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Music Videos (in General)

I just saw something on TV that made me very sad. I occasionally watch a little bit of the International Channel. This evening, they are showing the most requested videos on a program called Revolution which consists of Japanese and Korean music videos.

I watched parts of two consecutive videos. The first one had a beautiful young woman singer in it. She was dressed similarly to Britany Spears (at her trashiest), and using very similar (trashy) dance moves. The second had a handsome young man who appears to be almost a clone of Michael Jackson.

Now, recognizing that market forces have driven these types of music and videos to become so popular, I would have hoped to see some dances and hear some music with more ethnic realism in them, related to their countries of origin. Instead, I saw ripoffs of US junk.

In the mid '80s, there were some good videos. Some were funny, some serious, some trashy, and some just horrible. But most of them were original and interesting.

Even into the '90s, I saw some good, interesting, original videos. I really enjoyed Robert Palmer's videos for "Simply Irresistable" and "Addicted to Love". They created very interesting visuals, combined with the almost robotic band and chorus of pretty women in the background of both videos. There were many others.

Now, I very rarely watch any videos. Jewel's "Intuition" video was cute, in that it highlighted a lot of the commercialism we see around us. There have been a couple of others that were interesting, but very few.

Do you see the modern videos becoming more and more vulgar and trashy?

General in Videos Music

I remember when I came back to the US in '94. I was absolutely hooked on MTV and music videos. That was when MTV actually showed music videos instead of the garbage shows they have now. I would literally still and watch videos for hours. Now, during the few times that they do show music videos, I can't stand to watch them. Either they are too trashy, or depicts strong violence or both. I can't recall the last time I sat down and actually enjoyed a music video.

Music Videos (in General) Sports & Fashion Music Movies

I tend to think that we idealize our youth and we're always going to look back on it as a purer time. It's more to do with our own purity than the music's purity.

Anyways, I think good music videos are still around. It all depends on what you like. Personally, I like Sum 41's "Hell Song" and "We're All to Blame". Many of Marianas Trench's videos are amusing, especially if you're familiar with emo music. Ten Second Epic tends to also have a sense of humour about themselves. I even like some of the older Fall Out Boy videos. I could go on for hours about my favourite videos. It all depends on where you look and what you like.