3 Hours of MTV V-IX

Repost. This covers up to the 16th of March, I reckon.

It is a little unfortunate that the singer of Franz Ferdinand has all the visual charisma of Alex from Blur: fine in little doses, not great for three and a half minutes. It doesn't help that the director of the video for Matinee - a fine spiky song about how life's never as good except when staring at the silver screen - has spotted the school-era of the song and gone craaazy with any idea they've ever had about public schools.

It says something about the standard of the arts these days that I'm not certain whether the video for Superman Lovers' Starlight is incredibly ugly CGI or an incredibly ugly example of a more conventional art - claymation perhaps, or puppetry. The track itself is french house in a sub-Stardust vein.

There is probably an interesting and catchy song about teenagers not shagging, but Don't Tell Me isn't it. The subject matter is a lot more difficult to tackle without creating an instant kitsch classic, and the rest of the song is rubbish simply because it's Avril Lavigne, and she hasn't gotten past "Hey look, I can spread this word over several bars!"

By all rights, the video for All The Small Things shouldn't work: it's taking the piss out of boybands, while producing one of the finest pop tunes of the last 5 years. It manages this by pinpoint accuracy in its parodies: Blink-182 are actually pretty good dancers, among other things.

The video for No Doubt's cover of It's My Life leaves me as speechless as the song. I'm not usually one to talk "travesties".. so I won't.

There's no clue in the video for Good Charlotte's The Anthem about whether they're taking the piss or not. The video is basically lollapalooza around an emptied swimming pool, with the vocalist singing about how he doesn't want to be "just like you" to the assembled cartoon indie kids. But then, indie kids are generally pretty cartoon, bless 'em. One way or another, the video never blinks.

Hooray, Ash are back! Orpheus is classic Ash: harmonies, girls, tricky middle bit, and more cars than usual. It's brilliant.

Everybody's Changing proves that Keane have discovered the 303 - and put it to the same use as Travis would.

Outkast's video for Hey Ya is a vision of Andre 3000 as a true superstar, with an appropriate grasp of world politics and other peoples' problems: IE none. A TV cartoon show is surely the next option. The song, of course, is fantastic.

Mary J. Blige's Dance For Me is a proper old-fashioned call to happiness and communion through dance - IE far too dull to dance to. The video doesn't improve on the song's one idea either.

The video for The Real Slim Shady (Eminem's comeback track in so far as it's the first single off his second album) doesn't clear up the matter as regards why he thinks legions of wannabe's are fronting on him, but does feature maybe my favourite four lines regarding Will Smith. It's not entirely clear how happy he is when a single verse details how there's a million people just like him who just might be but aren't, then back to how "in every single person there's a Slim Shady lurking". As is traditional, the video actually muddies things further by portraying him as a nutter with delusion of Marshallhood.

Were Feeder ever Nu-metal, and if not, who am I confusing them with? Just The Way I'm Feeling is Big Indie, and frankly they might as well be Scottish (they're not Scottish, are they?). The video is appaling "through the eyes of a child (who's gotten her hands on a colour filter)" shite.

No Regrets sounds like Robbie Williams's fucking up a Pet Shop Boys track. He's got Neil Tennant on to sing backup, which is probably a quite effective way of preventing him for suing after the trademark spoken word finale.

The video for Christina Aguilera's Can't Hold Us Down is strange, as it turns a decent but unexceptional Girl Power song (in which every second seems to be holding it's breath for Lil' Kim to appear) and recasts it as... well, as the video for Jason Nevins's It's Like That, except bafflingly with the skills almost entirely in the guys' favour.

If the ice age was coming, and you were going to build a spaceship the size of Vermont to send three people into space, would you pick Muse? Maybe the whole thing is a practical joke along the like of HHGG. "Nice work with the 2x4s and white paint lads, that'll teach them to white songs called Sing For Absolution. Sing for insulation, more like."

There isn't much to say about Fell In Love With A Girl or it's brilliant Lego video.

Good Luck is one of those songs that actually delivers on what everybody promises about Basement Jaxx (see also: Where's Your Head At). This is not entirely due to Lisa K, the lead singer with The Bellrays. Though it is mostly.

In what sense is the video for Lazy not just a scene from True Stories, with less David Byrne and more robots? Not that I'm complaining, obviously.

Blah blah Can't Get You Out Of My Head blah blah death of one of pop's most distinctive voices blah blah omnipresent ass blah blah.

There is no call for Faithless in the modern world, and the pro-positive Mass Destruction is pretty much the epitome of their wretched output. The video, pointing out that it'd be pretty terrible if kids did everything that adults do, backs this up entirely. Embarrassing then, that the actual song is a cracker, quality components that build like a mother. If Fatboy Slim made guitar pop....

Len were a bunch of cheeky chappies when they made Steal My Sunshine, weren't they? Perhaps they're dead now.

Lose Yourself is probably as focussed an Eminem as we're going to get: Two out of three verses are about capturing one moment, only one about standard "tough being Eminem" territory. The only little nod to his usual persona is the line about no Mehki Phifer.

It would be difficult to take Craaaaig David seriously in the year of our lord 2004 even if he wasn't playing a loony in Walking Away. Also videos about how he has to flee to the country to avoid being recognized (sneakily chancing his arm at the popular "tough being me" subject) sort of fall down when frankly it's nothing that a shave and a barber couldn't fix.

The start of Run is very reminscent of Coldplay, though it took me a while to figure out what exactly is the factor that reminds me. I think it's nothing more or less than the fact that the singer walking directly towards camera, which has become short hand for "honest + progression". THE Coldplay video, Yellow, is famously just a single shot of wet Chris Martin walking towards Camera, and so is The Scientist, though with an twist. The unfortunate gentleman in God Put A Smile Upon Your Face is also us-bound for a good part of the video. Anyway, the head indie fuckwad in Snow Patrol seems to be of the opinion that upping the Norn Iron accent will make up for it not being a particularly good song.

I love The Avalanches, and I love the fact that the video for Since I Left You muffles the first thirty seconds, and I love the coal miner's flashdance.

I like to think that I'd hate Sk8er Boi's flat edgeless viciousness even if the video wasn't a theft of public disobediance.

The preparation for this weekly (ha!) roundup of video is, fans of my sanity will be glad to hear, not sitting in front of the TV from 3-7AM, but rather taping it and fastforwarding through it, to jot down a tracklisting, followed by a more leisurely look at new stuff. The only track to elicit "What the fuck is that?" during fast forward (not counting N.E.R.D., as they were on the first week) is Get Your Freak On, with it's freaky dancers, underground shenanigan, five-foot neck and Missy looking quite dignified swinging from a chandelier.

And so Eminem appreciation week draws to a close, with the best xmas no.1 there never was. This is the super-sanitized version of Stan which is missing "I drank a fifth of vodka" along with every second word, of course. Also "had his girlfriend in the trunk"

A smarter man than me could probably write a thesis about how Justin Timberlake is the acceptable face of american males: past confidence into swagger, but just indie enough to feel vulnerable. This is tested to its limits in Cry Me A River, where he basically plays a complete freak. The wirework sort of helps (as does the Michael Jackson joke).

Wake Up (Make A Move) should by rights be a Shamen/Prodigy stormer, but in fact it's the latest from Lostprophets, Wales' finest nu-metal boyband. The video is vaguely "The kids are all right (or we can make them all right)", though the song compares poorly to the sort of stuff Linkin Park knock out on a regular basis.

I like the way that the video for D12's Purple Hills is vastly cleaned up from the original (starting with not being called Purple Pills) but is still about taking every available drug all the time. Irreplacable Eminem Moment: "bounce, bounce, everybody bounce. (sound of submachine gun) I said everybody bounce!".

What's the hell is this? The Beastie Boys return to us in our time of greatest need (which in fairness they already faced with that internet only antiwar single last year), and Ch-ch-check it out sounds like a knock off of Ill Communication (10 years old, people) and the video is them beating each other up in funny suits, like if you'd explained Spike Jonze to an idiot.

You'll recall that I like Hole In The Head. The video doesn't improve on the song: it's strange that the infidelity happens over half of the way through, though the purpose is basically just to show us what kind of rock groupies the Sugababes would make.

A reminder to people who like Gorillaz: if your favourite moment of Clint Eastwood is when the rapper lets loose, you need to go out and buy Deltron 3030's self titled album. The videos aren't as great, though.

I do quite want to like Daniel Bedingfield, bedroom genius etc, but the video for fine garage angstathon Gotta Get Through This doesn't make it very easy. For a lone maverick etc, he's built, and dresses, like a spare member of Boyzone, and the video looks like it's nicked from Jamiroquai. Not good.

I've written about Seven Nation Army before, and the video isn't much to talk about, just an endless riff on the Clockwork Orange poster.

Nothing much to say about (the other) Thank You, either. I wish I could claim that it's success was due to a massive crossover appeal from the song's appearance in Stan, but I suspect not.

I don't think I've ever seen a Jay-Z video before, but based on 99 Problems I've not missed much. The fine song battles gamely against bleeping, even if it reduces sections of the third verse to complete silence.

Trick Me settles the question "What's Kelis like without bigname producers?", unfortunately in the negative. It take fine quality ingredients - ska, dub, big jazzy double bass, and combines them to make nothing much at all. The focus of the video is a bunch of arrows directing attention away from/onto whatever's on the screen: it actaully does live up to the common complaint "an eight year old could do this".

Hoobastank are a band that I've filed as "what the kids like". I am now ready to finally bring my results to the scientific community: the kids suck. The Reason is tortured American vocals and dull bass over sub-Travis melodic jangle. The heist video is rubbish too.

Sometimes its easy to see why MTV plays the clean version of a video, and in the case of P.I.M.P. it's because 50 Cent is joined not just by Snoop but also by a dozen topless ladies. They do keep the Pimp Legion of Doom, whcih I think we can all agree is the emotional core of the song.

Nu Flow is a great "intro to the band" track, and establishes the constituent parts of Big Brovaz, though the carnival sideshow thing is just being milked for "we're quite scary" effect by the end.

I think as a modern human, I'm supposed to be suspicious of authorial intent, but to be honest I'm frequently fascinated. Take Song 2, for instance. Did Blur intend to make an impenetrable art-rock ranter, to underline Beetlebum's message that this isn't your elder brother's Blur, and mistake the extent to which the chorus's massive bass and needlenose guitar would create fantastic tension over the "difficult" verses? Or did they just decide to make a big dumb song that everyone would enjoy? It's certainly not the video's job to help you decide. Either way, they seem to have had fun.

And Andre 3000's 50's nosdtalgia continues unabated in Roses. I'd like to think that was Prince he's taking the piss out of at the end.

What sort of examples are the modern conveyor belt bands providing to our children? Not only are Liberty X stealing jewels in the video for Just a Little, they're having a rave-up on the way. It doesn't bear as much resemblance to Piano in The Dark as I had previously thought.

The tricky secret at the heart of Coldplay: Clocks is actually not just good, but positively great. The video hasn't broken their all-rubbish streak, though considering it's just them playing, it's not too offensive.

21 Seconds is a great way to introduce So Solid Crew. Each of the MCs gets a clear shot, though I'd be hard pressed to name everyone in one of the group shots at the end. The video is all apocalyptic cage match, though whether the cage is supposed to keep the MCs in or the mutant hotties out is never made entirely clear.

The video for Laura makes it clear that at some point Scissor Sisters will make a sequel to Tommy. The song is Elton-in-the-seventies, if you like that sort of thing. They're brilliant live, honestly.

Just Looking is maybe the moment when Stereophonics lost all their indie promise, and settled down to getting to a big mopey chorus as quickly as possible and hanging around there for a while.

Kanye West is too damn smart. It's done him well as a producer, and It All Falls Down definitely benefits from that: after one listen it sounds completely familiar and completely unique. He's probably quite a pleasant rapper, too but the video is all about muffling the vocal in synch with what's happening onscreen, so I have no real idea about that. Possibly this is a deliberately off presentation of what's already an omnipresent track in the States (possibly).

Mr. Brightside by The Killers - anatomy of the modern rock song: starts with a very 2004 clear guitar line with attendant drums (see also Doves/SnowPatrol/Coldplay) continue with slightly seedy/wanty lyics in the vein of Pulp, launch into lengthy chorus that starts a little like Placebo then actually hits the sort of space associated with Big Country, throw in a few Numan synths for a few seconds, then hit it all over again. Remember to include a drum build like in All The Small Things (scientists now suggest that all songs can be improved in this way)

My idea of fun definitely does not stretch to watching Richard Ashcroft be a dick for 4 minutes, which makes a review of the video for Bitter Sweet Symphony a bit tricky. A point might be that even a twat can have, like, deep feelings of confinement and hope, but that's not actually that interesting unless you're a 16 year old boy. Or a dick.

This is what makes Wonderwall an important song, that you can't not have a position on it. I went down a fairly standard arc: great at the time, tarnished continuously almost immediately, eveuntually heard again and it's good. The video seems a bit of an after thought: get in someone who has ideas, smy songcraft will stand supreme over them.

Why doesn't anyone do animation in videos (apart from the fact that it will never top Take on Me)? It's ideally suited to this modern nu-metal, and it's only got grimmer and grittier in the last twenty years. The answer, I suspect, is that it costs a fortune. Fortunately, Linkin Park have a fortune, and so we have the video for Breaking the habit, a fairly straight ahead number from them (a new life! through death?), with a not very straight ahead video. It appears to be mostly Chester Bennington's disembodied whoojit wandering around several tales of modern misery, in which time sometimes starts heading backwards. At the end, his crushed body flies back up 1000 floors to the rooftop gig that he lept from. Which must be a great buzz.

There is no good reason why Nelly & Kelly should be a good combo, any more than Hanson & Mansun (feat. Marilyn Manson), but the fact remains that Dilemma is one of the sweetest, saddest pop songs of the last few years. The video nails this perfectly, and also provides a vision of "Nellyville, where the girls get a diamond for how old they are: 1 year 1 carat.."

The video for Milennium is appallingly smug, even more so than is justified in taking the piss out of Sean Connery / Roger Moore. It's even smug when it's taking the piss out of itself. Not Robbie Williams on one of his best days, either: sweating, bug eyed, a distinct lack of sarcasm in his eyes.

It's possible that all space videos will forever look like Michael & Janet Jackson's Scream. Anyway, that isn't this song, this song is No Scrubs, and it's a complete classic, even if I keep forgetting there's a rap break (with exciting kung- fu). Only at the end do important questions arise: why do TLC have identical costumes in black and white? Are we being told two different stories by mortal enemies? Probably not.

Sing for the Moment does seem a bit "Oh shit, we forgot the video, we'll get Eminem to run through it once in studio then stick together some live footage/documentaries. It'll be fine, the song is one of his 'sucks to be me' ones, the fans won't even notice that there's a guitar solo".

The best bits of the video for Firestarter is watching Liam Howlett staring at Keith, wondering "what the hell are we going to do about this?"