The Veronicas - 4ever (2005)

**1/2 (of four)



The only thing worse than one Avril Lavigne is two Avrils. The Veronicas belong to that well-scrubbed pop-punk genre, lighter than The Donnas and catchier than Elastica. These two, neither of whom is actually named Veronica, are twins from Brisbane, Australia, and they're fucking button-cute. So cute they even jump up and down on the bed and have an unironic pillow fight during the video.

I can only describe "4ever" as a guilty pleasure, with its unashamedly singalong chorus and perky dueling guitars. Director Daniel Kern sets most of the video in a hotel room, where the identically dressed, heavily lipsticked 20-year-olds sing and smile at each other and write all over the bathroom mirror. Eventually they get outside and sunbathe, ride around with the top down and suit on an overpass above the highway.

All this is as TRL-friendly as it sounds, but "4ever" somehow refuses to wear out its welcome. And it all brings to mind the lascivious quote from Tony Roberts in Annie Hall, when he's called away to bail out Woody Allen: "Twins, Max. Sixteen year olds. Can you imagine the mathematical possibilities?"

Madonna - Hung Up (2005)

** (of four)

A few weeks ago, I dozed off during an episode of "In Living Color," and I dreamed that Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriwether were reviewing this video for "Men On Videos." They both snapped, "Hated It!" and Antoine said, "Who wants to see some old heifer showing her flabby ass? Madonna, girl, even Cher knew how to cover it up sometimes." Then I woke up.

Madonna still attempts to retain what little sexiness she has left by wearing a leotard and gyrating around. The "Hung Up" video features all kinds of dancers flitting about the streets of South Central LA, and a restaurant and converge together in some big dance off. It's like a gay version of You Got Served.

The song itself has a retro disco feel to it, and it seems like Madonna just wants to have fun again after the ponderous American Life album. Hated It!

-Guest reviewer Leon Bracey

Pretty Ricky - Your Body (2005)

* (of four)

I hhhhate these little dwarf-men, who attempt to croon like Usher but can flow as nastily as 2 Live Crew. These scrawny bastards frolic around Miami Beach with videhoes who would never give them the time of day in real life.

-Guest reviewer Leon Bracey

Trina featuring Kelly Rowland - Here We Go (2005)

**1/2 (of four)

Miami's Diamond Princess and Kelly Rowland from Beyonce's Children - oops, I mean Destiny's Child - collaborate on another man-bashing song. Trina is as sexy as ever as she berates her man for doing her wrong. The song I can do without, since it samples one of my favorite slow jams, "Tender Love" by the Force MD's.

But I've been a fan of Trina since her guest appearance on Trick Daddy's "Nann Nigga," where she spat out sexy, vile lyrics such as, "You know nann hoe / That'll make you come like me / Nigga you don't know nann hoe uh-uh / That don' tried all types of shit / Who quick to deep throat the dick / And let another bitch straight lick the clit."

Huh, where was I? Oh yeah, her and Kelly get together and throws the man's shit out of her house. End of story. Leon is bored, but slightly horny.

-Guest reviewer Leon Bracey

50 Cent - Window Shopper (2005)

*1/2 (of four)

The onslaught of soundalike, monotone-flow 50 Cent singles continues, "Window Shopper" being the flagship single from 50's semiautobiographical new movie, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. He raps so wooden, I can't begin to imagine his acting chops, even if he is playing himself.

This video focuses on the first part of the movie's title - the "get rich" part - with 50 Cent and posse on a shopping spree down in the Caribbean. While a mob of fans mills around outside the store window, 50 plops down nine grand for a pair of $85 shoes. It's supposed to be tongue in cheek, you see, but from the lack of expression on 50's face - fresh from a starring role in a widely distributed motion picture - it's rap star business as usual.

There's plenty more in "Window Shopper" intended to tickle the funny bone:

EXAMPLE ONE - 50 negotiates the sale of a hottie's jewelry on the street by tossing a rubber-banded roll of hundreds at her.

EXAMPLE TWO - 50 and a partner who looks astonishingly like Mase* hit an outdoor burger stand and pay $75 for a two-gallon milkshake and $400 for a hamburger. No cheese, though. That costs a hundred bucks extra.

* = He had to learn that monotone,
mush-mouthed rap flow from SOMEwhere.

EXAMPLE THREE - Thousands of Americans pay ten bucks for adult tickets to a piss-poor movie by the name of Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Only the third example really makes me bust up laughing.
__
I searched the Internet just now for further information about 50's movie, and I came across a review of it on the website Christian Spotlight on the Movies. These family-oriented, well-informed reviews tell believers what movies to see and what to avoid.

Here's the opening line from the Get Rich or Die Tryin' review: "If you had asked me who Fifty Cent was before I saw the trailer for Get Rich or Die Tryin', I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I am not a fan of rap music, nor have I followed the Billboard popular music charts since the early 90s." See, this is the guy you want reviewing your hip-hop movies - I'm glad I have experts to evaluate these movies and influence my decisions.

Surprisingly, though, the R-rated 50 Cent movie is said not to live up to the teachings of Christ: "Christians, there is nothing in this film worth subjecting yourself to. It is, from start to finish, full of bad language, nudity, and violence." I guess hip-hop has changed since the early '90s. Where are M.C. Hammer and P.M. Dawn when we need them?

I'm inspired. I want to start a website called Christian Spotlight On Porn: "I must confess, I'm sort of a newcomer to bukkake films and haven't followed the adult industry since Ron Jeremy was under 200 pounds. But I was utterly surprised by the sheer amount of semen swallowed by the female star of A Rear and Pleasant Danger. Don't any of these supposed role models know consumption of multiple wads is strictly forbidden by Paul's teaching in Hebrews 8?"
__

NOTE: For more hilarious video commentary, check out the "Window Shopper" review on the Talkin' Videos site.

Lindsay Lohan - Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father) (2005)

*1/2 (of four)



I remember the glory days of this video-reviewing gig, when the only back-and-forth girl-pop rivalry was Britney and Christina trying to outskank each other with every successive video. (That was a win-win situation, as far as I was concerned.) Now the girl-pop rivalry is between Kelly Clarkson and Lindsay Lohan, and they're competing for the title of Most Scarred Childhood Thanks To Abusive Parents.

Clarkson's "Because of You" features a grown woman wagging her finger at a broken, ambitionless mother figure whose dead spirit was apparently passed along to the daughter. Now here's Lindsay blaming her dad - celebrity tabloid mainstay Michael Lohan, played here by a menacing clone of Gabriel "Satan" Byrne in End of Days - for all her problems.

You know Gabriel Lohan is abusive because he yells a lot and points his finger threatingly in Mom's face and at one point smacks the copy of Parade magazine she's reading right out of her hands. (MOM: But honey! Marilyn vos Savant has a killer brain teaser in her new column that involves prime numbers! I can't live like this!)

A blonde Lindsay Lohan, who also directed this mess, emotes from the bathroom floor while wearing way too much black and blue eye makeup. (Ah, black and blue - the universal colors of spousal abuse.) Intercut are screaming-dad flashbacks that have a nine-year-old Lohan counterpart - played by Lindsay's little sister Aliana - watching all the drama go down in the living room and immediately becoming Scarred For Life.

It turns out - and, damn, Director Lindsay was clever here - the whole scene is going down in a department store window, outside of which a crowd gathers to watch the dysfunctional domestic proceedings. It's all so transparent and heavy-handed it can't possibly be taken seriously.

And, shit, I can't stand Hilary Duff and Jessica Simpson, but I always liked Lohan. For her whip-smart turn in Mean Girls, if nothing else. Shit, she even brought an odd dignity to her uptight-mom-stuck-in-teenybopper-body part in the 2003 remake of Freaky Friday. But after watching Lindsay try to force out the tears in the closing shot of "Confessions of a Broken Heart," I'm gonna have to let her go. You're fired, Lindsay. Clean out your desk. It was fun while it lasted.


P.S. Here's the funniest thing about "Confessions" - Michael Lohan, when asked to comment about his daughter's deadbeat-dad ballad, claimed he was thrilled with Lindsay's ambition and talent. And said he wrote his own song in response, to clear the air. Now, see, coming across that at 7 a.m. would be worth watching. Instead we get this ludicrous TV-movie shit.

Sean Paul - We Be Burnin' (2005)

** (of four)

Wow, so this ragga-dancehall assclown gets another album, does he? For the curious, no, I won't be first in line to buy Dutty Rock II - in fact, I'll give twenty bucks to anyone who can distinguish this Sean Paul single from entries previous. It sounds the freakin' same. (One-trick pony, sir!) So if this dutty ditty seems at all different to you, go ahead and send a 3" x 5" postcard with your name and address on it to my nonexistent P.O. Box, and that twenty bucks is as good as yours. Hand to God.

The "We Be Burnin'" (you don't think he's talking about... *gasp* marijuana, do you?!) video puts Sean and three jockey-dressed girl dancers smack in in the middle of an anonymous Middle Eastern desert. While a jean jacket-wearing Sean lip synches and flails his arms, the trio of girls dances behind him, kicking sand up their glistening legs, rolling around on the ground and bringing a brand new form of camel toe to the Arab world. See, over there, "camel toe" usually actually refers to the toe of a camel, not lingerie-imprint vagina lips. But both are equally sexy to them.

Director Jessy Terrero also cuts to a sparse indoor set with Sean synching and flailing in front of four garbage trucks that are adorned with flashing multi-colored flourescent carnival lights. A pickup truck with six flamethrowers shows up at the desert shoot once the sun goes down, and the video still doesn't get cool.

Nah, things don't improve until the cast of the movie Jarhead arrives on the scene to blow the fuck out of Sean Paul and Co. as part of President George W. Bush's new Congress-unapproved freedom mission. That's Operation Ragga-Dancehall Assclown Get Rid-Of. For once, I don't even mind the waste of my tax dollars.

My Chemical Romance - Ghost of You (2005)

**1/2 (of four)

I've got a friend who loves these guys, but until this big-budget sellout video, My Chemical Romance did nothing for me. I'm still not overly impressed, but at least director Marc Webb knows how to fill a screen with a series of images that hold the viewer's attention.* And at least "Ghost of You" has a catchy chorus to it. And at least for once we get a chance to see MCR lose the raccoon-eyed pop-goth look for the length of a four-minute video.

The motif here - World War II. There's a lot of gritty, green-tinted video-game-looking footage of a beach invasion gun battle. (Lots of shots from the Saving Private Ryan playbook, to be sure, though it's completely PG-rated.) And, yeah, the trend lately in filmmaking is to use the setting of a past war to comment on the political foibles of the current ongoing war in Iraq.

But Webb and My Chemical Romance aren't too interested in political commentary. They're pushing a song about the dissolution of a romantic relationship with a video about the loss of lives to war. It's a little incongruent, but most lyrics about loss ("never coming home, never coming home, never coming home," etc.) are interchangable, particularly if you don't enunciate them too well.

The MCR guys play a USO show in clean-cut uniforms, entertaining the troops and their ladies. The ladies look longingly into their eyes, knowing they're headed off to battle and may get their arms, heads or johnsons blown off. The MCR geeky guitarist has the most devoted girlfriend, so naturally he's the one who ends up dying. The poor bastard gets his johnson blown off, and the medic bass player can't save him.

The video closes on the wide-open eyes of the lead singer about to face his own doom. Which comes in that chilling moment when the Pussycat Dolls scoot past My Chemical Romance for control of the #4 slot on last Thursday's TRL countdown. "Ghost of You" adds up to a decent, unexciting, B-minus good time, which still puts "Ghost of You" ahead of the current MTV curve. Pussycat Dolls, I'm talking to you.


* = Take for example this sweet transition shot: Open on a bird's eye overhead dance floor view of five couples slow dancing. A pair of troops marches into this scene on the left side of screen, flanked by a slow-moving wave washing across. The wave hits the five couples, two of whom dissolve into steel, X-shaped bracing statues - as more troops march in and the entire screen shot becomes the beach invasion.

Vanessa Williams - Colors of the Wind (1995)

zero (of four)

I forgot all about this horrid Vanessa Williams end-credits theme from Pocahontas until I took a day job as restaurant waiter. If you're not a minion of the service industry - or perhaps a grocery store checker or a secretary in a dentist's office - you may not realize the 1995 ballad "Colors of the Wind" still pops up as innocuous background Muzak on the Michael Bolton channel once per work day.

I, on the other hand, worked in a college dining hall when this song was at the top of the adult-contemporary charts. All totaled, I've probably been on the clock at a menial job while "Colors of the Wind" was playing well over 400 times. Think about that the next time you complain about having to leave home at 4:30 a.m. and sit in three hours of traffic to work in the sewage treatment plant. I've endured the goddamn Pocahontas theme song 33.3 dozen times at my job. Who's the workplace martyr now?

The video? Well, you tell me - when you're watching the video for the main single from an overly marketed movie, what do you expect to see? There are a frickin' lot of clips from Pocahontas, which was one of the most heavy-handed, bland Disney movies in the vault. The most uber-politically correct, too.

Guys, look, I know the white folks massacred the Indian people, but look at it this way - they were also lucky fuckers. They never had to sit through this movie. Although... I bet the less humanly decent among the dead Native Americans may have seen it after they died. I'm not talking about bad karma during reincarnation. No, Pocahontas is playing on closed-circuit television in an eternal, 82-minute loop in hell, dubbed in Portuguese and subtitled in Arabic.

If you're paying close attention, I suppose, the movie clips from "Colors of the Wind" progress in chronological order, but when a song and video is this bad, you probably won't be able to let yourself pay attention. Even the mocha-creamy, dead-gorgeous features of one of my lifelong crushes, Vanessa Williams, can't make the video bearable. She's just too wholesome here. Give me that 8-page black-and-white spread of Grace Jones Afro'd era Vanessa sixty-nining with a white girl in that legendary 1984 issue of Penthouse.

The shots of Williams, by the way, all take place either on an unconvincing The Native American Woods At Night set - where Vanessa twists and turns her fan-blown sheer wrap-shawl while pretending to emote - or in a pastel What Dreams May Come meadow. The whole thing seems blandly New Age, but like the movie, it also cops this Earth Mother feel to induce corporate capitalist guilt. And I know corporate capitalism is some evil, evil shit, but music like this makes me want to cut down trees and eat a juicy bald eagle patty melt.

CLOSING WORD FROM VANESSA WILLIAMS:

"Colors of the Wind" is a song about injustice to humanity.

Injustice comes in all forms,
whether it be stealing a native people's land
and marching them a thousand miles
across rough terrain in the dead of winter
and then raping, slaying and burying them.

Or whether it be disqualifying a perfectly beautiful
and talented Miss America candidate and forcing her
to abdicate her throne because some photographs surfaced
of a white girl sitting on that beauty queen's
Grace Jones Afro'd face.

I have a dream that one day all will truly be equal.
That's why I've continued my crusade
for Native Americans and porn
in my new movie Pokeahotass II:
Weapons of Ass Destruction.

Beastie Boys - Root Down (1995)

*** (of four)



You'd think the Beastie Boys exhausted all their Ill Communication video-making energy with the Spike Jonze joints "Sabotage" and "Sure Shot." Their appearances in Evan Bernard's video for "Root Down" are limited to black-and-white concert performance footage, all basically from the same show with limited angles.

But what Bernard lacks, re: artist footage, he makes up for with rapid-fire stock clips - color and black-and-white, quickly cut and with the screen sometimes divided into horizontal and vertical twos, threes and fours. My favorite sequences involve New York subway map clip art and vintage funk/breakdancing.

There's also graffiti artists at work and less-germaine extreme sports footage of the snow- and skateboarding varieties. It's fun to watch, but it's one of those videos where, if you've seen the first two minutes, you've seen the entire thing.

The Rembrandts - I'll Be There For You (1995)

*1/2 (of four)




Wow, what an awkward, annoying video this is. You might not be old enough to remember, or you just might have been plain off the Top 40 page at the time. But ten years ago, this full version of the "Friends" theme song got played once an hour every fucking single place you went, no matter where you went. And, if you've forgotten, well, you're a fortunate soul.

Here's what happened - this struggling group of perky musicians was lucky enough to have this puff of utter treacle picked as theme to a major sitcom. The "Friends" people were lucky enough to have their show blow up as a major hit. Some radio programmer was lucky enough to think to home-tape the minute-long version of "I'll Be There For You" and singlehandedly put it into rotation.

The record company was lucky enough to get asked by countless other radio stations for a full-length single of the song, which had been limitedly released several years prior and promptly sunk without a trace. The song was lucky enough to shoot straight to #1. And the rest of us were unlucky enough to then hear it several thousand times in 1995 and beyond.

"I'll Be There For You" became a surprise hit, and the video was a total rush job. On a white soundstage decorated with black geometric shapes (a triangle AND a hexagon on the same set! after Labor Day!), the Rembrandts, all in black and white suits and wearing sunglasses, perform while the entire "Friends" ensemble cast improvises physical comedy antics around them.

Maybe it's intentional for the sake of "humor," or maybe it's because these guys have never been in the spotlight, but the band looks agitated and sometimes downright pissed off the entire time. The whole affair stinks to high heaven.

COMPLETE ROSTER OF
"FRIENDS" THEME VIDEO
SIDE-SPLITTING HUMOR

Printed here as a service
for future sitcom stars who
might find themselves
acting in a music video
for their show's theme song.

If you're ever in this situation, folks,
these all go on the future-reference
DON'T DO LIST:

-Courteney Cox gives piggyback ride to Matthew Perry

-David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston dance tango

-Aniston and Cox each steal a pair of sunglasses from guitar players, trade with each other

-Perry runs and hides behind hexagon

-Perry and Matt LeBlanc begin to dance tango, look at each other as if the same-sex dancing is awkward, shrug off notion, continue dancing tango

-Schwimmer pokes around piano player's sheet music, gets hand smacked away

-Aniston gazes into tambourine as if it were a mirror and she a vain, vain lady

-LeBlanc and Shwimmer come up behind piano player, lift him out of his chair, carry him away

-Perry feigns injury to own hip with tambourine

-LeBlanc and Schwimmer sit down at piano bench, decide they can't play, pick up comically small bongo drums instead

-Cox and Aniston give guitar guys reacharounds, grope their instruments

-Cox knocks out drummer with drummer's own sticks, takes over timekeeping duties

-Kudrow heads behind hexagon with third guitarist, emerges with his guitar strapped to her, proceeds to mime like she's playing it with her teeth

-Schwimmer operates camera

-Perry pretends to play acoustic guitar face down

-Aniston operates other camera

-Kudrow does spastic dance with tambourine

-Show lasts another nine seasons, spawns successful season-on-DVD-for-forty-bucks merchandise line

-Rembrandts sell kidneys for gas-bill money

-Ha

-Ha

-That's

-True

-Comedy

Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now (1987)

* (of four)


JULY 1987 - At the age of nine, I am enamored of Top 40 pop radio. My favorite songs are "Don't Dream It's Over," "I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight," "The Final Countdown" and, number one with a bullet, Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," the flagship single from the soundtrack to the Andrew McCarthy comedy Mannequin. I see the music video on VH1 every time I visit my dad, and I crack up laughing.

-
APRIL 1988 - I beg my mom to rent Mannequin on VHS from an electronics store named Tipton. I tell her it has my favorite song in it and that from the music video I can tell the movie is going to be wildly hilarious. We watch the movie, me and my mom and my little brother. None of us like it. But before we return it to Tipton and check out a compilation of WWII-era Donald Duck shorts, I put my tape recorder up to the TV speaker and record an obnoxiously low-quality copy of NGSUN. Listen to it a few more dozen times.

-
JULY 1995 - Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, VH1 runs a History of Music Videos A-Z marathon. The weather's absolutely beautiful, but I stay inside for three days and pick which videos to record for all-time safekeeping. "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" makes the cut, as does 1986 Starship #1 "Sara." I do notice, at the age of seventeen, how fucking horribly the NGSUN video has aged, but I still think the song's cool.

-
SEPTEMBER 2005 - I karaoke "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" at a bar called Maryland Yards with my heavily tatooed, cropped-haired friend Lashonda. She's fifty years old, we're both drunk, and our harmony is downright painful. I resolve to never sing Starship with Lashonda again - from now on, it's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" or nothing.

-
NOVEMBER 2005 - Sitting at home on a Tuesday, I come across a VHS tape labeled "Music Videos '95." Sixth in the lineup is "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," bottom right corner branded with the white-and-blue "AtoZ VH1" logo. I get the urge to fire up the laptop and give this Starship video the epic full-circle treatment it deserves. But, to my surprise, it's actually not as embarassingly fall-down funny as I remember. Its unintentional humor quotient peaks about a minute in.

The scene is, Starship guy-singer Mickey pulls up to a closed department store on his motorbike. In the store window, a freeze-framed Grace Slick plays the role of mannequin. Clips from the movie Mannequin show Andrew McCarthy happening upon his mannequin and watching her come to life. He skids backward, Kramer-style, and falls on his ass.

Cut to freeze-framed Grace coming to life in front of Mickey, who raises his eyebrows to the camera in exaggerated fashion.Both reactions are overblown, but one of these guys went to acting school and the other didn't. The other just coasts on his Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon 1 hair and silky-smooth voice.

There are a couple other funny parts - including a Spinal Tap-level solo played on a jagged, rectangular pink guitar by a Dana Carvey lookalike in plaid, paisley pants. And there's the dramatic conclusion, in which Mickey shrugs and joins Grace in freeze-framed mannequindom.

But watching this video in November 2005 gives me more or less the same reaction as me watching Mannequin in April 1988. It's just a big, tacky letdown.

Dream Academy - Life in a Northern Town (1986)

**1/2 (of four)



Name of this song doesn't ring a bell? Think of the anthemic refrain "Hey-oh Ma-ma-ma / Hey-eee-doo-bee-die-yah / Hey-oh-ma-ma-mee / Hey-ay-ay-ie-yo," sung by dozens of voices while African kettle drums pound away. It reads pretty obnoxious on paper, but "Life in a Northern Town" is one of the more recognizable, anthemic, distinctive and actually distinguished one-hit wonder pop songs of the '80s.

Dream Academy - fueled by production from Pink Floyd CEO David Gilmour - features a vest-wearing lead singer who looks half like George Harrison and half like the lead singer of Men Without Hats. The female backup singer, wielding an oboe, looks like Linda McCartney. So the entire affair is pseudo-Beatles-esque*, in a subdued '80s way.

The video, unexciting but watchable, features slice-of-life stock footage of rolling street shots of middle-class houses, river crossings and street signs. After awhile, you feel like you're looking out a car window on a road trip that's never going to end. Add to the mix old home movie footage and that telltale shot of JFK in the motorcade immediately pre-head wound.

There's also plenty of footage of George Without Hats, Linda McCartney and the rest of the band play-synching from an empty, dimly lit rehearsal hall. You know, for a video from such a synthesizer-ridden decade, it's reassuring to know there's a live violin player and kettle drummer and clarinetist to compete with the closeups of the guy playing the same three notes on his Casio. But don't worry - there are plenty of those closeups, too.

COMPETING OPINION
courtesy of Rate It All.com user Scriptfis

"The video is a poignant study
in wet wintry industrial monochrome**."

* = This marks the first time in eleven years of writing that I've ever attached the prefix "pseudo-" and suffix "-esque" to the same word. I don't plan to make a habit of it.

** = Note the lack of commas in Scriptfish's punctuation. It speaks urgency.

Kelly Clarkson - Because of You (2005)

* (of four)



First season "American Idol" champ Kelly Clarkson's new power ballad is a serious made-for-Lifetime estrogen fest. Scarred as a little girl - what, like eight years ago? - by witnessing her mom's romantic anguish and abuse, the song's protagonist has grown up to be a shell of a woman. ("I watched you die / I heard you cry every night in your sleep / I was so young / You should have known better than to lean on me.") She's so messed up she's picking godawful songs to record and release as singles. Domestic abuse sure is a bitch.

And, obviously, we're not treated to a video so tongue-in-cheek self-referential as to cast mean "Idol" judge Simon Cowell as the flashback daddy. No, this is transparent, heavy-handed shit, and it's totally meant to be taken seriously. Clarkson is in a fight with her boyfriend, who takes a framed portrait of the two of them and rears back to hit her with it. But the moment freeze-frames, and Clarkson steps back from the situation, literally - she spends the rest of the verse backing up while singing into the camera, which moves along with her. Clever, director Vadim Perelman, clever.

Clarkson eventually ends up side by side with her childhood counterpart while watching Mom pop pills and act depressed and watching Dad pack his suitcase and back the car out of the driveway For Good. There's even a cliche-drama moment where Dad flips over the coffee table during an argument and storms upstairs with Mom running after him. The song builds to a cacaphonous climax (it surprises me not to learn "Because of You" was written by former band members of Evanescence) while a second-unit Clarkson emotes from a black soundstage. Oh, the delicious fucking anguish.

Alan Jackson - The Talkin' Song Repair Blues (2004)

*** (of four)



Traditionally, I've never given two shits about country music. In fact, the only country videos I think I've ever reviewed are VH1 crossovers from Shania Twain and Faith Hill. If not for my friend Jason - a musician, songwriter and singer who has vast knowledge of all types of music and is currently traveling to Nashville every few weeks with his guitar-playing partner in attempts to break into country music. So far, Jason and Joe have played showcases and met with executives and song lobbyists. Jason's retellings of these meetings and the Nashville country culture closely resembles Jackson's "Talkin' Song Repair Blues."

Nashville people will listen to your demos and issue you instructions for lyric revisions based on the quality of the writing, the politics of country radio and the overall code of ethics for country music. Which is an opposite checklist for that of hip-hop lyrics - no demeaning women, no badmouthing America and no goldurn cussing.

Jackson focuses more on the lyrical-quality side of the standard Nashville critique to aspiring songwriters. In the song, a country artist's car breaks down, and he's told a bunch of mumbo jumbo by the mechanic - who then reveals himself to be a wannabe country songwriter himself and comes to Alan for advice.

Some of the funnier lyrics, to be appreciated by prose and lyric writers alike: "I know you've been using a cut-rate thesaurus / 'Cause your adverbs have backed up into your chorus / Now your verse is runnin' on verbs that are way too weak." It's a tad bit cutesy, Jackson's copping and reworking of condescending car mechanic speak, but as a song gimmick, it works straight through to the end. The whole thing is an inside joke but not too inside.

Jackson spends the video lip synching outdoors in a mustard-colored suit coat and white straw cowboy hat, while Anthony Clark and Mike O'Malley (both of the sitcom "Yes, Dear") act out and mouth the lyrics as the musician and the mechanic. For two sitcom stars, though, the video's a tad bit subdued - nothing too zany or wacky here. There's no straying from the task at hand, which is to bring the clever-ass lyrics of the song to the forefront.

The more I give country a chance, the more I appreciate the intelligent, tongue-in-cheek gems that dwarf the heavy-handed, apple-pie, flag-waving shit we usually get from Nashville. And it fucking kills me to admit it.

Wreckx-N-Effect - Rump Shaker

*1/2 (of four)



Wreckx-N-Effect was the brain child of R+B producer Teddy Riley, who apparently poured his heart and soul into this pinnacle of one-hit wonderhood. I was an idiot and bought the entire album - paid like four bucks for a used copy, but still, it's a definite one-hit wonder CD. One guess what song is Track One.

"Rump Shaker" came on the heels of "Baby Got Back," but where Sir Mix-a-Lot's video was knowingly campy, Wreckx-N-Effect tries to look their thuggiest while rapping from a beach during Black Spring Break. One of them is wearing black spandex shorts, while another sports the R. Kelly bandana/sunglasses and a third has donned a purple wetsuit.

But the girls - the rump shakers themselves - steal the camera's attention. My favorite is the one in the orange bikini who's standing ankle deep in the ocean, pretending to play the song's synth loop on the saxophone. There are at least two closeups of the orange-bikini slowly mouthing the lip of the sax. And there are dozens of other anonymous dancers whose entire essences are summed up by closeups of their asses shaking or their titties jiggling or, in one particularly amusing slo-mo shot, a bucket of water sloshing across their flat bellies.

This song's kind of fun when you're fifteen and the lyric, "Since you got the body of the year, come and get the reward / Here's a hint: It's like a long, sharp sword," still makes you giggle. But it doesn't wear particularly well, and I have a feeling Teddy Riley himself doesn't claim it as one of his babies anymore. Like a long, sharp sword indeed.

Mazzy Star - Fade Into You

*** (of four)

I have a friend named Emma whose number-one preset on her car stereo is the Michael Bolton station. Which spits out all the adult-contemporary classics - and about fifteen way-too-heavily rotated current chart-sitters - you love from Gloria Estefan, Kenny G, Richard Marx and Queen Of Bitches Celine Dion.

Celine, by the way, sings an obnoxious newer ballad called "Have You Ever Been In Love" that Emma enjoys without irony. ("What's wrong with the lyrics? 'Have you ever been in love'? That's a legitimate question. I like it. The words are good.")

So I burn and stash CDs all over Emma's car with the music I know we can both agree on, and a prime example is the haunting 1994 stoner-rock track "Fade Into You" from Mazzy Star. Who proceeded to sink without a trace.

Too bad, too. I loved the groove of this song - Portishead meets grunge-pop - and always longed to hear more from Mazzy. But somehow in the eleven years since its release, I've never spotted a copy of So Tonight That I May See in a used-CD shop for cheap. Maybe it's just that good. Or maybe it just didn't sell any fucking copies.

Either way, I have the Kevin Kerslake video for "Fade Into You" on precious VHS and can visit it any time I want. Keeping with the heavy-lidded, molasses-slow feel of this ethereal ditty, Kerslake's shots are all in slow motion, colors washed out in blues and reds and lots of browns.

Mazzy Star - girl singer and beatnik guy band - are out in the dessert, rolling down an abandoned highway and occasionally stopping so the guitar player can sit on the roof of the car and strum aimlessly. There's also night performance footage in the desert and plenty of shots of the singer standing alone, staring out into nothing and just generally acting like a lost puppy. It's all sooooo trippy, man. Sooooo trippy.

Notorious B.I.G. - Warning

*** (of four)



My favorite Biggie song of all time - well, all three albums - is this tale of a hustler being woken up ("Who the fuck is this / Pagin' me at 5:46 / In the morning / Crack'a dawnin' / Now I'm yawnin' / Wipe the cold out my eye / See who's this pagin' me and why") to be told by a friend that some dudes the hustler used to party with have found out he's rich and are coming to get him. To stick him for his paper.

The song of course ends with Biggie bragging about his arsenal of weaponry and fleet of Rottweilers ("And I feed 'em gunpowder / So they can devour / The criminals / Try'na drop my decimels"). The guys try to break in, and each spots a red dot on the other's forehead just before Biggie pulls the trigger.

The end part is left out of the PG-rated, MTV-ready video, though, you can be sure. In fact, Biggie re-recorded the vocals with friendlier euphimisms for murder, racial slurs and drugs, but a dozen or so words - and an entire sentence - still doesn't make the cut. (Among them: "Windpipe.") The new chorus, "Why they wanna stick me for my paper," rings particularly awkward.

The Hype Williams video, too, is disappointing. Oh, it's opulent and letterboxed and blinged to the gills, but it's a literal visual depiction of the song. Which means, we see Biggie waking up - yes, shirtless, and bookended by a pair of hot females - to take a phone call, while Puffy delivers the news from his hot tub while swinging around an open bottle of Cristal. Then Biggie processes this info and issues his response while - as the video progresses - sitting in his dry sauna, eating a bowl of Peanut Butter Crunch*, brushing his teeth and hunching behind his office desk while Puffy's on the other end of the phone, driving around the city with his top down.

The "red dot on your forehead" sequence, which served as closure to the song, is gone, and in the PG world of MTV, there's not much Hype can do to dress up what essentially is the same old rap shit - emphasis on property, gambling, drinking, hot women. And you see a lot of Biggie boob and gut. Which doesn't help.

What could have been an avant garde, Pulp Fiction-esque bringing to life of some sparkling hip-hop prose and storytelling ("There's gonna be a lotta slow singin' and flower bringin' if my burglar alarm starts ringin'") is a standard big-budget video with no conclusion. Still better than most of the shit around, though, so it gets the three-star rating.


* = Logo blurred by MTV, of course. You know, it's odd to learn at the age of 27 that Notorious B.I.G.'s favorite breakfast cereal is my favorite childhood breakfast cereal, although unlike me, he probably didn't spend the rest of the day whining about how the tan-colored balls of sugar and starch cut the shit out of the roof of his mouth.

J.D. and Jay-Z - Money Ain't a Thang

*** (of four)



Allow me to confess two reasons I'm a huge geek. First, and most obviously, I like this pompous, softball song and video. Second, and more incriminatingly, I just went into my roommate's bedroom - waking up his girlfriend in the process - to snatch his iPod so I could synch up my EP-mode VHS copy of the "Money Ain't a Thang" video with the uncut album track of the song so I could hear it in crystal-clear CD quality without any MTV content censorship. Even more incriminatingly pathetic, it's midnight on a Friday and I'm sitting in my bed with my 2001 Fujitsu on my lap and a naked, 25-watt stained-glass novelty bulb illuminating my room. Keep in mind I am a 27-year-old college graduate.

The concept of the video? These fuckers have money to burn, money to toss out their goddamn car windows. It was an audacious concept during the boom of the Clinton economy, and it's even more audacious statement in the mid-zero-zeros, when thousands of our fellow countrymen are homeless due to natural disasters. And, instead of volunteering in the soup kitchen and donating old clothes to the less-fortunate*, Jay-Z's dumping a gym bag full of hundred-dollar bills on the hood of Jermaine Dupri's Ferrari and offering the ladies "ice" to chill down their martinis. The "ice" is a handful of uncut diamonds Jay-Z drops into the girl's drink and, while impressive, it should be noted that the "ice" does not lower the temperature of the martini one degree.

J.D. has been a multiplatinum producer since the age of 17, so he does indeed have money to burn and toss out windows. In the video's intro - when he's lounging around the pool with Jay-Z and just kind of muses, "You know what? I think I'm gonna direct my next video, even though my ideas are stupid" - you get the feeling it's not much of a fictionalization. And, yeah, in case you're wondering, Dupri's ideas are pretty stupid. But, for some overindulgent reason I can't quite put my finger on, the whole experience is a humongous guilty pleasure.

In a vain effort to prove he's some kind of blueblood, Dupri spends an entire verse racing a high-class lady on a galloping horse out at a rustic country club somewhere. Then Jay-Z and Dupri race each other in convertibles on a two-lane country road while waving stacks of money around. This showboating attracts the attention of a redneck Rosco, whose cruiser can't quite catch up to the pair of rappers. I don't want to give away any exciting surprises, but by the video's end, dozens of bales of hay are destroyed and Rosco is mighty frustrated. ("Tarnation!" screams the flustered Sheriff Coltrane.)

All the while, director Darren Grant cuts to shots of J.D. and Jay-Z rapping in front of a palatial plantation and, true to the 1998 hip-hop scene, rapping in front of three rows of identically dressed fly girls dancing in a too-bright room with washed-out colors. Ridiculous, overblown and supremely watchable.


* = Which would make for one goddamned exciting hip-hop video, to be sure.

--
Read my original 1998 review of "Money Ain't a Thang" by clicking here and scrolling down to #58.

Jay-Z - Hard Knock Life

**1/2 (of four)



This is a supreme example of how a song and video you despise the first few hundred times you hear/see it can eventually win you over and earn the right to be played voluntarily and even purchased. Yes, after a string of Jay-Z bashing in my video reviews that lasted years, I finally broke down and purchased an $8.99 used CD copy of Volume 2: Hard Knock Life a year and a half ago at a store called Slackers. I'm not sure if it was a sudden realization, but I wore down. I had to admit I was wrong about Jay-Z not being talented and individual. And I'm sure my ex post facto approval of him helps the Jiggaman sleep better at night, so it's a win-win situation.

I think my big issue with "Hard Knock Life" was the fact that a self-proclaimed thug was sampling a main theme from one of the honkiest musicals of all time, Annie. Really, okay, I'm sure anyone of any race who grows up in poverty and despair can identify with the curly red-headed orphan and fantasize about having their own Daddy Warbucks or Phillip Drummond or George Papadapolous. But do I really need to see a perky nine-year-old girl with her hand on her hip sashaying down a ghetto street while lip synching to the decades-old kid's choir rendering of "It's a Hard Knock Life"? It undermines a touch of credibility and is just, really, when it comes down to it, rather gay.

But Jay-Z isn't in pimp mode here and he isn't in badass mode. He's in humble, respect-your-roots mode. I could go out to the living room and connect my computer to the Internet and do a little research and see if Jay-Z actually went back to his old neighborhood to shoot the "Hard Knock Life" video, but... um... I'm a lazy bastard. So let's just say the fictional Jay-Z character in the video is going back to visit his fictional childhood spots and leave it at that.

This Steven Carr effort is really just a collection of neighborhood shots with lots of real extras, either looking sexy and confident or defeated and weathered - no in-betweens here. And what starts as a hotass Mya doppelganger walking down the sidewalk lip synching to the kid's choir turns into a series of perky children of both genders. (Hey, Steven Carr, give me Mya back!) If it is a fictional Jay-Z in a fictional neighorhood, it takes away from the effect some, but either way it rings genuine and actually kinda folksy for someone who's sold his glamour image so freakin' hard for so long.

Curious to read my original, zero-star review of the "Hard Knock Life" video? Click here and scan down to #22 on the countdown.

Mark Wills - Back at One

** (of four)

God, this was the big trend for awhile, wasn't it? Country artists doing covers of R+B songs. That was all music needed - a twangy version of Tony Rich Project's "Nobody Knows," or, worse, John Michael Montgomery's nod to All-4-One with "I Swear." Add to the list this late-1999 version of Bryan McKnight's "Back at One," released to country radio while the original was still #2 on the charts.

I like McKnight and all - I think "Anytime" is one of the best slow jams of the '90s - but "Back at One" does not represent his finest work. The chorus reads like a bad episode of "Sesame Street," with its one-two-three nursery rhyme chorus structure and horrible, horrible lyric, "Four: Repeat steps one through three." But somehow the whiny histrionics of McKnight's original, the bridge in particular, translates unexpectedly well to the country medium. I'm sober and wide awake, and I think this version is better than the original.

The video's an exercise in stodgy mediocrity, though. Wills spends the duration of the video in a series of snazzy suits while lip synching from a big, empty house. The director even duplicates the Mariah Carey "Vision of Love" video by placing Wills in front of a big square window with a fake sunset passing by in the background. Oh, and he rides a doorless elevator which lists off the numbers of the floors as Wills is singing "One... two... three... four..."

Reliant K - Who I Am Hates Who I've Been

** (of four)

I don't like these guys too much. They don't really stand out in the pop-punk scene. Reliant K sounds like Blink 182 - their singer even kind of looks Mlike Blink 182's singer. The Reliant K frontman has two sounds - when he's singing to a slower, gentler song, his voice somewhat resembles that of Christian rock staple Michael W. Smith. (Turns out Reliant K is Christian and is signed to DC Talk's Gotee Records label.) When it's power-punk time, he adopts a phony British accent and just sounds whiny. The lyrics, fueled with despair and regret, are doubly whiny.

Half of this video sticks with shots of the band performing from a rooftop, with lots of closeups of the Blink-doppelganger frontman. The other half follows a cute little alternagirl as she walks down the street and slowly figures out that she has the ability to control time. When she walks forward, time moves normally. When she stops walking, time stops - some lady's library books freeze in mid-drop, the kid on the skateboard is stuck halfway through a trick, etc. And when she backs up a few steps, time reverses.

There's not much plot to the time-stopping thing, though - the produce-selling street vendor tosses the punk girl a magic pear or something, and the time thing begins. She's amused with it for a little while then realizes it's up to her to save the life of the nice Japanese boy who's going to get hit by a car as he crosses the street. When punk girl sees the carnage on the way, of course she backs up. Eventually backs all the way up to the fruit vendor and dodges the magic pear when it comes her way.

Kind of interesting and, shit, I've been fantasizing about having the ability to stop time since I first saw the '80s sitcom "Out of This World." I about broke my index fingers trying to jam them together in just the right way and stop time like that alien girl Evie. But, for all the narrative possibility of halting time at will, the best Hollywood has given us so far is the movie Clockstoppers and this ultimately forgettable video from Christian punk-pop band Reliant K.

Black Eyed Peas - My Humps

*1/2 (of four)



I already wrote a review for BEP's "Don't Lie" video that began, "It's been fascinating to watch the Black Eyed Peas complete every step of the selling-out process." I stand corrected - these guys didn't sell out all the way until their most recent video, "My Humps." This is their first single that features vocals almost exclusively from Fergie, the ex-child star who joined up with the Peas two albums ago and poised them to become TRL stars.

When I first got to like Black Eyed Peas, it was a hip-hop act with three distinct male rappers. Now the three guys are standing in the background wearing shiny suits and identical smug grins while Fergie The Child Star delivers her version of "My Neck, My Back." Or "Milkshake." Or "Hollaback Girl." Or "Gossip Folks." They're all damn near the same song, girl-empowerment sex anthems with nursery rhyme singalong choruses.

This one goes, "My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps, my lovely lady lumps, my lovely lady lumps, my lovely lady lumps, my lovely lady lumps, my lovely lady lumps, my lovely lady lumps, from the back to the front." Her hump is her ass, the lovely lady lumps are her ass cheeks, and they drive the men wild. Make them spend all their money and time on someone who eerily looks like a young, slightly more ethnic Kirstie Alley.

The entire video takes place on a gray-backdrop soundstage, where Fergie rubs her ass and dances with a quartet of booty girls. (The fairly elaborate choreography - for a BEP video anyway - comes courtesy of co-director Fatima Robinson.) There are Dolce Gabana bags and closeups of jewel-encrusted bracelets and fancy fucking cars. And a couple male extras in wife beaters and boxers, standing around basically.

Tacky, stupid shit this is, on the sixth-grade level and actually far more dirty than you might think. Fergie uses the word "ass" several times, and one of the male rappers asks her, "Whatchu gonna do with all that breast? All that breast inside your shirt?" There's a bit about mixing the guy's milk with the girl's "cocoa puff," too. We're just teaching our young girls more and more to be whores and whores - giving away their bodies so guys will buy them shit and pay attention to them - in our increasingly insane culture. I'm only half-complaining about this.

Head to the Talkin' Videos site for more hilarious, biased commentary on the video for "My Humps."

Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl

*** (of four)

Jet was a nice, derivative distraction for awhile, weren't they? They directly ripped off Iggy Pop with this track - which is fine by me since I'm still musically ignorant enough that I don't know any Iggy Pop - while somewhat resembling a VH1-friendly AC/DC. And their two hits, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" and "Cold Hard Bitch," sound practically identical. But, fuck, I don't care. I like these guys from Melbourne and their straightforward, energetic '70s rock sound and "throat-shredding" vocals. And I like their soundalike pair of hits.

The black-and-white video for "Girl" starts off looking deceptively simple. Director Robert Hales puts the band on a white soundstage in dark clothing, positioning them and their instruments in diamond-shaped formation. And they lip synch the song, while hand-animated and computer-animated effects slowly pile up around them. One of the speakers starts leaking blood, then blood tracers ooze up from the guitar cords and before long we're stuck in a leisurly acid trip. A shadow woman starts writhing around, appearing and disappearing at will. Animated skull people and wings eventually crop up, along with flowers and random geometric patterns.

Sounds pretty queer on paper, but if you ever see this one pop up on the MTV Hits channel or wherever, you should leave it on. And start thinking about Jet's second album, which the band says will sound nothing like the first. "We're just taking our time and making sure it's five times better than the first one," claims guitarist Nik Cester. Let's hope Iggy Pop has some genius-ass shit they can steal this time.

Juice Newton - Queen of Hearts

* (of four)

Juice Newton is some kinda scamp, I'll tell ya whut. In the 1981 video for "Queen of Hearts," which is set in like 1881, Juice hitches a ride on a coal-powered locomotive while dressed as a streetwalker. The locomotive is actually like four-feet high and looks like one of the more unexciting rides at a frontier-themed amusement park. But Juice mugs it up to the camera anyway, turning back and waving with a big smile on her face as she rides off sitting next to the well-dressed, bearded conductor.

This is just the beginning of Juice Newton's escapade. When she arrives in town, she pushes the same well-dressed, bearded gentleman on a rope swing suspended from a tree branch. Pushes him too hard, in fact, causing him to fall off and Juice to mug for the camera like, Ooops, didn't mean to do that. Cut to Juice stepping into a prison cell while a row of bars swings shut behind her. Juice mugs for the camera again like, Ooops, shit happens.

By the next verse, Juice has made bail and she's robbing a stagecoach driven by the same well-dressed, bearded gentleman. Cut to the same row of prison bars shutting behind her, with Juice mugging for the camera big-time like, Ooops, back in jail again, for armed robbery this time. I'm such a naughty, naughty girl. Then, after berating the bearded man for hopping into bed with too many different girls while he's in a relationship, Juice hops in bed with him. And lands her nightgown-clad ass right back in jail. Cue identical Ooops mug.

I'm not sure if this is officially considered plot so much as just a series of disconnected All's fair in love and war sequences. They're all too short to officially make sense, and the video spends way too much time cutting from Juice and her bearded guy in the Old West to Juice and the same bearded guy performing "Queen of Hearts" on a soundstage in present-era 1981. And don't forget the liberally dispensed shots of a pair of hands dealing cards. One guess which card keeps popping up. What a mess, and here I am writing 350 words about it at 6:38 a.m. on a Wednesday, 24 years after this trivial little pop song and piss-poor video was released.