Coeur De Pirate featuring Allan Kingdom “I Don’t Want to Break Your Heart”
Gordon Gano has been known to croon “Breaking up is hard to do”. That’s quite an understatement. The video for “I Don’t Want to Break Your Heart” by Coeur De Pirate and Allan Kingdom demonstrates that it might be easy after all. Couer De Pirate plays the female of the couple. And she’s off on her own, working to get further away from Allan. She’s in his white BMW which breaks down. She’s on a beach by a fire. She’s walking through fog. She’s moving her way through an escalator into a parking garage. The whole while she feels she’s doing the right thing because she doesn’t want to break his heart. I am particularly drawn to the vehicle in this video. The white BMW, as I’ve already stated, breaks down at the beginning as Coeur (for short) has driven the hell out of it. Later we see Allan leaning against it rapping. It’s him showing he wants the car, and she has clearly no desire to keep going so she drives the relationship to breakdown.
Tiggs Da Author featuring Lady Leshurr “Run”
Apparantly it was Menander who first quipped “he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day.” That being said, it’s often seen as a sign of weakness to do so. It generally garners being called “pussy”, which strangely is also a slang term for vagina. Yet Tiggs Da Author looks at running in a different light. He opens his song “Run” with the lyrics “I run away from fighting/ but it made me stronger/ You can call me pussy/ Pussy is power”. I’m unsure if he’s calling to female strength here, but it’s nice to see a man taking a different route at defining his own masculinity. The track also features some strong lyrics by Lady Leshurr. The video for “Run” doesn’t feature much running. Rather, it has a lot of bright and vibrant colors, something always missing from New England winters. It also features Tiggs and his buddies hanging out of moving cars. I have to hand it to their ability, and lack of fear, when it comes to hanging out of moving cars. My favorite spot has to be driver hanging out of the driver’s side door putting his feet up against the car, holding onto the open door, face up literally inches above the ground. Amazing.
La Sera “High Notes”
La Sera’s video for “High Notes” is like an episode of The Howdy Doody Show meets The Twilight Zone. You take your run of the mill country variety show with a band performing, and throw in aliens, vampires, the creature from the black lagoon, and others and let it turn into a The Walking Dead free-for-all. Nary a soul makes it out alive, though La Sera front woman Katy Goodman does. It also turns out that she has he power to hypnotize with her eyes. I’m not going to lie here, it’s pretty easy for a redhead to hypnotize me. I can assure, though, that’s not the reason this video made the Rewind.
The Chemical Brothers featuring Beck “Wide Open”
For those of you who have been around a baby recently, you know one of the popular line of toys for them is the Oball . This is important for my description of The Chemical Brothers and Beck’s video for their song “Wide Open”. We start with a female dancer in an empty warehouse. There is a mirror leaning against one wall, and that factors in as well. As the dancer begins her routine and the song progresses, her limbs become hollow and formed out of that Oball material. First one arm, then a leg. Soon the other leg, and the other arm. Her head is turned into Oball as well. She dances like this and it’s pretty interesting to see a person like this moving around, being able to see through all the holes. It’s extremely neat to see her dance like this in the mirror. No worries, though, as she is her whole self when the video ends.
Massive Attack featuring Tricky and 3D “Take It There”
Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” compares a father’s drunken abuse to a dance spurred on by the music of liquor and anger. John Hawkes’ performance as a drunk man wandering the night in the video for “Take It There” by Massive Attack featuring Tricky and 3D reminds me of Roethke’s poem. It could be the fact that there are moments where John’s stumbles are supported by a group of background dancers. The entire scene in the empty pool particularly gives this a performance piece feel. It’s where the most life in the video comes from as the look on John’s face goes from stupor to rage to self loathing. No one is abused in this video, but one could certainly see John’s character make his way home, rough up his son on the way to putting him to bed, all the while his wife watches helpless.
