My final 2011 video, and my favorite of the bunch, is TV On the Radio’s clip for the song ‘You’ from their album Nine Types of Light.
This is more of a short film than a music video. The concept is that the band members are meeting up in a diner a year after breaking up. The first several minutes of the video, as well as spans at the middle and end, show the five men reuniting with the sort of casual improvisational conversation that made Diner and Tin Men such a treat.
Often I’ll check out a song I like on YouTube, considering it for a blog post or just giving it a listen at work, and I’ll see a bunch of comments along these lines:
“Who’s here because they saw this on The Shield??”
“Just heard this song in Justified and had to look it up!”
“Loved when this played at the end of House!”
It used to be considered selling out when a band gave its music to a TV show or commercial. These days it’s just smart marketing. And it works, based on the number of people who find their way from their TV sets to a YouTube clip of the song.
I took some birthday money and bought a bunch of new music right around this time last year. Actually, I even wrote a post about it… this one. Of the seven CDs I bought, two rose quickly to the top of the heap: Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad (the beginning of a beautiful friendship) and TV On the Radio’s Dear Science.
Damn, does time fly.
It feels like I wrote my review of TV On the Radio’s Dear Science just a couple of months back but checking the timestamp I see it was published on New Year’s Eve, 2008. Are we really halfway through 2009 already?
My opinion of the album hasn’t diminished a bit since then. It continues to feel like something brand new, a fresh blend of sounds and ideas with the funkiness of Prince and the lyrical ingenuity of Elvis Costello.
Ten Best Songs of 2008 – #4
This was probably my hardest pick in the top ten… not because I wasn’t sure if a TV on the Radio song would make it but because I couldn’t decide which one.
‘Family Tree’ was my first choice but then I decided to switch it up for a couple of reasons. First, it isn’t really representative of the album (Dear Science) as a whole. It’s far mellower than, and lacks the wonderful grooviness of, every other track on the CD. And it’s also a grower… I didn’t really “get” it the first two times I heard it, and I hesitated to put a song out there that might not grab people instantly.
