The desert seems like an unlikely choice for a song about everything; consumption, chaos, speed, glut, and overstimulation. But it serves here as a kind of primal scene for America, but in reverse. The detritus, the laboratory, and the canvas. Everywhere you go there are signs that bear the same omen: E.N. It's a logo, a joke, and the psychic condition of billions.
Read MoreVideo of the Week: The Strokes/ Threat of Joy
Julian always seemed to me like a the narrator from a post-modern novel; he's looking around at a chaotic cityscape which is vulgar, commercial, fractured, and undecipherable, and isn't sure how or even if he feels about.
Read MoreVideo of the Week: Charli XCX/ Vroom Vroom
Models and cyborgs are intimidating to us because of their physical perfection and their access to power. But models grow older - despite the efforts of surgery, UV absorbers, and probiotics - cyborgs don't. Vroom Vroom is an apocalyptic vision; what if the cool kids never grew up?
Read MoreVideo of the Week: Gwen Stefani/ Make Me Like You
The circle in Make Me Like You recalls the circling, vulture-like mobility of the paparazzi. Gwen moves within an enclosed spiral, a space that can only point inward towards an disembodied watchman. That Gwen seems joyful in this video speaks to her ability, in her personal life, to cope with extraordinary circumstance.
Read MoreVideo of the Week: Grimes/ Kill V. Maim
Her hair was spiked up with Elmer’s glue that she kept under our bathroom sink next to nail polish (black, white, chrome), maxi pads, and unused perfume samples from the mall.
Read MoreVideo of the Week: Drake/ Hotline Bling
He’s dressed more like he’s going out less, sleeping on his dance coach’s butt like it’s a pillow, making faces I thought only I made when I do karaoke. Or yawn.
Read MoreVideo of the Week: Sonic Youth/ Kool Thing
She asks to play with his radio and unties a pair of sneakers with her teeth. Kim's lyrics are exaggerations of girlish longing and obsession and here she casts herself as both the go go dancer that got to speak and the horny fangirl lusting after a too cool black boy.
Read MoreVideo of the Week II: Lana Del Rey/ High by the Beach
The kitchen is empty, save for a tabloid with our girl on the cover (someone’s seen Britney’s Lucky Video one too many times). Except Lucky wasn’t ever allowed to say high or do drugs or admit that she had her own feelings. When she was first caught with a cigarette on a balcony in April 2002 she was in a whirlwind of shit with news media and fans alike.
Read MoreVideo of the Week: Lana Del Rey/ High by the Beach
High by the Beach is part self-fulfilling prophecy, part revenge fantasy. Featuring her new getaway in the video gives her a unique kind of power: no need to worry about people selling blurry pictures of her home to TMZ, she’s hosting an exclusive housewarming herself, and everyone’s invited—though not everyone may stay.
Read MoreVideo of the Week: Joanna Newsom/ Sapokanikan
Video of the Week: Selena Gomez/ Good for You
But Good for You is unmistakably about Selena’s pleasure: she is alone and in every single frame, she mumbles her delivery like there isn't anyone to hear it, she sings about wearing her hair up and a skintight dress while wearing an oversized white t-shirt and her hair down.
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