The Vids Are Alright

Sleigh Bells - Infinity Guitars.

Let me start by saying I absolutely love this song and the album it comes from.

Which makes this video all the more HORRENDOUS. Let me explain: part of the reason I like Sleigh Bells is due to the overdubbed female vocals. The fact that the singer used to be in a teenpop group only adds to the awesome playground clapping song charm of it. When I listen to the track it puts me in mind of a small army of gum-chewing schoolgirls who may seem innocent at first, but the immense CRUNCH of guitar shows they have a nasty bite and are not about to take any shit off YOU, Mr Grown-up. The sudden loud feedback is perfect for a scene of tower block demolition/universe creation/batshit skipping choreography/everyone suddenly turning into a vampire/whatever. It’s a big reveal — IMHO the whole song relies on it, and I was very much looking forward to what the video director would choose to accompany it.

With this in mind, my problems with the video are thus:
- I am reminded that there is only one of Alexis
- she is not dressed like a T-1000 or similar arse-kicking device/character
- she is walking too slowly and doesn’t actually go anywhere or do anything apart from take her jacket off
- she does not hit anything with the baseball bat but CHUCKS IT AWAY
- the dude with the guitar joins her but no-one else does, so there is a big empty street behind them failing to be full of gum-chewing schoolgirls hell bent on revenging their murdered Geography teacher (or equivalent)
- a sofa is set on fire before the Big Reveal but that’s it. I would prefer to have either everything on fire or nothing on fire until the end. Doing things in half measures lessens the impact. ARGH.
- The first part of the Big Reveal involves some cheerleaders STANDING ABOUT. They would have been better used in the first half where there is actual stompy cheery clapping to do some cheering to. Have Sleigh Bells never watched Bring It On? Cheerleaders are often talented gymnasts! Why are you not taking advantage of this with some perky, cute & popular-to-boot BACKFLIPS? Or if that’s too much then at least some EVIL cheerleaders who smoke cigarettes and ride motorbikes?
- The second part of the Big Reveal is Alexis and Guitar Dude watching a small pile of guitars be on fire. This is not Infinity Guitars! This is INFLAMMABLE GUITARS. No explosions. No earthquakes. Not even a zombie attack. Just a sad little bonfire of approximately seven guitars. FFS dudes, I know you’re probably on a budget but I could generate a higher number of guitars with the free editing software that came with my four-year-old laptop. I am very disappointed in this video and *shudder* I think I like the song less every time I watch it. SAD. FACE.

Olly Murs - Please Don’t Let Me Go.

Olly ‘the Will Young that came second’ Murs has gone on a summer holiday (complete with double decker bus) to some posh seat in the country where a bunch of glamorous people are having a shindig. It is unaccountably rubbish and thus a prime candidate for TVAA’s Video Improvement Clinic!

• The video gets off to a bad start by not actually showing Olly driving the bus: why have him rock up on a scooter when he could have some dodgy blue-screen scenery whizzing past him?
• The mansion does not appear to be haunted in any way: a few ghosts would sort that out (or perhaps one of Olly’s chums with a sheet over their head playing a hilarious joke on him)
• We briefly see a lass on a rocking horse: multiply this by five and you have ROCKING HORSE BACKING DANCERS i.e. awesome times.
• For a countryside party full of posh people there is hardly any TWEED or PIPE SMOKING or CROQUET taking place. This leads me to believe that the attendees are not in fact posh but are squatters who have overrun the mansion for an illegal rave of some sort. Therefore I would like to see this confirmed by having Olly and his mates being chased off the grounds by a SWAT team, fleeing into the woods lest the rozzers find the half-smoked joint they’ve hurriedly hidden in their sock.
• Or at the very least have the Jenny Love-Hewitt lookalike tear off her mask and reveal the gruesome zombie corpse beneath.

That’s plenty to be getting on with. Let’s hope Olly takes this constructive criticism on board for single number 2!

Christina Aguilera - Not Myself Tonight.

Blimey. Xtina has gone full-on srs bondage - think ‘Human Nature’ but without any ballet, chihuahuas or Madge crossing her eyes to lighten the mood. Probably not one to watch if your boss/mum/The Queen is looking over your shoulder.

Alas if black gloss body paint and diamante ball-gags aren’t really your thing, there won’t be much of interest for you in this video (though the brief nod to ‘Dirrty’ at 1.38-1.44 is a nice touch). I wish we could have seen more of the middle-8 sequence where Xtina is playing some sort of latex Sherlock Holmes investigating the effect of lighter fuel when applied to a wardrobe full of PVC clobber (ans: the smell of Reading Festival on Sunday night when the portaloos have been set on fire), but no, it’s all gimp masks and stained-glass windows and perfume product placement that would put Britney to shame. I think I even liked this half-arsed 20p comic strip better.

Kelis - Acapella.

I’ve never been that keen on videos that make people’s eyes look weird (cf Sugababes’ ‘Change’ where Keisha’s hayfever must have been running riot). Here Kelis has employed a range of icky eyewear options including a rhinestone mask (that she seems to be awkwardly craning her neck from side to side in order to see out of), white make-up that makes her look like she’s squinting, marker-pen that will be a nightmare to get off etc. I am reaching for the Claritin as we speak.

The whole Tribal theme is a bit uncomfortable, especially the ‘reveal’ at the end - hate to say it dude, you are not really a convincing Earth Mother. A few clever shots aside this really seems half-cooked - Nicki Minaj’s marine troops were a much better use of jungle environs! Living in an organic yurt with your two husky dogs is all very well and good but in future Kelis needs to remember to put the electric candles away before the visitors turn up. And then there’s the black backdrop with pollen blowing everywhere in which Kelis may as well be lying on her back doing pedalling exercises to strengthen her pelvic floor. And skip to 2.47 for the worst cgi desert ever - you can actually see the blurry line where someone’s had to Photoshop out the edge of the blue screen curtain. Shame, because the song’s not bad.

Get Far ft H-Boogie - The Radio.

What the hell is this? Someone has done a bagpipe-bosh track that is Not Good? Impossible! You know, someone really needs to properly bosh up Shoots And Ladders. Nick-nack paddy-wack BOSH BOSH BOSH! [does Fatboy Slim effect] Mary had a little l-l-l-l-l-l-amb-amb-amb-amb-amb-amb.

Anyway back to matters at hand. This video contains Forest Nymphs in daft outfits doing rhythmic gymnastics and taking turns to blowing Susan’s magic horn (hur hur hur). However the only powerful force they are summoning is MY SCORN. Mr Tumnus accompanies them with his trendy black Macbook.

Sabrina Washington - OMG.

OMG indeed: this track samples ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’! Unfortunately the video is a big old bag of arse, sorry Sabrina. The only good element is the telephone covered in hundreds & thousands right at the beginning. No-one wants or needs to see a female Kiss tribute act being held on dog-chains, or a vom-coloured dress with fake nipples. And what the hell is that thing on your FACE, Sabrina? Lady Gaga can only get away with that sort of facial adornment because she would look utterly non-descript without it. Sabrina looks like she’s had a nasty eye injury and only the pirate doctor was available for bandaging duties.

Girls Can’t Catch - Echo.

From Stigs of the Dump to Vera Lynn! GCC have set up their own seizure-inducing lighthouse on the White Cliffs of Dover. I assume this is some sort of pun on ‘Echo’ » ‘Sonar’ but someone really needs to let them know that sonar is done with SOUND and lighthouses produce LIGHT. That’s GCSE Science basic level. If they stick three megaphones together and warble through them then they might be heard by a dude walking his dog on the beach in Calais, but I’d wager he’d probably prefer Dolly Rockers.

(Remix linked to here for embedding purposes - you’re not missing much)

So Solid ft Mega, Lisa Maffia & Romeo - Since You Went Away.

The latest scientific research has revealed that rising sea levels are not in fact due to global warming but due to the OCEAN OF TEARS wept by all mourning the final passing of UK Garage. The best combined efforts of N-Dubz, Tinchy etc to valiantly yank out the nails from the coffin cannot make a dent in this dreadful tolling death-knell of a track.

Leeeeee-sa (Maffia!) and the other two have been exhumed for a non-league basketball game accompanied by a pointless tinkle-hop track and two ‘commentators’ whose tumbleweed-inducing banter will have anyone who has a sentimental thing about SSC sobbing into their hands.

Britney Spears - 3.

Here’s the mostly-rubbish video for Britters’ Greatest Hits plugger (and here’s another link if the one above disappears). It’s rubbish because:

1. NEON TUBES arrrrhghahgahghrhgh
2. Pole-dancing where the pole is horizontal and a bit too high above your head = FAIL. Also the tragic memory of Brit’s previous disastrous attempt at pole-dancing is still too fresh (you all know which one I mean - I shall not link to it here so we can all forget about it).
3. Monochrome minimal post-‘Single Ladies’ backdrop yawwwwwn
4. One of the female dancers grabs Britney’s bum in a really weird fashion - it’s kind of uncomfortable to watch and I don’t exactly know why
5. The radio edit bleeps ‘sin’ and replaces it with ‘bliss’. I know ‘thing’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘sin’ either but ‘bliss’ DEFINITELY does not rhyme with ‘thing’ even in a squashed flat vocal.
6. Britney has flogged at least eight different perfumes but to my knowledge this is the first one that has required product placement in one of her videos.

It’s only mostly rubbish because:

1. At 2.59 she does her ‘dividing 3597 by 236’ face! I haven’t seen that face for at least four years.
2. Her tiny smile at 3.03 just kills me dead. I love you Britney.