And
I hope it does!
About
two years ago I had a spell of listening to pop music, and I really came away
hating One Direction. I also came away realizing that they are important to
many people I care about, and that can be okay, so I usually don't say
anything.
I
still hate them so much. I know it goes past logic. Just being in the mall once
I caught the beginning of "Kiss You" and was filled with rage at them
pretending they were even capable of riding motorcycles; I did not feel this
way about the Go-Go's pretending to water ski in "Vacation".
In
July 2013 my Twitter timeline was full of exclamations and gushing about One
Direction's new release, "Best Song Ever". Not only were teens
gushing in their own tweets, they were re-tweeting the praise of other fans I
did not follow, so the volume of the comments was quite high. That was its own
level of annoyance, but nothing compared to actually watching it.
I
kept silent then, but now I am writing about music videos -- the good, the bad,
and the ugly -- so this is my time. There could be some hurt feelings, but they
don't usually read my blog posts unless I point them to a specific one, so I am
going for it.
Here
is the link if you wish to see for yourself:
And
it's okay if you don't want to watch it. It sucks, and I am going to describe
it for you.
The
video opens with an establishing shot of the Hollywood sign and goes into the office
of two executives blathering, and praising the band as they come in. This is
"funny", because the two executives are played by two of the members
of One Direction. The other three play the sexy assistant, the publicist, and
the choreographer.
They
talk about the movie and how big it is going to be, again praising the band a
lot, but the boys object to the costume concepts that other boy bands have
worn, and the choreography. "Never in a million years." They then
proceed to, while perhaps not being dressed identically still wearing hair and
clothing typical of a boy band, dance around wrecking the place. They point
their fingers all tough at the executives, throw papers into the air and turn
over desks of other employees, and then they spray paint "THIS IS US"
over the bottom of a poster of them.
The
video has several things wrong with it, but I think what really killed me was
the excessive praise. It was Twilight all over again.
One
bothersome thing was how derivative it was. The one executive seemed to look an
awful lot like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder. Hey, you know who else has
done fat executives who act cooler than they actually are? David Lee Roth.
Actually,
playing multiple roles in music videos is not that unusual. We could talk about
Fall Out Boy playing regular and nerd versions of themselves in "Dance
Dance", but we will be spending about two weeks on Fall Out Boy videos
later.
"Holiday" by Green Day is
sometimes mentioned. There are some funny costume changes. The actual
role-playing feels less prominent, but I mention it anyway because it has much
better green screen antics than "Kiss You", which in addition to
ripping off "Vacation" also rips off Elvis' "Jailhouse
Rock".
So
let's just call the best music video for musicians playing multiple roles
"Learn to Fly" from the Foo Fighters. They don't just take on other
selves; they take on every featured face in the video other than a cameo from
Jack Black and Kyle Gassner. This includes surprisingly nuanced performances by
Dave Grohl including, among others, a star struck young girl and a flamboyant
steward. Plus, the band saves the day due to their preference for alcohol over
coffee, which seems pretty plausible.
Even
the intro, once the music started, was heavily derivative of the Who's
"Baba O'Riley", which, incidentally, was the last interesting thing
about the song. Normally I hate this type of music because of the focus on
beautiful girls who don't know that they're beautiful and are therefore ripe
for use and abuse.
This
song spends less time on the twisted view of women and instead disrespects
music. While I will acknowledge that you might like a song more after it
becomes associated with a memory, like dancing with someone you are attracted
to, when that does happen it should not be possible that you will then forget
how the song goes. Yes, the song they describe is quite vapid, which makes forgetting
it more likely, there should just be a higher regard for music, and higher
expectations, than evinced in this song.
With
all of that, I still believe the worst part is the pretense of rebellion. They
say "Never in a million years" to the described dance routine, but in
fact it takes less than two minutes for choreographed dancing to occur. Maybe
they were specifically saying "no" to the pirouettes, but what does
that say? We will do dance numbers, but they shouldn't take any talent or
skill. I don't normally like playing up gender bias, but if that's what they're
hinting at, then I think it's fair game to say that what they are doing is not
terribly masculine.
Yes,
they might act a little shirty with executives, but they also make the movie and
release the records and completely toe the company line. In fact, when they
start getting really "destructive", it is out disrupting the rank and
file's workplaces. How typically corporate.
I
believe they are trying to summon the image of bad boy rock stars trashing
their hotel rooms, but even if that behavior were admirable, merely pretending
to emulate it while still being overproduced pawns is the opposite of rock and
roll.
Graffiti
has a long history with a lot of meaning. We could talk about trying to establish
some ownership and some permanence, and how hard authority has fought that, and
we could talk about the value of artistic expression. There were girls saying
that the "This is us" was One Direction's way of saying that they
would not change with success and they were still them. No! It's the name of
the movie! If they wanted to have some
meaning they could have painted over their faces - they just turned a regular
poster into a movie poster. What an artistic triumph.
Going
back to my title and opening, I won't try and define a best song ever, because
I think it's more productive to just enjoy the wealth of good songs out there. A
lot of those good songs can have an impact where it is like getting punched in
the face. Music can release your feelings and change your mind.
I
don't understand how anyone can get so excited over this tripe, as shallow,
uncreative, and blatantly commercial as it is. I guess it is triumphantly
mediocre, and there can be worse things. The next two posts will go from being
merely banal to being evil.
For
now, it's just, hey, One Direction, irritating me ever since I found out that
were a Saturday Night Live guest instead of a skit, like 2Gether. They could
have been okay as a skit.
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