pop – The Red Pen of Doom

JUNGLE invigorates music videos by going old school

January 27, 2025January 26, 2025Posted in 2 Music Video MondayTagged back on 74, broadway, country, Dance, generic music videos, jungle, music videos, pop, rap, volcano1 Comment

Listen: unless you live in an ice cave, you listen to music and have seen 5,923 music videos. Most of those are forgettable.

There are reasons for that.

Your typical Generic Music Video features shots of the band pretending to play their instruments as the lead singer pretends to sing. They’ll shoot in an alley, to pretend to be gritty and real. They’ll shoot on a beach while looking pretentiously at the sunset. They’ll shoot on a rooftop, thinking they’re The Beatles.

For variety, an ambitious band will try a music video that tells a story. This is hard, and expensive, like filming a short movie. Instead of a zillion-dollar budget for a big band doing the alley-rooftop-beach thing, we’re talking a bazillion-dollar budget. Thriller was not easy or cheap.

If you clicked that link, yes, professional music videos run from $20k at the absolute lowest end to $500,000 or more. It’s a joke (except true) in Hollywood that rich men with girlfriends who think they should be a singer will spend far more than this to hire a producer, cut a single, and get a real director and crew to shoot one music video. And yeah, there’s a chance that singer makes it, simply because a talented band back in Des Moines, Iowa doesn’t have that money supporting them.

HOWEVER: I come here to praise Jungle, a fun band that did something that entertained the hell out of me. It’s not a lame video of the band playing, or a pretentious short film that flails. You don’t even see the band, not once.

Here’s the video I saw. Watch it, then we’ll talk smack.

How can you not love that song and video? It’s full of joy, with interesting choreography, constant shifts, always something new.

Here’s what blew me away: they didn’t just make one video. They did an entire movie of this based on their album Volcano.

And it rocks. The thing just works.

Sure, musicals aren’t new, and actors have danced on Broadway since forever. I’m just happy to see this come back, hard, to give us something fresh again with music videos. We don’t need more pop stars singing “baby baby baby” or rappers bragging about their Lambos and boats. I am not surprised or impressed by country singers driving beat-up pickups while singing about beer and duck hunting.

Jungle has impressed the hell out of me. Here’s the movie, and all I have to say is 11/10, give us more.

This one chart cuts through the heart of EVERY MUSICAL GENRE

January 29, 2018August 3, 2021Posted in 2 Music Video MondayTagged alice martin, blues, folk, music videos, no roots, pop, punk, Rock, types of music1 Comment

So on Mondays, when the mood is right and the coffee is hot, I dissect music videos on this silly blog–half because it’s fun and half because you can learn a lot from taking apart a 3-minute video.

This chart does a beautiful job of taking a scalpel and slicing right through the heart every major musical genre. It is merciless, it is brutal and there is no escape. Even better: there’s a lot of truth in here. Because the secret of humor is revealing painful truths.

Great job, John the Atkinson of Wrong Hands–please give us more charts like this.

As a bonus, here’s a music video that we’re looping endlessly: NO ROOTS by Alice Martin, a great song in part because it’s completely different. I can’t shoe-horn her song into pop, blues or punk. And that’s a good thing.

RICO SUAVE by Gerardo shows the power of silly fun

June 12, 2017August 3, 2021Posted in 2 Music Video MondayTagged gerardo, Music video, pop, rap, rico suave, RockLeave a comment

A classic one-hit wonder, RICO SUAVE shows off the massive music-video firepower of being completely fun.

We’re not talking lyrics as literature here, and this music video isn’t amazing in any single area. Gerardo isn’t exactly Bruno Mars in terms of world-class singing, acting and dancing talent.

However: None of that matters, because the whole video is flat-out fun. He’s plenty good at dancing and truly talented when it comes to transmitting the emotion that, “I’m having a good time, and so should you.”

That’s a valuable skill when most rock, pop and rap stars are busy trying to look brooding, emo and/or tough.

Fun works. That’s what people want.

So here’s to you, Gerardo, who I see became and A & R exec at a record company. I still remember this video because it’s a classic four minutes and fifteen seconds of unfiltered joy.