I’ve spent the past few weeks scouring Youtube for the best of the worst/dumbest/unintentionally dorky/silly music videos out there. This is what I came up with… (No Rickrolls, I promise)
10. “Dancing In The Dark” by Bruce Springsteen. A young Bruce Springsteen with bad hair, silly-ly tight clothes, and some very unfortunate dance moves teams up with an even younger Courtney Cox to give both of their careers a big boost. What can make this even better? The sheer dated-ness of the song, and the random shots of a young, be-jewfro-ed Max Weinberg and a young Clarence Clemons clapping his hands and doing something (rocking out?).
9. “Come Dancing” by The Kinks. An already silly song with its dance-hall horns is made utterly preposterous by the addition of a kid pretending to be a young Ray Davies and plays “guitar” on a tennis racket. Loses utter preposterous-isity points because the video acts out the song and (mostly) everything makes sense within that context.
8. “Fight For Your Right To Party” by Beastie Boys. Three nerds (complete with taped-up glasses) decide to throw a party… What can go wrong? Well, the Beastie Boys show up committing acts of arson, theft, and various types of assault. Then the party gets even further derailed when the Beastie Boys start a (gasp!) Stooges-esque pie fight. Just the sheer over-the-top-ness of it. Oh the humanity!
7. “Long Road To Ruin” by Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl is like the real version of that Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” guy. He’s a rock star who’s been in a ton of bands, he piloted a plane (Learn to Fly music video), he got the autograph of one of the members of Foo Fighters (also in the Learn to Fly music video), he was a poster-boy for Footos (Big Me music video), and he even has facial hair. What can he do to top all of that? Bad wigs, a porn star stache, a fake soap opera, lots of crying, a Hard Day’s Night-esque scene of him getting chased by fans, and “The Davy Grolton Band” …all in one music video. Yes, “Long Road To Ruin” has it all, in epically ridiculous amounts.
6. “Parklife” by Blur. Damon Albarn is a dork. ‘Nuff said. Also, the members of Blur reenacting the cover of “Abbey Road” and dancing with ice cream. Absolutely silly.
5. “A Cause Des Garcons” by Yelle. I have no idea what she’s saying, but upbeat French electro-rap is always fun, and can only be made better with copious amounts of ridiculosity. Ridiculosity here appears in the form of Yelle dancing around a cartoony version of her room, and whenever she touches an object, it turns into a silly dancing French man dressed up as a large cartoony version of whatever object she needs.
4. “Alfie” by Lily Allen. Another video set in a cartoon world, except that Alfie (Allen’s brother) is played by a rather creepy-looking stoned puppet that throughout the course of the video flips off some birds, defaces stuff, moons the camera, hits Lily, erm… plays with some pictures of Barbie dolls, and it’s even implied that he smokes pot. A must see for the whole family.
3. “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash. A classic. What happens when a Muslim, a Hasidic Jew, and an armadillo take a road trip across Texas? I don’t know, but probably something like this video, but you know, a bit more straight-forward, and logical.
2. “Help!” by The Beatles. Okay, so the movie “Help!” isn’t a music video in the traditional sense, but it has music and the band frolicking around and no real plot. Still good though. I mean, it’s The Beatles. You just can’t do better than that. Well, you can’t do much better than that.
1. “Shiny Happy People” by R.E.M. How exactly do you make a music video out of a song that isn’t too good and doesn’t mean anything? By featuring an old man on a stationary bicycle, a very dorky dance routine done by a lot of people, and Michael Stipe’s mustard-yellow suit (including backwards mustard-yellow baseball cap). Also worth watching: “Shiny Happy Monsters.” It’s the same thing, but with slightly different lyrics and Muppets, including a puppet version of Kate Pierson.
Honourable Mentions:
Best FAIL: “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan, at approx. 1:17. Truly a great music video.
Best use of stupid camera tricks: “Can’t Stop Feeling” by Franz Ferdinand. Also because it features Alex Kapranos.
Video makes more sense than the song: “Mexican Radio” by Wall of Voodoo. “I wish I was in Tijuana/Eating barbecued iguana” …What?
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