Haim’s ‘Want You Back’ is the simplest video of the ten I’m featuring but also one of the most compelling.
The clip features a single shot of the three sisters walking down a completely empty Ventura Boulevard in their hometown Los Angeles at dawn, occasionally pulling off some subtle dance moves but mostly just looking simultaneously goofy and cool.
Selena Gomez taps into the acting chops she honed during her years on Wizards of Waverly Place for her ‘Bad Liar’ video.
Gomez plays four roles here, including a high school student, the girl’s mother and father, and a female gym teacher. This thing has a plot worthy of a telenovela: the girl has a crush on the gym teacher, with whom her father is having an affair seemingly with her mother’s knowledge.
Charli XCX’s video for her summer single ‘Boys,’ which she directed, was perfectly timed for the year Women Struck Back.
The video flips the script, putting men in the eye candy role that women have filled in music videos for decades. Call it the female gaze. XCX recruited 60 men of various degrees of celebrity, mostly famous through music or YouTube, and asked them to do any number of cute/funny things.
I always get about a month’s worth of year-end recap posts at this time of year, making it one of my favorite periods. Over the next two weeks I’ll blog about ten of the best music videos to hit screens in 2017, five by women and five by men.
Dua Lipa is a 22-year-old British pop singer who got her start posting covers on YouTube. She released her debut album this year and ‘New Rules,’ the album’s sixth single, reached the top of the UK charts.
I don’t know anything about Phillip Phillips except that he won a season of American Idol and his parents must have had a hell of a sense of humor when naming him.
But I do own his 2012 debut album The World from the Side of the Moon and I can attest to the fact that its first three tracks, at least, are very good.
Meet Me In Montauk 