3 hours of MTV XXIII-XXVI

Up to mid-September. I've turned red back on, because some of these I actuially heard elsewhere first.

Bah, I appear to have outgrown Green Day. American Idiot seems to be directed by someone who'se seen the video for Street Spirit, but couldn't seem to figure out how it was done, so just has some of the band play really slow, then sped the others up. Hilarious. The song combines the earestly sarcastic tone of classic american punk rock with the dedication to making the same sound all the way though of.. early american punk rock. Okay, it's not that bad, but lord it's not good. It's also full of lots of bits where the guitar/bass/drums are dropped to reveal the rest of the band are playing: the same damn song still. Like the worst dj in the world. (for all that, it's not actively bad or anything. It sounds nice, but it thinks it sounds astonishing. The video is the same: lots of lovely shots, nothing to stick with you)

Fatboy Slim - Slash Dot Dash: You are taking the piss.

Vice has Razorlight thinking they're Television, but they're actually Tom Petty. But pretty nice for all that. The video hasn't much to do with anything, it looks ike an idea that has been shopped around a bit "We have some time laspe footage of this phone box, right, and we were wondering..."

Weezer are heroes to millions, but they seemed a bit "meh" to me. Hash Pipe is from their last album, I think, and like Buddy Holly has a great first line (though Buddy Holly's is better, a fine chorus (ditto), and the rest sort of slips away. The video seems to be a bit "dude, we know! Sumo, we get it", but has a few nice surprises at the end.

AAaargh! It's Bryan Mc Fadden! No hang on a minute, it's just the lead singer of Thirteen Senses. Eight more than regulation, and it's possible that Into The Fire is a perfect delight to one of them. Aurally, though, it's just one more item on the Coldplay charge sheet.

The video for Scandalous is a classic horror scene, where someone on the run from the police, through London's bad bits, ends up taking refuge in a club. But not just any club! It's Mis-teeq club, in the grips of a fantastically insurgent, insistent song, like Jumpin' Jumpin' in heat (Yes, I know!)

The video for The White Stripes' I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself is a poledancer dancing, from lying on a podium to the pole then eventally back to the ground. This is both inferior to the Massive Attack video for Be Thankful for What You Got, and draws attention by it's pointlessness to the fact that it isn't even that good a cover of the Bacharach and David original. There isn't anything connecting the song to the one screen 'action', leading us to wonder wether she was actually dancing to another song of the same length. Possiblities include Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Man, Die, All right!, Jackson, Hang on Saint Christopher, Indian Song, White Light White Heat, Roll Over Beethoven, Get Up On It Like This, or most likely Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Motherfucker.

If you had to pick a song for Marilyn Manson to cover, Personal Jesus would probably be top of the list, but to be honest he doesn't bring a lot to the party. The deadpan vocal on the original was scarier than anything in this kitchen-sink mess. The video looks like Silent Hill, which I assume is standard for Mr. Manson.

Fatboy Slim remix of Groove Armada's I See You Baby? FatBot Slim, more like! This is barely a remix of barely a song. The video isn't overburdened with ideas either. He's the security guard, with cameras in the bathrooms. So he sees them (Do you see?) shaking that ass (do you see?)

Reasons to love the video for Blinded By the Lights:

1) it's set at a wedding reception, the one place on earth more seedy and miserable /happy than a club.
2) it "promotes" drug abuse.
3) it promotes the wanton use of mobile phones
4) its the video for Blinded for the Lights! By The Streets! and it hits the same notes of frustration and confusion and drugs and mobile telephones ansd the relationship they have with each other and how the last two can't really control the others except they vcan.

The video for Predictable starts with a cartoon house on a cartoon hill, and then a cartoon lead singer of Good Charlotte leaves, and makes his wasy down the drive to the town. where upon hthe whole thing turns real, and goes wrong. The town appears to have been directed by Cartoon Tim Burton, as is the creepy room that the band are playing in (they actually waste a dozen frames on a shot of a skull on a bookcase, because although someone would be fired if the skull wasn't there, someone would also be fired if there wasn't a shot of it). Otherwise, it's a standard nu-metal business with a rush at the chorus that might have been nicked from green day/blink-182, except the chorus, along with the rest of the song, is about how someone's left him, only you now what? He knew you were giong to do this. It wouldn't be so embarrassing if they were whippet-thing indie kids, but these are big bulky corn-fed lads. You're grown men for crisssakes (see also the bassist from Lostprophets, who looks like RanXerox with a floppy haircut)

The video for The End Has No End is the tales of two losers. Or possibly one loser, it's a little unclear. Thopugh not as much as the new look on (some of) The Strokes. At this point I'd like to engage in a sarcastic review of the strokes new look in a fake teenbeat / marketing proposal stylee (retro-Velvet Julian contrasts well with unchanged unflappable Fabrizio), spiraling downwards into further snark. But truth is, I love it when bands do shit like this. The shaven-haired Damon, the slightly less manky Pulp, everything Andre 3000 has ever been involved in; it's great pop, and maybe the only reasion that I feel like using it as something to bludgeon the strokes with is their refusal to admit that they're pop. Whcih is a fine pop stance in and of itself, so maybe the other real reason I'd do this is the far more prosaic "I don't like them". And the new song does little to change my views, it's one of those where the vocal keeps on plowing through the chord changes and occasional speedups.

Stereophonics - Have A Nice Day: No verdict registered. Possible causes of total system shutdwon: THE SUCK

Black people are from outer space! Or so Outkast would have us beleive. Prototype is off the Andre 3000 half of the album, and it's basically a slow gloopy funk number that I can imagine skipping past on the album, but makes a decent aural backdrop for the video, about a spaceman who came travelling, looking for LURVE. it's tweeness will prevent me from watcing it again, but I'll always treasure those four minutes.

You will hear nothing from me about how the dancing in the video for Praise You is a double bluff, a fantastically innocent response to a song in an ironic wrapper. That is spike jones, those are professional dancers and the whole thing is a vicous joke at the expense of poor dancers everywhere. Which is why it is so fuckin cool. Well, that and the Fatboy Slim tune attached, but I don't remember liking it nearly so much before I saw the video.

"Dooo you have the time / to listen to me whine". It's only for about twenty seconds at the start of Basket Case that it's just vocal and guitar, but the video makes it seems much longer. Though considering the song is quite pacey, having as it does two instrumental breaks and still under three minutes long. the video is directed by someone who's a) got a lovely sense that bright primary colour are perhaps Green Day's best match but b) has decided that the scary baby masks from Brazil aren't seen often enough.

It is probably a popular opinion that you don't know Feeder's Just A Day, but you'd be wrong there - DEAD WRONG! It's the one that goes variosuly "all! by! my! self!" "I don't wanna drag you down, drag you dow--n" and "do-do-dodooo" and generally makes no attempt to diguise it's true nature as a Gim Blossoms song in nu-metal clothing. It came out three years ago, which is why everyone knows it, but back then, Feeder were not the stadium monsters they are now (note: check if they are stadium monsters). So for their video, they got people across the world (possibly wales) to film themselves accompanying the song, and send it in. There must have been quite a deal of shite, but the resultant video is the best thing I have seen anywhere, partly because it acknowledges that people love music for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways. They thank the people who made it at the end, and if there is any justice, these people will be the entertainment giants of the next century. I want a Kasei & Kos show now!

Bit of tabla, spot of spoken word, and then into the nassty squenchy bass. It's the cover of Bobby Brown's My Prerogative. Though of course Britney Spears might want to consider why it's safe releasing this now: because Bobby Brown has so faded from memory that he's just his guy that's best known for considering it his perogative to slap Whitney Houston aorund. A cautionary tale, not something to play while you get married in your undercrackers.

Dude! Queens Of The Stone Age rocks, and the song (Go With The Flow) rocks, and the video is in black and red with occasional white, like Sin City if that didn't suck.

I never actually rated Bootylicious the first time round, I just filed it along with the other disappointing singles off Destiny's Child's second album. Clearly it's great in concept, but to be honest I only started rating it after hearing Smells Like Booty, the mashup of it vs Nirvana's anthem. So I wasn't really sure what the actual tune behind the vocals sounds like. The answer appear to be: a lot like Eye of the Tiger. The video is dress-up for all concerned, and has a bit where the artists pull apart a bit of the set to reveal a dancefloor, as all videos should. You listening, Embrace?