The best of the rest
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
Throughout the year, there were a lot of music videos that had a lot of people talking. While there were some videos that I may have talked about in earlier editions of this column, with the amount of great videos out there I did not have time to talk about all of them. Here are some music videos that I discovered this year.
Calvin Harris – My Way
Recorded when Calvin Harris was dating Taylor Swift and released after he broke up with her, he addresses the breakup with the song and its music video. We see Harris in a server building wearing virtual reality eyewear, and he is put in a Westworld type farm. As the music video progresses, the things around him, including a woman, shift. In the second half of the video, we see a group of women in his barn dancing with laser lights. You’ll see things that cause the video to look like it is buffering, but you do not need to refresh your web browser. Harris looks kind of like Ryan Gosling in this music video.
Bruno Mars – 24K Magic
Bruno Mars and his backup singers/dancers have a night out in Las Vegas in the music video of the first hit single from his recent album 24K Magic. Directed by The Young Astronauts (a Canadian group of directors), we see Mars and company go to parties, including a party in the Bellagio resort. They also dance in the streets of the city and drive along the Las Vegas Strip. The dances in the music video are 1980s-style dances, just like the style of 24K Magic, which has a 1980s sound. We even see Mars riding a Sea-Doo in the fountain of the Bellagio, which would only be topped by Drake prancing in the fountain when he performed in the Billboard Music Awards this year.
Maren Morris – ’80s Mercedes
As the line goes in the hit single from Maren Morris’s Grammy-winning first album Hero: “I’m a ’90s baby in my ’80s Mercedes.” In the music video, we see Maren drive her Mercedes-Benz 380SL, including a road trip and a night out. The forest that Morris drives in looks like the forest that Llewyn drives through in Inside Llewyn Davis. I wonder how the singer is able to lie down in the front of the car and have the car still moving without her driving it.
The Strumbellas – Spirits
The Canada-born Strumbellas are considered as the next Arcade Fire, and they had a very controversial line in this song with, “I got guns in my head and they won’t go.” The music video of the hit single from the band’s first album Hope involves them going to a funeral of an unknown person with unusual people surrounding them. They then do a parade in the streets while moving the coffin of the person. This parade tries to top off the parade in the music video of the Arcade Fire song Rebellion.
