The 5 Best Videos Of The Week
Last week was Thanksgiving, and I don’t write this list during Thanksgiving weekend — partly because people aren’t sitting around their computers that Friday, and partly because just about nobody releases good videos that week. Or, in any case, that’s usually the case. But last week, there were actually plenty of good videos, and there were more this week. That means we get an all-killer, no-filler week, where even the #5 video is pretty great. It’s almost enough to convince me that I should only be writing these things every two weeks. This week’s list is below.
5. Justice – “Fire” (Dir. Pascal Teixeira)
I feel some type of way about the Orioles jacket in this video, largely because I feel like you shouldn’t be wearing O’s shit unless you have strong and sentimental feelings about Boog Powell or Eddie Murray — feelings that I’m guessing a French dance producer does not have. But the Orioles do have the best graphic design in Major League Baseball, so I’ll allow it. In any case, this is basically a Whitesnake video, with Justice standing in for Whitesnake and hot as fuck 70-year-old Susan Sarandon standing in for Tawny Kitaen, which is a great idea executed beautifully.
4. Ab-Soul – “Braille” (Feat. Bas) (Dir. PANAMÆRA)
Apparently, all you have to do is go up on a rooftop and tilt the camera a little bit, and Paris starts to look like an alien landscape.
3. Somewhere Else – “Move Together” (Feat. Magid Jordan) (NSFW) (Dir. Helmi)
For some reason, a cool thing for music-video directors to do this year is to turn makeout sessions into surreal nightmare visions that short-circuit brains. I don’t know why this would work, but it does, every single time.
2. Gucci Mane – “Last Time” (Feat. Travis Scott) (Dir. David M. Helman)
The snow! The night vision! The Repo Man car! The fire! Harmony Korine smoking cigars and dancing! It’s all just so beautiful.
1. OK Go – “The One Moment” (Dir. Damian Kulash)
At this point, it’s pretty easy to argue that OK Go are a band second and a viral-video production unit first. But when those videos are this intricately orchestrated and grandly pointless, that feels less like a legitimate gripe and more like a quibble. And there’s a strange, uncanny beauty to this, and to the idea that anyone would even attempt it, let alone pull it off.