While doing boring indoor exercise, I watch music videos. These must be fun and distracting while also musically appealing. I'm all out of new ones.
I mostly listen to gloomy nerd music where there is no music video and the only exercise you do is either to rock back and forth on your heels while frowning and nodding (at a show) or turn pages with terrible ennui (at home) so I have quickly exhausted the upbeat-fun music videos I know.
The kind of thing I like for this purpose has fun costumes, maybe an ensemble cast, maybe something interesting going on. I am a prudish and easily bored person and find videos that are about minimally dressed people flailing around/making out/etc to be both kind of gross and basically dull.
Favorite olde tyme videos:
The Smiths Ask, directed by Derek Jarman - uptempo, ensemble, little bit of plot, great costumes
Dream Warriors My Definition of A Boombastic Jazz Style - about dancing, full of retro video clips
Favorite newish ones:
Janelle Monae, Tightrope, as far as I am concerned possibly the Greatest Of All Time, since it has fantastic dancing, fantastic costumes, excellent politics, great narrative and cinematic references and is basically irresistible.
The Moonlandingz, The Rabies Are Back. Interesting song, strangely compelling video, unsettling costumes
Sadly I'm familiar with the sort of eighties greatest hits - I've seen all the famous Smiths ones, most famous Talking Heads ones, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Karma Chameleon, etc. So if it's from the eighties, it needs to be a little more obscure.
Because I don't even own a TV (I mean, not literally, obviously I"m watching these) I am totally unfamiliar with music videos after about 1992 except for Janelle Monae and the sorts of bands reviewed in The Quietus, so there's a lot more scope there.
Amuse me! I'm desperately afraid that I'll watch "The Rabies Are Back" so many times that I will cease to love it, and then the light will have gone from my life.
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