Animated Music Videos

When I was growing up, my family didn't have MTV. So I was left out when my friends had discussions about the new video for "Buddy Holly" or Stone Temple Pilots' performance on Unplugged. Sometimes I asked my parents if we could visit Grandma's house - to see Grandma, yes, but also because Grandma had cable. Once there, I would allow her to engage me in a five-minute conversation before scampering off into the guest bedroom to see what was on MTV. This led to an immortal exchange between my grandmother's husband and me about the video I happened to be watching on MTV: Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance." This is the video, you'll recall, in which Petty takes home a dead corpse (Kim Basinger) so he can dance with her. I remember being rapt with the combination of catchy melody and quasi-necrophiliac story that seemed more than a little taboo to my twelve-year-old self. So I was a bit uncomfortable when Bob sat down next to me on the couch, apparently for a five-minute glimpse into adolescent pop culture. At the end, when dead Kim Basinger's eyes open, he grumbled, "Now what the hell was all that about??" and stormed out of the room.

I know that videos really came out in the early 80's, but I really think they reached their peak during my generation - specifically during the early 90's. I feel this way even if my lack of MTV left me out of the conversation at the time. One of the greatest perks of Youtube is that it is basically like having classic MTV On Demand. In 1993, I probably would have had to wait through the entire top ten countdown, plus four commercial breaks, in order to see Alicia Silverstone in Aerosmith's video for "Cryin'." (assuming that I was at Grandma's, or somewhere else that had MTV, to begin with.) Now I can just type in a few letters and see it instantly. Twelve year old me would be dumbfounded.

Maybe at some point I'll do a top ten list of my all-time favorite videos. Those would be pretty tough to come up with off the top of my head though. For the time being, I'll narrow it down to my...

Top Ten favorite ANIMATED Music Videos

1.) "My Girls" - Animal Collective

Ok, there is some quasi live action stuff going on here. But mostly it is just psychedelic amoebas and a giant glowing cube, swimming in time with the keyboards and Beach Boy harmonies. This is a song I could listen to for twenty hours on repeat anyway - with the visuals, it's like being in another dimension.

2.) "My Old Ways" - Dr. Dog

Without the video, this is a pretty little Beatles-esque tune with some surprising modulations at the chorus. It's incredibly catchy: "I don't ever wanna go back/To my o-o-o-o-o-o-old ways again." What were the old ways the singer doesn't want to go back to? As it turns out, cartoonish jewel heisting! We get the whole story in this video, in which a gang of lovable jailbirds sing and dance and tap for your entertainment. For some reason, this reminds me of "O Brother Where Art Thou?" Is it because one of them kind of looks like George Clooney?

3.) "King Rat" - Modest Mouse

This is Modest Mouse at their creepiest and dirtiest - a frantic blues shuffle with some rowdy New Orleans horns and banjo played so hard it sounds like it's about to break. Sounds like the perfect vehicle for a profoundly disturbing animation about the evils of the whaling industry - directed by, of all people, Heath Ledger - doesn't it? In the end, I'm not sure what the video means. (Is this depiction of sadistic whales supposed to arouse our sympathy for them?) But I do know that it's rare for a song and a video to simultaneously make you uncomfortable and make you want to dance.

4.) "Paranoid Android" - Radiohead

When I was 16, everyone told me that Radiohead were a bunch of geniuses and that "Paranoid Android" was a masterpiece, so I guess I thought so too. On listening to it again for the first time in many years, it seems that sometimes the crowd is worth listening to. This song moves seamlessly between styles - meditative, rockin' and at the bridge (I guess), downright mournful. It's my generation's "Aqualung" - except that I like it more. The video was done in that sort of crude Beavis and Butthead, Dr. Katz style - which is probably best because if it were any more realistic, those severed limbs would be awfully disturbing.

5.) "Clint Eastwood" - Gorillaz

Gorillaz was The Beatles of the animated music video genre - case closed. Their concerts feature a giant screen of the band members' animated avatars - displayed in front of where the band is actually playing. And these alter egos have so much personality that no one even seems to mind. "Clint Eastwood" wins the award for Song Most Improved by Animated Music Video - not that the song was bad before. But there is just something about the new giant blue version of Deltron, which enters by floating over the band and bears its four teeth as it raps, that cannot be captured in the song by itself.

6.) "Take on Me" - A-Ha

I was born too late to really claim this song and its accompanying video as my own. But let's face it - it probably did for animated videos what "Thriller" did for regular music videos, which means it deserves to be included on this list. I'm guessing you've all seen this video and know the story:  A woman sits in a coffee house reading a comic book about some kind of motorcycle race. The winner of this race (incidentally, A-Ha's lead singer) winks at the women through the page of the comic book. His hand comes out of the comic book and pulls the woman into an animated world. Girl and comic motorcyclist dance with each other for a little while, sometimes in comic version and sometimes as real humans. The waitress at the coffee house comes back for the bill, only to find the woman is nowhere to be seen. She crumples up the magazine. Something else happens with some sinister looking guys and motorcycles. Some other things happen. The video ends with the hero escaping from the comic book, running away with the heroine and living, presumably, happily ever after. There is no need to recount all of the details of this little story in order to make the point that it is highly innovative. It is also the perfect marriage of animation to music. I have no idea what the song "Take on Me" is really about and until now, I hadn't bothered to think much about what the music video was truly about either. But I know that this video is bigger than the sum of its parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

7.) "One More Time" - Daft Punk

I don't really love this song. I think that at some point in my life, it must have been the soundtrack to someone spilling a drink on me in a crowded club. In fact, I think I have been classically conditioned to flinch and guard my beer whenever I hear it - even if I'm not holding a beer. Then again, I never heard this song played by blue aliens at a rock concert on another planet. If I had, I might have been as happy as, say, the little alien girl with no eyes, merrily clapping her hands to the rhythm at 55 seconds in.

8.) "Do the Evolution" - Pearl Jam

Well, it's not Even Flow or Animal or even Corduroy, but the song isn't bad. And this sometimes disturbing, always entertaining four-minute tour of (mostly) human evolution, warfare and eventual apocalypse would be entertaining even without the sound on. Highlights include the whole ape sequence (25 seconds), "Superman" Caveman (40 seconds), and the birth machine and assembly line (3:09).

9.) "Heartless" - Kanye West

Again, I'm giving the video more weight than the song - not that I hate hip-hop or Kanye - just that I prefer to listen see other things (see items 1-5 on this list). Still, an animated rap video is pretty damn innovative. Most rappers want to show how hard they are, how street they are, how much bling the have, how many females they can get. Cartoons are decidedly un-hard and un-street, but somehow Kanye makes himself look like a bad-ass anyway.

10.) "Roller Coaster of Love" - RHCP

This video is just fun. Red Hot Chili Peppers are fun (when Anthony Keidis isn't singing about whatever happened back on "that day" in the City of Angels.) Beavis and Butthead are always fun - unconditionally - and probably even more so now that they aren't on tv regularly. Mostly, this is a fun video because it just reminds me of the 90's and of high school - only the best parts of both. Also, that heart loop-de-loop (2:49) is pretty ridiculous. I'm not sure how that works - unless you're Flea on roller-skates.