A Love Letter to Music Videos
As a child I was always captivated by music videos and I continue to really enjoy watching them to this day. Music videos provide an additional layer to a person's experience of a song. Maybe the video is meant to evoke how the artist feels when they think of their song. Maybe it's meant to show another element of the music. A really good music video has at times changed the ways that I feel about songs. They can also be spaces to experiment with fun concepts because they are usually really short. It’s always really disappointing when great songs have music videos that end up being major flops.
Music videos are also a really low stakes way of consuming media. A bad film might waste an hour of your life, a bad music video will waste maybe four minutes. And if you find a video that you love you can watch it many times over. I still return to some that I loved when I was a child.
Here are a couple of my favorite music videos:
INTRUDERS- Jessie Reyez
In this stunning video Reyez tackles colonialism, transforming a song that could have easily been about a jealous lover into a reflection on oppression and its afterlives. Reyez is animated into a woman defending her sentient island home from intruders.
Happy- Mitski
Mitski really delivers on the plot twist in this video. For the entire video you think that it will go one way for the carpet to be pulled from under you a mere couple of seconds before the end. Trust me it’s worth a watch.
Cellophane- FKA Twigs
This video follows much less of a traditional narrative than the rest of the videos on the list, but the concept is gorgeous. The video begins in a room with FKA Twigs displaying her insane athleticism through pole dancing. The world then falls away and she descends taking viewers on an incomprehensible journey that will have them coming back again and again to this video.
Yo Perreo Sola- Bad Bunny
Bad Bunny has never really cared for fitting within tired gender norms; this entire video is a middle finger to homophobia and toxic masculinity. He dances in drag through most of the video serving some of the looks of the century. He ends the video with a message about respecting women.
thank u, next- Ariana Grande
The vibes are just impeccable. Watch for the tea on Ari’s ex’s stay for the nostalgia. This music video is full of references to the romcoms that many of us grew up with as she details her own personal journey of growing up and accepting breakups.
Wet Dreamz- J. Cole
Dog lovers rejoice, this one is for you. How do you adapt a song about discovering your sexuality in adolescence? We follow the love story of two puppies who meet and fall in love in a really cute reference to puppy love.
