2006 Videos Thread #3

This was a very good year for videos. It was difficult, but we were able to pare the nominees down to 30. Each of us then chose what we thought were the Top 5.

Some of the videos were easy to remove - Blue October's "Hate Me," Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie," and Kasabian's "Shoot The Runner," for example - and a few were very difficult.

In the end Disturbed's "Land Of Confusion" won, which makes sense to me as I think it was the only video on which everyone who voted was able to agree.

I personally wouldn't have picked "Land Of Confusion" as the top video. Here were the Top 5 as I saw them:

01. Fort Minor - "Where'd You Go"
While many videos deal with the Iraq war and loneliness on a large scale, Fort Minor worked on a more personal scale. To take it above and beyond, they made almost a mini-documentary, using real stories of real people. The video has brought me to the edge of tears every time I have seen it, more than footage of war ever could. It was a very mature move and one I have not seen from most artists. The song fits well with the project and keeps its integrity.

02. OK Go - "Here It Goes Again"
If nothing else, this song wins for sheer originality. The band pulled off a completely unique stunt (and outside the realm of this video, have performed it live), used a unique media (YouTube) to promote it, and have seen themselves catapult from obscurity because of it. Prior to "Here It Goes Again" I had never heard of OK Go. The choreography is solid, the song works with the video, and it was done on a minimal budget.

03. Disturbed - "Land Of Confusion"
This video almost was not considered because it is very similar to the idea of Eminem's "Mosh". However, the video is simply amazing. It has a very strong and pointed story and has the ability to rile as much as the motion picture V For Vendetta. The idea of the people having power is also a great one to see.

04. Stone Sour - "Through The Glass"
It's just a well-crafted indictment of Hollywood and the effort it took for the actors to pose and for the propsmen to make cardboard cutouts of them is very impressive. I just thought that the video was incredibly well put together and I had never seen this concept used before. Props to Corey Taylor and the boys in Stone Sour.

05. The Killers - "Bones"
This video is done in true Killers fashion, mixed with some very interesting special effects. The video definitely portrays the song and is done in a classy manner. It's not the first time I've seen skeletons used (I think Korn used X-Rays in "Make Me Bad" and I know that Kaiser Chiefs used skeletons as a motif in their 2005 video "Everyday I Love You Less And Less"), but it was done incredibly well. The special effects are amazing, the song is good, and it has the makings of a great video.

The #5 position was hotly contested. I had considered Matisyahu's "King Without A Crown," Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," and People In Planes' "If You Talk Too Much" for this position, but ultimately had to give in to The Killers.

We were allowed some special awards and so I had to come up with some. And so our inaugural awards:

Snoopy Award
For the bravery of fighting the proverbial Red Baron (in this case Bush), I award Neil Young's "Living With War". While the concept is similar to APC's "Imagine," that he had the gall to put up the Iraq death count gains major awesome points in my book.

Carl Jung Trophy
For an awesome show of pop psychology, I award Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy". It was the best use of a Rorschach test I have ever seen.

Unique Message Award
Because we were flooded with videos relating to Iraq and the war, I chose to give this to a video with a different moral. People In Planes' "If You Talk Too Much (My Head Will Explode)" deplores modern methods of "communication" and speaks in favor of actually communicating, something we can all learn from.

And finally,
The SJC (Shark Jumping Championship)
Fergie takes it hands down with "Fergalicious". Go back to singing hooks, because otherwise you're in a long line of sinkers.

Those are my awards for the year. Congratulations to Disturbed! My next post will be a review of The Decemberists' "The Crane Wife". Stay Tuned!

AtD Announces: The Notable Music Videos of 2006: Official Results Thread I

And now that moment you've all been waiting for, the results of our 2006 music video awards ! Before we get to that, however, here's how the whole shebang went down. I asked my fellow editors, RyTunes and Doughnutman, to pick their five favorite videos among all those that were nominated. Oh yeah, I picked mine too. Then we used a weighted scale system that gave our top choices more points than our bottom choices. The scale worked like this: 3 points for the number 5 video, 5 points for the number 4 video, 10 points for number 3, 25 points for numero dos, and a wallopin' 50 for first. Well, the math is done and AtD is proud to declare a winner in our first ever Editor's Choice Music Video Award:

Disturbed - Land of Confusion (click on the link for the YouTube video stream)

Disturbed's roaring cover of the 80's Genesis hit powered into first place with 65 points (1 1st place, 1 3rd place, and 1 4th place finish). This animated spectacle, which is directed by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, serves as an appropriate and more brutal follow-up to its Reagan-era predecessor, serving as a commentary on current politics that is more shocking than satirical.

The runners up for our Editor's Choice Award:

Fort Minor - Where'd You Go (featuring Holly Brook)
30 Seconds to Mars - The Kill (Bury Me)

Each totaled 50 points with two individual first place finishes. The Kill also won an award at the MTV VMA's this past year, taking home the MTV2 Award at that ceremony. Finally an honorable mention to our 3rd place finisher:

OK GO - Here It Goes Again

The video that needs no introduction. It changed the rules for how music videos are marketed and shared. Another fine example of the Web 2.0 in action. What else can we say about the landmark success of this video? Over 9 million views on YouTube, Grammy nominated for Best Short Form Music Video, featured on the Colbert Report, performed live without error at the 2006 VMA's, and parodied in a Cingular Wireless commercial. (Source: Wikipedia)

But that's not all! There's a lot more comin' your way before we wrap up the year that was in music videos. Next, RyTunes and Doughnutman (not necessarily in that order) will share with you their thoughts and comments on the videos mentioned here, plus a few more that weren't. After that, I'll close it off with a few personal whimsies on what struck me and why, while also welcoming the next cadre of music videos that will blow our minds and destroy worlds in 2007. It should be a wild ride, don't go anywhere!

AtD Announces: The Notable Music Videos of 2006: Official Nominating Thread

As 2006 draws to a close and we reflect and resolve in anticipation of a new year, new hopes, and dreams yet to be fulfilled, I thought we'd take a moment on the old 'log to visually look back at the year that was, with the best music videos of 2006! Now this is by no means a new idea, but thanks to the advent of YouTube and Digital Democracy, we can go about this in an entirely new and interactive way. Before we get to the good stuff I thought it would be useful to talk about what actually makes a music video one of the 'best'. There is no real SOP here, so let's improvise:

Criteria for evaluating the quality of music videos:

1) Originality. Art eternally strives to reinvent itself in a world with finite tools in which to create it. The struggle to be fresh and different among legions of influences and imitations is ultimately a large part of what defines it's place in the grand scheme of things. No one really enjoys seeing arbitrary shots of a band performing against interspersed sprinklings of bad dancing or pretentious non sequiturs, do they?

2) Audio/Visual Congruity. If you're going to bother putting the time and energy into developing a visual medium to convey your musical message, wouldn't you say it ought to be appropriate? Although the utterly irrational and absurdest vid can be fun and humorous, it's generally aimless and unwelcoming. Go for the themes, the style, the flair; let the pictures carry the notes on wings of glory and not on broken backs up a mountain of defeat.

3) Coherence. Sometimes it's good to blow people's minds. Most of the time. however, it's good just to be understood. While the occasional foray into the experimental realm of existentialism and atmosphere sometimes make a powerful statement, it should meet the fundamental expectation of narrative; that is, it should weave a story or a unified idea in some way. Even Tool's infamously bizarre visual constructions contain a sense of character movement and purposeful events. The simple goal here is to not try too hard to be the Pablo Picasso of the music video world.

4) Integrity. Not all bands, in fact a good number of them, probably cannot afford to make a professionally scripted, shot, and edited video. That's okay. What's not okay is throwing together some loose ends into an imploding bomb of sloppiness and carelessness. Much effort with little to fund it does not necessarily spell logistical nightmare. One only need look at OK GO's instantly cult classic "Here it Goes Again" for proof of the fact that rudimentary can go a long, long way.

I don't portend to be an expert of the directorial and production world who is readily qualified to speak to the inherent objective characteristics of a given video. So if you want to disagree, agree, add your own thoughts and comments, or slap me across the face, you can do all but the last (I'm behind a computer screen and therefore inevitably distantly removed from you). So while you're debating the merits of that, what were the standout, provocative, sexy, innovative, and intense videos of 2006? Alternatively, and perhaps more amusingly so, what were the most atrocious, banal, preposterous, and unwatchable videos of the year? Let's do it all. We'll use the comments as the official nominating thread. The contributors of the site (as well as any of our faithful or new readers) are welcome to throw their ingredients into the pot and then we can soufflé the sucker and see what turns out at the end. Ultimately we'll chose the ten best, because our opinions rock, and we'll also chose the worst. We might even choose to give some videos their own made-up honors such as 'Best use of the color brown.' You never know.

In the end we'll have some kind of list-thingy with YouTube links, and commentaries, and maybe even some other fun goodies. Think of it as the VMA's (without MTV) meets the Mystery Science Theater 3000 of musical motion pictures. Or something like that.

As this will be the last post of 2006 to this site (as far as I know...), May you all have a Happy, Safe, Blessed, and Inebriated New Year. We'll catch you bright and early in 2007 on the flipside of this post. For now on to the comments, nominations, and flame-wars!