It’s not hard to find weird music videos, mostly because (a) you can’t throw a rock on YouTube without smacking five different music vids and (b) musicians tend to play it really, really safe or truly let their freak flag fly. There’s no in-between.
This video is the good kind of weird. Watch, then let’s chat about why.
Okay, so that’s definitely something I hadn’t seen before: a music video where the heroes are a gang of ducks, getting revenge on an actual gang for their misdeeds.
And yeah, there are seventeen ways this video could’ve gone wrong. But I think it works.
They set things up properly by showing the human gang doing bad things, both to other humans and to the ducks, and the ducks starting to go into action, building up suspense. Then they paid all that off with a nice variety of surprising montage of Duck Vigilante Justice with a good sense of variety and surprise, escalating to a climax. I particularly liked the duck driver–a nice touch.
VERDICT
Yes, this video is definitely weird, but the risks paid off. Well done, Bingo Players.
The great thing about the Series of Tubes is you stumble upon random treasures, like this cover of 1944 by Elina Ivaschenko.
Beautiful, right?
Obviously, her coach’s reaction help makes this video great. You can see and feel the joy as her singer nails this.
What hit me was the universality of music. Most of these lyrics are not in English and it doesn’t matter, because the emotion comes through, strong and clear.
When strangers are coming They come to your house They kill you all and say We’re not guilty not guilty
Where is your mind? Humanity cries You think you are gods But everyone dies Don’t swallow my soul Our souls
Yaşlığıma toyalmadım Men bu yerde yaşalmadım Yaşlığıma toyalmadım Men bu yerde yaşalmadım
We could build a future Where people are free to live and love The happiest time
Where is your heart? Humanity rise You think you are gods But everyone dies Don’t swallow my soul Our souls
Yaşlığıma toyalmadım Men bu yerde yaşalmadım Yaşlığıma toyalmadım Men bu yerde yaşalmadım
There’s real pain and history behind the song, which is about Stalin’s deportation of the Crimea Tarters.
The original song is by Jamala, a Eurovision winner from Ukraine.
So this is one of the rare covers which improves the original. Kind of like how Meg Myers took RUNNING UP THAT HILL and transformed it into a rocket ship full of beautiful noise.
I first saw and heard Normani in LOVE LIES, which is one of the greatest music videos ever. Seriously. I’ve played it 6.2 gazillion times and am still not sick of it. Khalid and Normani nail this thing. If you haven’t seen it, check this thing out. Such a slow burn.
Then I kept hearing her on other tracks, like DANCING WITH A STRANGER with Sam Smith–just perfect.
Here’s the first song I’ve seen from her that’s completely hers. Check it out.
Impressive, right?
Most people are lucky to have nurtured one talent to a world-class level. Singing or dancing. Not both.
I think she’s got heaps of talent in singing and dancing. She reminds me a lot of Ariane Grande years ago, before she went supernova, and people knew her mostly for spot-on impressions of Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Shakira or whoever. Wait for the middle of this video where she does Christina Aguilera singing THE WHEELS ON THE BUS, which is crazysauce. I would totally buy an album of her doing covers like this.
VERDICT
I believe, deep in my soul, that Normani is going to take over and dominate the airwaves. Give us moar moar MOAR.
Dua Lipa is one of the rare singers who continually tries new things in music videos, and songs. Those risks tend to pay off. I can’t remember the last song or video where I skipped it.
I only heard PHYSICAL on the radio and found the video because a dancer did a tribute that I swore was the actual official video.
And this song itself is a tribune to the original 1980s LET’S GET PHYSICAL by Olivia Newton John.
First, let’s check out Dua Lipa’s video before we talk smack.
Good, right? It’s paying homage without being a direct ripoff of Oliva Newton John.
What I like is Dua Lipa clearly cares about dance. They aren’t part of the background, making her look good — she’s dancing right with them, in this one and every video I’ve seen her do. Impressive.
The pioneer of legwarmer videos
Now here’s the original, which is still funny, but hasn’t aged that well.
This was a big deal when it came out. Huge.
Now it looks pretty cheesy, like those Crystal Light National Aerobics Championships, which is amazing and worth being studied in Contemporary History 376: What Were They Smoking in the 1980s?
VERDICT
The more I see and hear of Dua Lipa, the more I like her stuff.
Great job–please keep taking risks and trying new things with these videos. Give us moar moar MOAR.
Wait five minutes and 2020 will deliver unto you new craziness, like today’s massive hacking attack.
So this song by two people I’d never heard of, J.P. Saxe and Julia Michaels, totally fits the mood of this year of apocalyptic nuttiness, with all of us just waiting for what’s next.
Giant meteor? Fine. Alien invasion? BRING IT, INTERGALACTIC MAGGOTS–WE ARE EMOTIONALLY NUMB AND UNAFRAID TO DIE.
Here’s the video:
Simple, right?
They didn’t hire a Hollywood action blockbuster director and spend $8 million on sets, explosions, and backup dancers.
Two characters singing separately on split screens. Then together.
Expensive Monsters, made by pop stars and rappers, and these videos have budgets bigger than the gross national product of Paraguay.
Shoestring Specials, shot on your buddies iPhone and edited by Carl, who dropped out of UCLA film school but still has his subscription to the Adobe Creative Suite, so you pay him in beer.
Obscure Weirdness, where all the wild things live.
It’s the obscure stuff that’s the most fun, because you never know what you’ll find. Sometimes it will be gross, or lame, or shocking. But other times, it’s like finding buried treasure without a pirate map.
Here’s what I just saw. Take a look and a listen.
It’s silly and stupid, right? But also brilliant. So maybe stupidly brilliant.
The sets and costumes are COMPLETELY SPOT-ON, like they bribed the night shift guy at Paramount–maybe he’s a cousin of Carl’s.
I’m loving the actor’s facial expressions, which are perfect, especially when he’s playing Data.
So: I’m required by law to like this. It’s creative, and a lot more fun than watching your average music video from a Far Too Serious Pop Star.
You can’t make this stuff up, which is what makes it so great.
Finland, Sweden and Iceland are really into heavy metal. I mean, seriously into it. There’s like FIVE BILLION heavy metal bands in Finland, which is like the population of Akron, Ohio or whatever. (I’m kidding. 5.5 million people, with 53 heavy metal bands. Not in total. 53 bands per 100,000 people. Daaaaamn.)
One of the bands is Hevisaurus, which you don’t need to understand Finnish to know it talking about “heavy metal + dinosaurs.” And they’re not screwing around. Their audience is kids, and they’ve got good songs and high production values. Check it out.
Good, right? Shocking so.
What really got me were (a) the puppetry with the dinosaur eyes and (b) the fire-breathing dinosaur. That’s metal.
Usually, a little theater goes a long way for a rock or metal band. KISS got a crazy amount of mileage from wearing makeup. Hair bands in the ’80s sold a lot of records with perms, spandex and a little eyeliner.
Hevisaurus is going the extra mile here. These costumes are movie-quality (kid movies, sure, but way better than a band needs for the stage).
Wikipedia quotes/translates a Finnish source that says: “According to legend, five dinosaur eggs made from metal survived the mass extinction some 65 million years ago in the mountain of wizards. In the year 2009, witches gathered at the same place. A giant lightning bolt hit the ground and simultaneously created ash and revealed the eggs. From the power of the witches’ chants, the eggs exploded open and five Hevisauri hatched.”[15] Hey, most Marvel and DC superhero origin stories would kill to be half that cool.
Also: Heavisaurus is going all “Artist Formerly Known as Prince” with a dispute involving their music label, Sony, and it doesn’t get any more metal than sticking it to the Man.
Verdict
Could not love this more. Give me more Hevisaurus.
Yes, this is a cover, so the original credit goes to Kate Bush–yet the Meg Myers version is hotter than a supernova. Take a listen.
And here’s the Kate Bush OG version, then we’ll talk.
The videos
Kate Bush took a risk here with the dancing, a risk that didn’t quite pay off, though anything is superior to the standard, “Watch the lead singer emote into the microphone for three minutes.” Only a few people can really pull that off, like Sinead O’Connor’s cover of NOTHING COMPARES 2U.
The video for Meg Myers is different and brilliant. Motion capture plus kids coloring each page? YES.
The music
Since the lyrics are identical, what matters for a cover is execution.
And this is where Meg Myers and her producer rock us like a hurricane. I heard the Meg version on the radio, fired up the Series of Tubes and went after “running up that hill.” Up popped the Kate Bush version, which sounded like the right song, and made me wonder if fumes in my car, my mood, or mind-control beams from Elon Musk satellites had made me simply enjoy that scratchy car-radio version more than a pristine cut on good headphones.
Which made me have a sad. Because my memory of the song on the radio was crazy good.
Then I stumbled on the Meg Myers version, and no longer believed the whole Elon Musk mind control theory AT ALL, and played her cover approximately 5,923 times in a row.
Her cover is that good.
The deeper meaning
Bad pop songs are like bad dialogue in a movie or novel: they’re on the nose, with no room for ambiguity, no hints at something more.
The lyrics here are interesting and deep. Here they are:
It doesn’t hurt me
Do you want to feel how it feels?
Do you want to know, know that it doesn’t hurt me?
Do you want to hear about the deal that I’m making?
You, it’s you and me
And if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places
Be running up that road
Be running up that hill
Be running up that building
See if I only could, oh
You don’t want to hurt me
But see how deep the bullet lies
Unaware I’m tearing you asunder
Ooh, there is thunder in our hearts
Is there so much hate for the ones we love?
Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?
You, it’s you and me
It’s you and me, won’t be unhappy
And if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places
Be running up that road
Be running up that hill
Be running up that building
Say, if I only could, oh
You
It’s you and me
It’s you and me, won’t be unhappy
Oh come on, baby
Oh come on, darling
Let me steal this moment from you now
Oh come on, angel
Come on, come on, darling
Let’s exchange the experience, oh
And if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places
I’d be running up that road
Be running up that hill
With no problems
Say, if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places
I’d be running up that road
Be running up that hill
With no problems
So if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places
I’d be running up that road
Be running up that hill
With no problems
Say, if I only could
I’d be running up that hill
With no problems
I believe the lyrics hit a sweet spot between “completely on the nose” and “so obscure and esoteric that seven different MFA students have written papers about it, and they all disagree.”
Meg Myers explains this a little during her Tiny Desk Concert with NPR, which is worth a listen for an acoustic version of the song, and for what she says about her motivation for doing the cover.
Verdict
Thanks for the original, Kate Bush.
And give us more like this, Meg Myers–swing for the fences, knowing you won’t hit a home run every time. Just keeps swinging. Because this cover was amazing.
Bonus content: here’s how they made the video. Impressive.
Post Malone is insanely popular and famous now, and he does make (a) great music and (b) music videos that look like Hollywood movies.
His latest music video, CIRCLES, has been watched 5.92 trillion times and is all over the radios. Here, take a look, then we’ll compare it to a heavy metal video from the ’80s with a similar medieval theme.
Weird, right? Here’s why I think this video vexes us.
The song is catchy, and the video is interesting and slick–but they don’t match up. The two don’t mesh to make something new that’s greater than the sum of its parts, like peanut butter and jelly or Kirk and Spock.
The tune is pure, upbeat pop. Professional music critic types have thrown down by calling it the best Katy Perry song of the summer. The video, though, is trying to be dark and tough, bloody and gritty. It’s like peanut butter and broccoli. Do not want.
Put a different video with this song and it would work just fine. Throw a different, darker track on this video and it would fly.
This just doesn’t.
You can see a great example of a beautiful match between song and video by this obscure new artist called Post Malone, who chose his stage name via a rap generator and recorded did this little track called SUNFLOWER for some cartoon superhero movie that nobody watched.
Perfect, right?
Nailed it. Cannot be improved.
Now comes our contender from the ’80s, a totally different take on medieval music video goodness, with Dio making the video for HOLY DIVER on what looks like a budget of $39.84 and a case of Bud Light after binge-watching Conan the Barbarian and Highlander movies.
Here, take a look and listen to grainy archival footage of long ago, when MTV actually played music videos instead of reality shows:
We’ve got the opposite problems here compared to Post Malone, especially when it comes to production values, sets, costumes and all the trimmings.
HOWEVER: The tone of the song matches the tone of the video. That’s huge. Kind of the first job of any music video: match the song.
There’s one storytelling edit I’d make, and that’s moving the sword fight with the bad guy to the end, so they’re circling each other until the climax. I’d make the same kind of storytelling fix to the Post Malone video and change the end, because the Rapunzel angle didn’t work at all.
VERDICT: I have to give it to Dio here. All the money and talent in the world can’t fix a bad marriage between song and music video.
The Red Pen of Doom 