KP: I like Pink too, and I appreciated the directness of her attack, although I can't help but feel she has it both ways here: She gets to make fun of the "stupid girls" who rely on their sex appeal by skanking it up in her own video. I always feel like she's as daring and edgy as her label feels will be profitable. But whatever, it's still a cut above a lot of stuff.
Which is more than you can say for Jamie Foxx's "Unpredictable." Foxx is a great actor, but he still has a lot to prove as a singer. This is just, ugh, terrible, except when Ludacris shows up and it turns into a totally different song. When Foxx's album came out, Slate compared it to The Onion's Smoove B. I think this is too cheesy for Smoove. Also, assuming that the Beyoncé track didn't drop like a brick, there are three Hype Williams-directed videos on this countdown that all use the same trick, putting a widescreen image sandwiched between a split image where the letterboxing black bars would normally be. It's pretty lame.
NM: What's funny is that I didn't even note that it was Hype Williams the first time I saw that effect, way back at Number 20. But you better believe I noticed it the next two times. And not in a "hey, that's neat!" way.
"Unpredictable" is in a close race with Staind's "Right Here" for my least-favorite video in the countdown. Weren't we done with Staind? Didn't the "rock is back" bands at the start of the '00s knock nü-metal off the charts for good? As a song, "Right Here" features pretty much everything I hated about that movement in the first place, from the sober self-obsession of the lyrics to the dully virtuosic guitar-playing. As a video, it's even more excruciating. A band as homely as Staind should not be shot in close-up. And aren't they performing in the same stately old house that was in Train's "Drops Of Jupiter" video?
KP: I second everything you just said. And to skip ahead two slots, weren't we done with Train, too? The song's bad, but the video's the just about the most dully literal interpretation of a song I've ever seen. It's called "Cab," and the lead singer spends most of the video riding around in a cab. He's lonely and everything's grey. Gak. How do these bands stick around? Does mediocrity have its own kind of weird momentum that allows acts like Train to just keep pooping albums onto the charts? Is it simply brand recognition? Do people listen to Train because they've been listening to Train for a few years and don't want to switch? That's why I buy the same paper towels every time, but those principles shouldn't apply to music. I guess we should back up and talk about All-American Rejects, but let's just not, okay?
Also, I think Aamer's had some coffee. He's perked up quite a bit now that we're in the Top 10.
NM: I do like the thought that this is how the guy from Train spends his days now, stalking women at two bucks a mile.
But here's the thing about the persistence of Train, Staind, and for that matter Rob Thomas, whose "Ever The Same" ducks in at number six: I'm almost willing to believe that VH1 would rather keep programming their videos than admit they were wrong to hype them up in the first place. I guess you could call it loyalty to a bunch of acts that helped VH1 make the transition from boomers to maturing Gen-X-ers, but it's a weird kind of revisionist history they're writing, where Matchbox 20 really was the most important band of their era.
KP: So it's all VH1's fault? Somehow I always suspected… You're right, though: This chart makes it seem like the years between, say, 1987 and 1995 never happened. On the one hand, we've got '80s giants like Bon Jovi, Prince, Madonna, power-ballad-mode Steven Tyler, and LL Cool J (and I've come to think of Jamie Foxx's singing career as just one long echo of Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time" single.) On the other, we've got late-'90s/early-'00s headaches that are still around, like Staind, Train, Goo Goo Dolls, and Rob Thomas. There's plenty of stuff that doesn't fall into either category, but those two elements dominate, at least this week.
Some decent stuff slips through, though. I'm not nuts about the Mary J. Blige song at number five, "Be Without You," but she's got a great voice. Also, I kind of like the Mary J. Blige-uses-new-technology-to-express-her-heartbreak theme in this video. In one shot, she's tapping out the lyric on a laptop. In another, she's discovering that she hasn't missed any calls on her cell phone.
NM: Got to love the idea of a wired-up Blige. Do you think she's "logging on" to the "Internet?" I hope she has a "firewall" or someone might "hack in" and steal her "identity."
This video also features Terrence Howard, our second Academy Award-nominated actor of the countdown. And it's one of the few videos with any ambition, telling a mini-story fraught with drama. It's nothing that dozens of other slow-jam hip-hop videos haven't done before, but it's nice to know that somebody's still trying to do something with the form beyond renting an old house and telling the band to look away from the camera.
The Number Four video is Natasha Bettingfield's "Unwritten," which doesn't have much of a story. Natasha gets in a dingy elevator with some dude, then she dodges lens-flares in a field for a few minutes, and then she gets back in the elevator just in time for the gospel choir to arrive. It's not much, but the color's nice, and the video made more of an impression than the song.
Bettingfield looks like the kind of gal who'd be really fun to hang out with, but if you tried to kiss her, I bet she'd freeze up like Flavor-Ice.
« Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next »
- Comments