YouTube Music Video Classics

Three instant hits in two weeks

By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist

A lot of people are talking about three popular music videos that were released in a two-week timespan. The music videos’ genres, cinematography, and themes vary greatly, but they have all gone viral on the Internet. Here is a look at those music videos.

“Hello” by Adele

After a three-year break, Adele is back with this black-and-white music video for “Hello,” the highly-anticipated first single from her third album 25.

Directed by the man who made the award-winning film Mommy, Quebec’s own Xavier Dolan, the music video shows Adele going back to a house that she and her former boyfriend lived in, switching between the house’s current abandoned state and flashbacks of them living in the house. We also see her walking around the Quebec countryside. Adele personally asked Dolan to make the music video and she came to Quebec to film it. Some viewers could say that the music video is even sadder than the one for “Someone Like You.”

This music video reminds me of the ones for Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around…Comes Around” and Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away.” It would be nice if there was an extended version of “Hello” that included more of the dialogue scenes in it.

“Hotline Bling” by Drake

Toronto rapper Drake’s latest music video shows him as you never seen him before. Directed by Director X, we see Drake dancing in different boxes and staircases while going back and forth between shots of female dancers. He does a variety of dance moves including jamming, prancing, and a dance move that is similar to a motion in Wii Sports’ tennis. The lights in the music video remind me of the lights in a Sonos commercial. The dance moves in the music video were so striking that a lot of people made parodies of the music video featuring the dance moves.

When Saturday Night Live did their parody of the music video, Martin Short appeared as his super-nerd character Ed Grimley and claimed that Drake stole his dance moves. Recently, the University of British Columbia did a campaign in which various students danced to the song as a way to invite Drake to perform in their year-end concert this year. They even recreated the set from his music video for their version.

“Focus” by Ariana Grande

How could Ariana Grande top the success of My Everything? With the music video for the first single, “Focus,” from her next album Moonlight. Directed by frequent collaborator Hannah Lux Davis, with choreography by one of Ariana’s backup dancers, Brad Nicholson, we see her dance with a cellphone, dance with her back-up dancers, play the trumpet, and a variety of other things. The music video has a futuristic look and the second half of it reminds me of Beyoncé’s music video for “Single Ladies.”

The song sounds similar to “Problem” structure-wise, and there are a lot of things in the music video that are seen in her earlier ones. If you are wondering if Ariana changed her hair colour, she didn’t—her white hair in the music video is a wig.