Music Videos...

In the wake of Michael Jackson's death, I was going to discuss what has happened to music videos and why it appears that they're dying when all of the sudden, really good music videos have recently emerged.

Music videos used to make or break an artist. Throughout the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, many were these flashy productions that normally cost endless amounts of money.

Nowadays, the event that used to be the music video is not anymore. Many videos nowadays are simply performance videos. I want to go back to a time when music videos were creative and groundbreaking all of the time.

That being said, there are three videos that I've seen recently that still give me hope that music videos are still alive and well.

Seether's Careless Whisper (directed by Tony Petrossian)-Tony Petrossian is one of my favorite directors currently. He's directed videos such as Stone Sour's Through Glass, Rise Against's Prayer of the Refugee, and Serj Tankian's Empty Walls. He may be very political, but the way that he's done it is always creative. In this particular case, he uses the 80s and tries to tie it in with what's going on in the world today through an Atari-esque video game featuring the band.

Framing Hanley's Hear Me Now (directed by Mason Dixon)-Mason Dixon has directed all of Framing Hanley's music videos and this is the second version of Hear Me Now. I like that this video takes more of a literal approach to the first one. It's dark, but very sexy. You could say that this video's built for sin (HA!). Jimmy Swaggart never sinned this badly.

Alice in Chains' A Looking in View (directed by Stephen Schuster)-Easily my favorite video of the year thus far and it has nothing to do with the nudity. This conjures up bad memories of the Tool videos I watched when I was younger. Except, whereas those videos were more sublime, there was a realness that made this particular video more disturbing. It kind of reminded me of the movie Requiem for a Dream. There was simulated child abuse, simulated rape, an implied suicide attempt, and a simulated drowning all within seven minutes. As crazy as it may sound, this is what music videos are all about. That video set the tone of the song and vice versa. I guarantee you won't be seeing that video anywhere near television anytime soon.