Jamie Cullum - Get Your Way (2005)
**1/2 (of four)
On one hand, jazz singer Jamie Cullum's video for "Get Your Way" is innovative and fascinating. On the other, it peaks about two-thirds of the way in and wears out its welcome by the end. At about 150 seconds, this video would be perfect - at four minutes, it needs more. A song this distinct, paired with a video this distinct, could use a little more build and payoff. As is, though, the package is still a guilty-pleasure success and something VH1 can rally their troops behind.
Cullum - who I'd never heard of before tonight - has been a solo star on the jazz scene for awhile, pairing old standards with originals. Now he's going for broke in the adult album rock/pop market. "Get Your Way" is simultaneously traditional jazz, perky pop and R+B-infused, in a catchy but knowingly cheeky way. Cullum himself resembles teen movie C-list actor Shane West with a shag mullet and is simultaneously playful and respectable.
His job is to react to a blue screen for four minutes, and Cullum hits nearly every note. As the video opens, he's seen lip synching against a white background into an animated blue squiggle of a microphone that soon yanks itself out of his control and turns into a variety of abstractly drawn objects. From a sexy woman to a barking dog to a palm smacking the shit out of him.
Soon enough, the animated microphone abandons all laws of physics and suspends Cullum on strings, puppet-style, turns into a tightrope for him to walk and becomes a noose and gallows that suspend the singer upside down. Then comes the Daniel Greaves/Sharon Coleman video's best sequence, the song's bridge - Cullum is illuminated blue on a black background and gets completely mauled by the animated microphone rope. The camera then zooms inside the rope to a blood stream-type scene with cells sliding down the current and pulsing to the beat.
Then, after a piano solo that has Cullum plunking his fingers down on a skyscraper scene that resembles the "Frasier" logo, the video runs out of ideas and goes back to its original concept, praying for the song to end as soon as possible. If the songs of The Beatles and the videos of They Might Be Giants have taught us anything, it's to get in and get out and cater to our microscopic attention spans in poppy two-minute spurts.
On one hand, jazz singer Jamie Cullum's video for "Get Your Way" is innovative and fascinating. On the other, it peaks about two-thirds of the way in and wears out its welcome by the end. At about 150 seconds, this video would be perfect - at four minutes, it needs more. A song this distinct, paired with a video this distinct, could use a little more build and payoff. As is, though, the package is still a guilty-pleasure success and something VH1 can rally their troops behind.
Cullum - who I'd never heard of before tonight - has been a solo star on the jazz scene for awhile, pairing old standards with originals. Now he's going for broke in the adult album rock/pop market. "Get Your Way" is simultaneously traditional jazz, perky pop and R+B-infused, in a catchy but knowingly cheeky way. Cullum himself resembles teen movie C-list actor Shane West with a shag mullet and is simultaneously playful and respectable.
His job is to react to a blue screen for four minutes, and Cullum hits nearly every note. As the video opens, he's seen lip synching against a white background into an animated blue squiggle of a microphone that soon yanks itself out of his control and turns into a variety of abstractly drawn objects. From a sexy woman to a barking dog to a palm smacking the shit out of him.
Soon enough, the animated microphone abandons all laws of physics and suspends Cullum on strings, puppet-style, turns into a tightrope for him to walk and becomes a noose and gallows that suspend the singer upside down. Then comes the Daniel Greaves/Sharon Coleman video's best sequence, the song's bridge - Cullum is illuminated blue on a black background and gets completely mauled by the animated microphone rope. The camera then zooms inside the rope to a blood stream-type scene with cells sliding down the current and pulsing to the beat.
Then, after a piano solo that has Cullum plunking his fingers down on a skyscraper scene that resembles the "Frasier" logo, the video runs out of ideas and goes back to its original concept, praying for the song to end as soon as possible. If the songs of The Beatles and the videos of They Might Be Giants have taught us anything, it's to get in and get out and cater to our microscopic attention spans in poppy two-minute spurts.
posted by daytime at 4:59 AM
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