching twice. Or once. But, little ladies, if you like what you see here and want to join the fan club, just send an email to b5fanclub@yourfanclubs.com. They send you a little B5 patch and everything - I've got mine sowed onto the right sleeve of my bowling jacket, right under my "50 Pins Over Average Single Game" patch.

Janet Jackson - When I Think of You

*** (out of four)

Almost twenty years ago, Janet Jackson got her first number-one hit and MTV got one of the most elaborate videos of its inaugural half-decade with "When I Think of You." This was simple, innocent, pop-star-in-the-making Janet, not the Janet we're now more familiar with - who sings about bondage and discipline and whose wardrobe just might happen to malfunction if you invite her to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show.*

"When I Think of You" is meant to emulate the joyous block party vibe of big Hollywood musicals shot in Technicolor and featuring hundreds and hundreds of extras. And, even though it's patently obvious the "neighborhood" is one oversized soundstage set, the video does work its way through a variety of choreographed outdoor and indoor scenarios in what appears to be one continuous camera shot. (Though, in fact, if you pay attention, you'll notice a couple fairly obvious disguised cuts when Janet slides down her staircase and into the street, when she first walks into the nightclub and when the old-time photographer shoots his flash into the camera.)

We open on the neighborhood set as residents are beginning their day. A sweeping crane shot reveals a store owner sweeping the sidewalk, a housewife shaking out a rug on the balcony, nightstick-wielding cops kicking a sleeping vagrant off the hood of a parked car and a bag lady washing her face in a leaky fire hydrant. In rapid succession, a taxi pulls up, releasing more than a dozen dancing fools, a trio of smoothly dressed trumpet players works their way down a staircase and a cranky old man comes out and tells everyone to shut the hell up.

And there's Janet, in the heart of her big-hair and shapeless business suit days, taking it all in from the balcony. Her man appears over her shoulder, disappears, and she spends the rest of the video exploring the neighborhood in hopes of tracking him down. All the while, the camera roams with and around her, and a seemingly endless cast of characters spills through the shot. There are sailors fighting with street punks, dancing waiters wielding trays, smiling street hookers, the works.

"When I Think of You" holds up rather well after two decades, if you can get past the fact that it's cheesy as all hell. I never change the channel when it comes on, just because there's so much to look at - people, sets and camera movement - that the video is worth studying to try and figure out exactly how the director pulled it off. Plus, the song itself has a spot in my guilty-pleasure canon for life, I fear.


* = Faithful eMpTyV reader and archivist Mike Melanson recently emailed me the following: "Right after the famous Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, I saw from the web access logs that certain pages from your site were receiving an inordinately high number of hits. I investigated a little further and realized that people were doing searches like 'janet jackson nipple video' and ending up on certain eMpTyV pages. So your old site was incredibly popular again, if only for a day or two before the search terms got highjacked by a variety of unscrupulous websites."

Leo Sayer - You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

zero stars (of four)

Back when I did weekly eMpTyV review postings, around 2000 and 2001, I had a Gay Video of the Week feature. Which drew heavily on the big hair period of the mid-eighties (Tina Turner, Miami Sound Machine and, of course, Frankie Goes to Hollywood) but would have gladly made Leo Sayer's clip for "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" feel right at home.

Leo Sayer is a scrubbed-up Osmond boy with a Richard Simmons perm, white sleeveless shirt and cream-colored bell bottoms. He clutches an oversized, sparkling-silver microphone, grins widely and sings in a bizarre falsetto from one darkened soundstage. The screen is circled in, alternatingly, blue, red, green and white while Leo gestures wildly and mirror images of him recede infinitely into the background.

Oddest of all, when he sings the pre-chorus refrain, Leo sounds just like Freddie Mercury. I don't know, the whole affair just has to be seen to be believed, and it stands out like a sore, homosexual thumb even among its contemporaries on the VH1 Classic "Super '70s" set list.

All-American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret

**1/2 (of four)



There's only thing that distinguishes the "Dirty Little Secret" video from that of any of the other soundalike post-grunge, punk-pop TRL acts, one little concept, and they kind of blew it. See if you could have come up with this idea, too - the entire video consists of generic soundstage performance footage intercut with people standing alone and each holding up a decorated 5" by 7" index card bearing his/her "dirty little secret."

You could do some wicked, incisive satire with this concept, but as far as dirty secrets go, these are all kind of scaled down. At least half the blame goes toward MTV's stifling policies of content censorship, and I shouldn't hold that against the video itself. But, instead of admissions of crime or religious doubt or deviant sexuality, half the people in this video either are in love with their best friends or aren't sure they should marry their fiances.

Okay, one kid admits to having gay sex at church camp ("three times!"), but a lot of these admissions are just laughable goober shit. ("I can eat a dozen donuts in one sitting," "I waste office supplies because I hate my boss," and, my favorite, "I know it really stinks, but I really like the smell of my own poop.")

But, I'll admit, there are some good, juicy ones in here. ("I only love two of my children," "People think I've stopped lying but I've just gotten better at it," "I pee in the sink.") And veteran video director Marcos Siega knows well enough not to blow his wad at the beginning - the pacing is damn near perfect, and the song's short enough not to wear out its welcome.

"Dirty Little Secret" itself is a hell of a generic song, but the video held my attention. I'd just kind of like to see someone responsible hold up a decorated index card that reads "This shit could have been a whole lot better."

Gwen Stefani - What You Waiting For?

RATING: *** (out of four)

In her debut solo video from last year, Gwen Stefani can't concentrate on writing those brilliant, brilliant pop songs of hers because she's preoccupied with her deadbeat boyfriend. So she answers an ad ("Writer's Block?") posted on a bulletin board in the hallway of her recording studio.

After watching an informative video and signing a waiver in an office building, Gwen wakes back up in her recording studio to find a mysterious Flavor Flav alarm clock necklace on her piano and a miniature, computer-animated Japanese clay bunny running at her face.

After that, all bets are off - it appears Gwen has been issued a heroic dose of psyillocybin mushrooms, and she spends the duration of the video in another world. Gwen sings to a clone of herself - both of them clad in off-white top hats, enormous high heels and way too ruffly skirts. She finds a giant version of herself stuck in a house, with arms and legs popping out of windows on the top and bottom floors.

She crawls into an equally cramped greenhouse while Japanese geisha girls writhe from atop umbrellas in the water. She hangs out with pink flamingoes. She crashes a tea party. She gets opium smoke blown in her face by an old Japanese guy smoking from a houka. And, the kicker, Gwen runs through a garden maze whose green shrubbery oozes and drips with the exact living-watercolor imagery of a solid mushroom trip. Not that I'd know what that's like, Bush administration Justice Department officials. You don't have to tap my phone or put a camera in my bathroom.

Meanwhile, we see the real Gwen lying back in a wooden chair in her studio, defying gravity, while the song writes and records itself on a ProTools computer rig and the song's lyrics appear in calligraphy, in her notebook, as they're being sung. If you guessed the lyrics are actually about the fact that Gwen is under pressure to come up with a hit song for her big solo debut and define her identity apart from her band, then wow, you're as clever as Gwen. She could use your lyric-writing help, maybe. Or your drugs. Whatever drugs you could give her.

It's all pretty derivative - I mean, for a song that's about conquering writer's block and unoriginality, "What You Waiting For?" borrows a hell of a lot of ideas and images. There's one part Alice in Wonderland, one part Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one part Bjork (the "lyrics writing themselves in the notebook" motif is almost identical to her "Bachelorette" video), and I can't put my finger on it, but I know I've seen the "giant person trapped in the house" thing in at least one other music video.

Still, I've got a massive soft spot for videos that go all out with psychedelic effects, and director Francis Lawrence at least puts a halfway novel spin on it by indulging Gwen's sizeable hardon for the Japanese. The entire bridge of "What You Waiting For?", which doesn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the song, is devoted to Japanese people and cities. Apparently, Gwen Stefani can't wait to get back to Osaka, and the Harajuku girls have some damn wicked style. Oh, and she wants your drugs. Give her your drugs, for the love of God.

Click Five - Just the Girl

RATING: *1/2 (out of four)



Click Five is a band that rolls a hell of a lot of gimmicks into one - boy band TRL charm, British Invasion mop-top hair, '80s synth production and identical black-and-blue suits that call to mind the Strokes or the Hives or one of the other one-name bands that made a temporary splash in 2002.

All this could be excused if Click Five actually was from England (they're from Boston) or if their record company had allowed them to lead their career off with a single that wasn't written by the Fountains of Wayne guy. As it stands now, "Just the Girl" is an even more treacly reprise of "Stacy's Mom" (with a hint of Tal Bachman's "She's So High") with far-too-cheesy lyrics about an unattainable girl the singer's in love with. ("She laughs at my dreams / But I dream about her laughter.")

The video begins in a boring classroom, with a TRL cross-section being taught Hemingway by Peter Brady in shirt and tie. (Or is it Bobby Brady? I don't know my Brady boys too well, and I don't really purport to.) A helicopter bearing the name of the band descends onto the school's roof, and Click Five begins playing from a stage already set up and also bearing the band's name.

And a note circulates in the TRL classroom, "Click Five On The Roof - Now!" If you're Peter or Bobby Brady, trying to teach these kids the virtues of a long-dead, severe-alcoholic novelist, and there are five identically clad, newly appointed teen idols power popping it up on the roof, do you expect to retain the attention of your class? Hell no.

The classroom clears out immediately, and Peter/Bobby spends the rest of the video wandering the empty halls, looking sweaty and confused and trying to find out where all his students went. (HINT: If you hear a helicopter land on the roof, and suddenly there's a bass-and-snare backbeat filtering down into your classroom, and the kids all shriek and vanish, they're probably headed up to the fucking roof. It kind of stands to reason.)

Director Vem employs a lot of staple music video tricks, frequently splitting the screen into fours and nines and wiping back and forth from performance footage to the flustered Brady English teacher. The lighting scheme is a bunch of pale blues and greens, and the surprise ending - when the teacher gives up his search and returns to his classroom to find all his kids sitting quietly at their desks - is no surprise at all.