Lotta good clips released last year, but one stands HEAD AND SHOULDERS above the rest, in my opinion, especially considering America’s sorry track record vis-a-vis race relations this past year:
I’ve never heard of any of these songs or artists - *you don’t listen to top 40 do you- and I must say I can see why you like them. I don’t quite get what is so special about the Letterman performance clip though. I liked the song well enough, but not sure what you think is so outstanding about the performance. Is it just your favorite band, or is the song significant to you or what? Not being snarky; I’m truly interested.
Two that stood out to me, since I like a good dance video: Bailando, with its wonderful West-Side-Story dance-off between flamenco dancers and street dancers, including some awesome soccer hijinks from the street side. Chandelier, for its extremely talented and extremely creepy starring dancer. Casting such a young kid in the main role is very effective in making the dance disturbing and heartbreaking, but I’m not sure I think it’s a good idea, although I’m not in any way ready to defend my suspicions about its wisdom.
I was going to name “Queen” by Perfume Genius as well but since the OP has already mentioned that, I will offer “Turn Down for What” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon as runner-up. It works even without music.
I wouldn’t call it an explicit video, but it does have scenes of an Asian man’s (clothed) erection, (clothed) boobs that balloon out, and a cop that motorboats into those (clothed) boobs so I will put the link in a spoiler box.
What I love about the clip is both Samuel T. Herring just giving the performance his, like, all of alls, and Letterman’s giddy reaction to the whole thing after, like it’s 1987 and he’s just been handed the keys to his dad’s shiny new Pontiac Fiero (or some such) and told that he can do all the damn donuts he feels like doing. But mostly it’s Samuel T. Herring, his anti- rock star look, and his absolute, one hundred percent commitment to selling his song (and, face it, it’s an excellent song to begin with).
