Talk about growing up in the shadow of greatness.
Solange is Beyoncé’s little sister, a young woman who no doubt wants to be the Eli Manning of pop/R&B music, but better hope she doesn’t wind up the Stephen Baldwin.
While Solange is a pale imitation of her goddess older sister, and this song is forgettable, I do love the video.
tUnE-yArDs first showed up on this blog during a recap of last year’s Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll, in which hundreds of music critics’ top ten lists are combined to generate a list of the year’s best songs and albums.
tUnE-yArDs’ album wound up topping that list, shocking me as I’d never heard of them before. The top song was Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep,’ so it’s not as if the list was deliberately non-mainstream. I will be writing about this year’s Pazz & Jop poll as soon as its published.
Fiona Apple has released some wonderful videos during her career, many courtesy of one-time boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson.
My favorites are the big-band dance number they staged for the ‘Paper Bag’ video and the slow-mo black-and-white clip accompanying her cover of ‘Across the Universe’ (recorded for the film Pleasantville).
Next up in my series of memorable 2012 videos is a clip from British indie rock band Arctic Monkeys.
The band has been on the back burner for several years after blowing up in 2006 with one of the fastest-selling independent rock albums in history. They were pointed to as poster children for a new era in which a major label wasn’t necessary for major success.
One of my favorite theme weeks last year was a series I did on some of the best videos from the previous year. I discovered a slew of fascinating clips, mostly from artists I’d never listened to before.
Even when the music wasn’t anything special, the videos were alternately fun and thought-provoking. It seems that the ease and relative affordability of digital filmmaking has given a whole new generation of artists the chance to express themselves with images as well as sounds.
Meet Me In Montauk 