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I didn't want my MTV

By Gloria Diaz

Check out Gloria's Blog — Edge of Gloria!

Fort Wayne Reader

2011-12-01

Years ago, when MTV was new and showed videos, a friend of mine was jealous because I had cable and she didn’t. I hated MTV from day one, because it seemed like the videos never made sense with what the song was saying. I guess I’d like the visuals to coordinate with the lyrics, but that’s just me. I’d watch video after video, and be furious, because I’d say, “no, it needs to be about THIS,” but lacking millions of dollars, I could never remake videos. Now, I have a video camera, and have made my own videos, but I still lack the millions, plus a production crew (and it shows).

But at least now I have the capabilities to take songs and put my own visuals with them. Yeah, they are other people’s music, but it sort of satisfies my urge to do it “my way,” so to speak. Thanks to YouTube, I can watch all those videos I missed back in the day when music seemed a lot better than it is now. Here are a few videos that I just didn’t like.

Madonna — “Justify My Love”: Hate the song, hate the video. I hate it when people make stuff like this and say, “Oh, it’s not porn, it’s art.” Filming sex acts (simulated or real) in black and white doesn’t make it art. This is porn. Or an adult film, take your pick. When this video and song came out, it was a big deal because MTV wouldn’t air it. Ever the capitalist, Madonna rushed it out as a “video single” and made an extra half million dollars or so. I stopped seriously listening to Madonna’s newer stuff after this, although I’m still an “Into the Groove through “Vogue” era fan of hers.

No Doubt — “Spiderwebs”: A catchy song, but aside from the phone cords (remember those?!) I don’t understand the connection between the tune, the band playing for a Japanese wedding reception and Gwen’s crotch attacking the camera. “Sorry I’m not home right now, my crotch is thrusting in your face, so leave a message and I’ll call you back, my crotch is thrusting, but leave a message and I’ll call you back.” Yeesh.

Peter Gabriel--“Big Time”: An unbelievable mess of a video, it’s like he said, “Let’s just throw a bunch of crap in and not worry about it making sense.” The song (which I totally love) is about greed, so I wanted to do a version of it where a little boy leaves his hometown and makes his way to New York City to make a bunch of money and Donald Trump would be in it and everything. Trust me, it would have been cool.

Rebecca Black--“Friday”: Yeah, this is an easy target. However, I would have been PISSED if I’d paid Ark Music Factory $4000 (according to Wikipedia) to have someone write THIS song. The repetition, the stunningly simple observations (and Sunday comes afterwards …) and Black’s Autotuned voice make for a teen-oriented song that is dreadful. Making a video about riding around in a convertible without wearing seatbelts is a wonderful message to aim at a group of people whose brains have not fully developed yet. This song this song blows chunks blows chunks and the video is bad like totally bad like really, really, really bad.

Fastball--“The Way”: Supposedly based on a true story, I would have taken a more literal approach. Incidentally, I LOVE this song. In my version, a young couple, fed up with parenthood, takes off and leaves the kids. The band then wanders through the house singing, while the kids cry. Band adopts kids, takes them on tour as roadies. Kids eventually learn to play music, become huge, and notice mom and dad are in the front row of one of their shows. The kids (now grown up) instruct security to beat their parents up. Final shot is of the band in the tour bus, watching footage of the beating, as it heads down a desert highway. I think that would have been better than the standard footage of the band playing and various people dancing.

Next column: Videos I actually LIKE!