The Vids Are Alright

Anastasia Vinnikova - I Love Belarus.

Country: Belarus. There’s a clue in the title.
Song: Rousing electro-rock with some clumsy English rhyming (“see the sun shining from above - and I’m gonna everyday give you all my love”).
Fashion: H&M sale for the main lass, but some great traditional costumes from the backing dancers.
SFX: NEON TUBES ARGH
Tourist Board Rating: Plenty of patriotism (plus the aforementioned cossacking backing dancers). 9/10.
Better than 2010? Remember WE ARE LIKE BUUUUTTERFLIES? This year’s song has a higher BPM but no sprouting lepidoptera wings = sorry dudes.
Overall verdict: Europe may well Love Belarus but do bear in mind it’s the only dictatorship left in Europe. This might cost them points!

Nomad - (I Wanna Give You) Devotion.

Now kids, this is how you do neon. Although even Sharon gets sick of it halfway through and switches off her blue screen background.

If the sight of people having lots of fun dancing is making your own feet itch, then why not come along to Poptimism this Friday?

Plastiscines - Bitch.

Oh dear, what a terrible racket - made worse by copious amounts of NEON ARGH. But wait! There are some redeeming features:

- first sighting of the predicted leggings/Doc Martens combo of 2010!
- the phone on the floor at 2.05 (kicked by above mentioned Docs). Where the hell did they get it? Who still has a phone like that? What century are we in? Perhaps it is a squeaky dog toy?
- girl staring at a graffiti-ed wall at 2.14 like it’s the bloody Rosetta Stone that she needs to decipher before double Demotic this afternoon
- the Trev & Simon ‘Swing Yer Pants’ bit at 2.20
- I like it when they drum on the pavement as it reminds me of my own drumming debut aged 3 on the kitchen floor with Mum’s saucepans.

MPHO - Box N Locks.

Yet another quirky young female British singer blah blah blah, but this time backed up with a Martha & The Muffins sample. The video is pretty basic to start off with (arrrrgh not MORE neon bars!) but it (and the song) suddenly steps up at the 2 minute mark, where MPHO finds herself dancing inside a glow-in-the-dark Kerplunk set.

(If you are a cretin and can’t stand Echo Beach there’s a remix that ditches the sample here)

Hannah - Keeping Score.

Oh dear, someone else who didn’t get the Neon memo. You’d think Hannah would be keeping abreast of matters, what with rolling around in all those newspapers. Much as I like her blue gloves, Hannah somehow fails at life here: it’s as if Heidi Sugababe decided to have cosmetic surgery to look more like Linda Robson from Birds Of A Feather. That thought upsets me.

At least we finally found out where Kelis’s big orange arrows went.

Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling.

Joyful indie pop from the BEPs. Yes, I said INDIE. This almost sounds like a Killers track, but with the crucial addition of comraderie and shared good times instead of Brandon Flowers’ desert philospher aloofness.

Meanwhile, what on earth has Fergie got on her dressing table there? Barbie’s ex-communicated cousin, Stripper? I quite like the Shark & Stripes though.

JLS - Beat Again.

It’s been a week of surprises. First Cascada release an RnB single, now an X-Factor runner-up - an X-Factor group, no less - has made a great pop record that will undoubtedly go to #1 as soon as the release date will allow. Other plus points: at least two of them are non-ugly, they can all dance in time with each other, one of them is called Marvin. And there’s a random bicycle in there for no reason.

Though someone should have told them that vertical neon strips have been done to death last year.

Shystie ft DJ Dee Kline - New Style

When her normal baseball-bat-wielding technique doesn’t produce the required results, Shystie instead attempts to impress Lurch from the Addams Family with her terrific harlequin outfits and dayglo face paint. Marvellous stuff. Oh, and yes it is indeed THAT DJ Dee Kline…

This particular youtube vid has some baffling tags attached to it:

Shystie new style Leona Lewis Run George Bush shoe attack N-Dubz Strong Again Alexandra Burke Hallelujah x factor Lily Allen The Fear dj deekline Lil wayne kanye west Orlando Bloom mystery Cool Russian Actor sketch son god russia russian fun video

X Factor, Lily and ‘George Bush Shoe Attack’ I can just about understand drumming up some hits, but ‘Orlando Bloom mystery’? And why all the Russia references? I imagine I’m missing something very obvious here…

Beyonce - Diva

As long as Beyonce has a pop career then I will never run out of stuff to put on this blog - you can always count on Bouncey to take full advantage of the music video format, and it looks like she’s going to repeat what she did on B-Day by making bonkers promos for EVERY song on I Am… Sasha Fierce.

As per ‘Single Ladies’, here we have Beyonce plus two backing dancers (who are in severe danger of becoming her Harajuku Girls). The Robot Hand is all present and correct, as are sunglasses with dangly bits of tinsel instead of lenses, ridiculous shoes, a fan made out of dollar bills and a completely pointless cigar-triggered explosion at the end. Hurray! It’s all much more pleasing to the eye than the boring old video to ‘A Milli’ (the Lil’Wayne track that B has shamelessly ripped off here). Expect more diva madness very soon.

EDIT: Almost forgot about the neon bar! Well done B for shoe-horning that one in there at the last minute.

Katy Perry - Hot N Cold

It’s such a shame that Katy Perry’s music is execrable (verging on turgid), because she makes a great video: