When a video ruins a perfectly good song...

I don't think many would disagree when I say that most products do not live up to their advertising. $4 mascara will not make you look like Eva Longoria, and health food will NEVER taste like chocolate cake. It may sound like a vast consumer conspiracy, but it's necessary to sell products. And smart consumers know to take each sales pitch with a grain of salt. Music videos are, essentially, an advertisement produced to boost album and concert ticket sales. Of course, Michael Jackson transcended this simplified definition with his cinematic masterpieces, but even then, the music videos didn't generate money directly - they supported the other products that did. So, the video should, at the very least, live up to the song they're representing. But there are times when a video actually makes me like a song LESS than I did before viewing it. Tegan and Sara are twins who, against all odds, make mullets look hot. And on top of that seemingly impossible feat, the chicks can rock. Walking With A Ghost, their 2004 single, is so unique it demands to be heard, and the video is actually pretty cool. But then, three years later came Back in Your Head: another ultra-catchy song that is aptly titled, since it's impossible to listen to without it getting stuck in your head for hours. Still, I really liked the song, especially since it's a favorite of my 5-year-old daughter. Then I watched the video. It's really beautiful for the first five seconds, when all you can see is the girls and their music equipment on a colorful stage. Then it cuts to an audience of dudes in white suits, eerily like some kind of futuristic KKK meeting. It kind of goes down hill from there. So which is worse: high hopes for a product that may not measure up, or a high quality product that is sabotaged by its own marketing?

Reverse Sexism

Close your eyes (do it!) and imagine a music video in which an impossibly good-looking guy vandalizes his cheating soon-to-be ex-girlfriend's most prized possession. Oh, let's say it's a cute little Mini Cooper or something. The three-minute montage consists of the guy growling provocatively about how he really got her good, while displaying quick takes of his artful destruction. Kinda sounds like a controlling, abusive, psychotic, right? Yet, this is a pretty fair description of Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" video. It seems that a sexy young woman who commits a crime of avenging passion is not only appealing, but empowering to women whose significant others are unfaithful, and in turn, all women. Okay, it's just for entertainment, I get it. But, really, ladies, is this what feminism has come to? When did becoming the oppressors free us from centuries of oppression? Carrie Underwood is talented, and I wish she'd resisted the tempation to openly condone a radical, vicious feminista attitude. It really doesn't do us any favors in the journey toward respect, which is infinitely more valuable than intimidation tactics.

Appropriate Titles

What's in a band name? Seriously, I don't understand where they come up with some of these names. In some cases, that's by design. In their 20 years of togetherness, Better Than Ezra has refused to disclose the origin of their name. Gotta admit, it's a great marketing strategy. Some bands' titles are peppered with rumors: Green Day allegedly referring to marijuana, and Pearl Jam possibly referencing Eddie Vedder's grandmother and her peyote-laced-jam-making Native American husband...ooookaaay. For some groups, a bizarre name is forgiveable. I'd rather Modest Mouse nixed the rodent, but the music is good enough to make up for the folly. On the other hand, some bands choose titles that are strangely appropriate. If Friday and Just Like Heaven, by The Cure, don't heal you of your pessimism and lack of faith in love (corny as it sounds), I don't know what will. Based on The Cure's model of christening, Plain White T's have indeed chosen the correct identification. Not to say their music is ear-splitting. No, it's much worse: supremely mediocre. Or plain, in their words. I know plenty of kid guitar players who could strum out a Hey There Delilah-esque little ditty in their bedrooms before their parents call them down for dinner. This explains why the aforementioned single was released a year before it went number one. People didn't catch on until they were beat slowly over the head with it for a year, inluding a major re-release. Okay, now I'm sounding Simon Cowellishly brutal, but it's nothing personal, Tom! Still, the question is, why some and not others? Looks like sometimes it's all in the marketing, kids.

At odds

"I ain't got no money / I ain't got no car to take you on a date / I can't even buy you flowers / But together we'd be the perfect soul mates"

The Timbaland lyrics describe a male fantasy present in music, poetry, literature and film: a woman's unconditional love. "Love is all you need," right? Westley (The Princess Bride) and Jack (Titanic), have nothing, but beautiful women fall hard for them regardless, on their charm (and looks) alone. But this seems in conflict with the familiar TLC refrain: "A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly / And is also known as a buster / Always talkin' about what he wants / And just sits on his broke *** / So (no) I don't want your number..." The guys are singing about wanting true love without any strings, while the girls are crooning that they don't want anyone who doesn't have a house, car, etc. Of course, there's a solution here. Guys: get it together. Girls: no gold digging.

British Invasion 3.0

I dare anyone to find something more adorable than Peter Noone singing "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" with his band, Herman's Hermits, on the Ed Sullivan show:



Watching it gets me excited about the next generation of young, brit, floppy-haired hotties who emphasize, rather than mask and overwhelm, their thick accents and vocals. The Kooks' "She Moves in Her Own Way" is reminiscent of the 40-year-old Herman's Hermit's hit, with it's simple, yet unabashedly catchy guitar rhythm, and innocently flattering lyrics: "It's not about your make-up / Or how you try to shape up / To these tiresome paper dreams...I love her because she moves in her own way / She came to my show just to hear about my day." To top it off, the kids (reportedly still in high school when the album Inside In Inside Out was recorded) have the unkempt hair, good looks, and the youthful charm that made all the now-60-year-olds scream four decades ago. To be sure, "Naive" tackles much less innocent subject matter (despite the ironic title), with the music video portraying alchohol addiction, but all the tunes manage to maintain the same great rhythms, and unique vocal sound and enunciation. Peter Bjorn and John's Young Folks, named Apple's 2007 iTunes Song of the Year, also serves up an undeniably retro feel, much more so than other songs on their 2006 album, Writer's Block.

Arctic Monkeys have a decidedly heavier and edgier sound, while still sharing the longish hair, the boyish good looks, and the obvious accent of their musical peers. Hugely popular, with Number One status in the UK, Arctic Monkeys have yet to find their way into the American mass market, which is, to some, a shame considering their talent. Which brings us to the main difference between the two or three rounds of British Invasions: measurable mass appeal. I, myself, can't help but be drawn to the largely unknown.

Androgynous Archetypes

Modeling and music are speckled with figures whose personae simultaneously attract and repulse both genders. David Bowie, Annie Lennox, and more recently Billy Corgan and Imogen Heap appear to consider themselves above gender; both (or neither) sex seems to identify with them. Why the intrigue?

Gender, to most, is the most basic building block of identity and personality development. It is also elementary, even for toddlers, to identify another's gender. But watch Bowie's Life on Mars? video and if you weren't familiar with the forty-year rock legend, you'd have a hard time deciding if the singer is a man or a woman. My fascination with Bowie began as a child, watching the eighties fantasy flick, Labyrinth. Co-starring with a pre-Ron Howardized Jennifer Connelly, Bowie plays Jareth, the evil and seductive goblin king. A perfect part for Bowie, not only because of the singing involved (he wrote original songs for the film), but because it was a role his larger than life persona could fit comfortably into. I thought he was gorgeous - strangely in both a feminine and masculine way, but ultimately appealing to my heterosexual orientation rather than my mere observation of feminine beauty.

But outward appearances are only part of the musically androgynous aspect. Some artists portray a hermaphroditic sound while being easily recognizable in person as belonging to a certain gender. Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups (below, third from left) comes easily to mind as a manly-looking man with an edgy, alternative-sounding tenor voice. Part of the intrigue, upon first hearing Lazy Eye, is wondering whether a guy or a girl is trolling the catchy lament of young infatuation. Especially since the bass player is a girl and sings backup occassionally. And Bowie, on the other hand, sings with a fairly obviously male voice. Imogen Heap and Billy Corgan both look their gender, while singing with lower and higher than usual voices, respectively.



Many times when hearing a new artist or band for the first time, there's no visual to go with the sound. So after you've done some detective work on Google or MySpace to find out the sex of this new voice, and the initial intrigue of the unknown is gone, what draws you back to that sound?

At least part of it has got to be the mere strangeness of it. Most people we meet are easily distiguishable as male or female, and exploring the otherness is tantalizing. And what wider appeal can an artist have than to have the ability to identify to both genders? Of course, by pushing traditional boundaries and making what many would say a mockery of a basic God-given assignment, they'll also repulse many. A minority of people will identify with transgender-esque figures who mirror their own gender identity confusion, but this is surely the exception rather than the rule, and the aforementioned artists have managed to gain and hold widespread appeal.

So, maybe it's solely the abnormality that attracts us. Rock and roll, is after all the soundtrack for the off-kilter. And Bowie, in my mind, is after all the godfather of alternative rock.