Repost from 2015 Hip-hop singer Frank Ocean is well-known to march to the beat of a different drummer, and nowhere is that more apparent than in We All Try, a lovely and plaintive existential humanist[…]
Category: Music Videos
That Random Minor Note, Part I: Janelle Monae
In her excellent new song, “I Like That,” multi-talented singer and former android Janelle Monae refers to herself as the random minor note you hear in major songs. A commentator on Genius interpreted this as[…]
Django Jane’s African Beat
Perhaps to showcase her many sides, the incomparable Janelle Monae released two very different songs/videos in advance of her hotly anticipated new album, Dirty Computer. A few weeks ago I showcased her funky, bubbly, sex-drenched[…]
Reconstructivist Art: Smooth Criminal
In honor of Michael Jackson’s birthday this week, please enjoy this essay about his song, Smooth Criminal, considered as an exemplar of Reconstructivist Art. Michael Jackson’s hit single Smooth Criminal is an object lesson in[…]
Hold up! (They don’t love you like I love you)
Beyoncé’s greatest strength, it seems to me, is that (in contrast to her husband Jay-Z) she’s not a natural or intuitive talent, but rather a dedicated and ambitious professional whose craft has been carefully and[…]
A Prince Among Men
As with so much of the art that has had the most impact on me, it took me a while to warm up to Prince. I was still a kid during the “Purple Rain” era,[…]
8 Great Dance Videos
This week I present a highly subjective showcase of eight classic music videos where the dancing makes up a major part of the appeal: 8. “Uptown Funk” – Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars The funky[…]
The Dancing Dead
If there’s one pop culture obsession I truly hate, it’s zombies. I fail entirely to see the appeal of these grotesque, rotting corpses, reanimated into some blasphemous parody of life. The same goes for vampires,[…]
Don’t Shoot – Original Music Video
Part II – Birth of a Protest Song I already spoke about what this video means, and why I think it’s meaningful/valuable, over at my friend Katelin’s blog (on race and religion) By Their Strange[…]
Original Music – The Drunken Drive Remixes
PART I – Good Times Music has always been a passion for me, but for most of my life I didn’t feel it met the grandness of purpose I foresaw for myself, so I let[…]