The 5 Best Videos Of The Week
We are now about halfway into 2019, and nobody has made a better music video than the one for Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” I honestly don’t think anyone will. This week’s picks are below.
5. Ed Sheeran – “Cross Me” (Feat. Chance The Rapper & PnB Rock) (Dir. Ryan Staake)
I love the idea that it was easier to build a freaky CGI dreamworld than it was to teach Ed Sheeran to dance.
4. Jamila Woods – “Baldwin” (Dir. Vincent Martell)
We could probably do without the outro where a bunch of kids describe all their ideal schools, thus spelling out the whole idea of this video a little too obviously. But this vision of Black Hogwarts is a beautiful thing.
3. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – “Organ Farmer” (Dir. John Angus Stewart)
The Lizard Wizard have to be our most convincingly unhinged rock ‘n’ roll maniacs since… what? The Butthole Surfers? God bless.
2. Cardi B – “Press” (Dir. Jora Frantzis)
It’s always smart when pop stars find ways to address their own public personas in their music videos. Like when Taylor Swift and Katy Perry spend a few years lightly beefing and then make friends in a video! Nice! Or when Cardi B is on trial for a strip-club fight, and there are rumors that it’s over her husband cheating on her, and then Cardi has a music video where a dude cheats on her and she naked-murders scores of models and then drowns someone in a prison toilet! Also nice!
1. Thom Yorke – ANIMA (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
This is where I throw my hands up and admit that I have no idea what counts as a music video anymore and what does not. This one uses basic music-video visual language, so I think it counts. And no, it’s probably not fair to compare a presumably Netflix-funded hallucinatory 15-minute dance recital from one of our great living directors to the shit that everybody else throws up on YouTube. But life’s not fair. (The teaser is below; if you’re signed into Netflix, you can watch the whole thing here.)