3 hours of MTV XVI-XVIII

Or (week of) July 11-25

Before Jesus Walks, a white-on-black card comes up. Warning: this video contain religious imagery and other material that some viewers may find disturbing. No shit. There are two completely different versions of this Kanye West video on mtv.com, one's the mtv.com version, one's the mtv version. The one shown on MTV itself is neither of these, it's completely different. If you see one and you're not entirely certain whether it's the warning version, it isn't. I don't want to say too much, as the sheer "what the fuck is going on" is hard to miss. The warning version also has the best match of song to video, and brings out the O Brother bits. The wierd beautiful high singing, the martial beats, not so much. Kanye's rapping isn't as good as his production, but nothing is better than the production on this song.

The bartender in the bar that Cold Hard Bitch is set in has lovely long dirty blonde hair, leading to the question: why don't Jet have hair like that, instead of looking like My Morning Jacket/Alfie/other indie chancers? They could be this generation's Poison, if they'd only turn to the light side.

Eve Feat. Gwen Stefani - Let Me Blow Ya Mind: This is the Dre-produced hit from a few summers ago, which I have embarrased myself several times by "dit dit dit" ing to remind people (It does in fact work). The video proves that every film director wants to make Animal House/Revenge of The Nerds.

Rollover DJ is a hateful song. I don't just mean literally, there's nothing wrong with that, anger is an energy and all. But Jet are mindlessly vicious about their target ("Got your Rhymes going round in my head / Got your supersonic beats mixing up my Keds / So dance little DJ come on / What's your name?"), while sounding like Oasis after being put into a camp where they make you play The Sweet over and over again before their reintroduction into society (but worse). The video is of a very live performance, where you can see how much they sweat. every drop lovingly captured on film, so that they can bring us this Real! Music!

There isn't a single real thing in the video for Basement Jaxx's Cish Cash, guest vocalist Siouxsie Sioux included. It's a Busby Berkely Apocaplyse, which occupies your brain enough to strip away all the useless layers from the track leaving only the bassline and the voice (not, thank the little baby jesus, the lyrics). Job done!

The best bit of Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do is "sound of the police!", though obviously this is not a serious criticism - many fine songs have that as the best bit. Neither is the fact that a video featuring a golf cart chase with all of Goldie Lookin' Chain outshines the song, for similar reasons. The real problem with it is that it's one joke stretched out over five minutes and given to three seperate rappers, none of which have a quality control button as such.

Let it be noted that the Paranew Android has nothing on file regarding Kelis's single Milkshake.

Goddamit, when will women stop sexing up the lead singer of Maroon 5? The litany of complaints in the video for She Will Be Loved is all shot in a 50's Hollywood style, like the director had seen Chinatown maybe one too many times. The women doing the over-sexing are even mother and daughter. The song is sort of pretty in a Counting Crows ballad way, only faster, with the balance more towards singing than bleating.

I have to admit that they do have a soft spot for The Thrills, because they make a nice sound, and because they pissed off a lot of the Dublin Indie Mafia by refusing to make their way up the ladder of "support by" gigs, and taking off to be famous. The video for Whatever Happened to Corey Haim looks like a Larry Clark/Whit Stillman effort: "twenty somethings get drunk and fuck. Aren't they precious". It's possible that the lead singer's vague resemblance to Vincent Gallo is responsible. Both song and the video, while not going to hit anyone's best of 2004 list, are shiny enough to reward regular exposure.

Is "Do you feel like a chain store/practically floored" the worst joke in pop? Coffee & TV overcomes this minor handicap, or course, to win through, much like the plucky carton of milk in the video. It's strange how it keeps being sweet no matter how many times I've seen it. It is also possibly Blur's last great song.

People who like to talk about how Madonna has her finger on the pulse of current everything seem to conveniently forget that she did a video (for a tidy little disco number called Music) starring a) Ali G and b) a poorly advised cartoon sequence. It didn't work for U2, it's not going to work for you.

The video for REM's Imitiation Of Life is a clockwork puzzle: a video clip plays of a big outdoors family party, and after 20 seconds it freezes and plays backwards to it's start, then forwards again, the digital zoom moving around the place, picking up people singing bits of the song to themselves, saying more about being alone in a crowd, but not too alone, than a hundred more 'naturalistic' videos.

A chainmail skirt, glitter paint. shiny lipstick, foot long horns on the drummer, random abuse of the zoom button. If you're thinking Give It Away, you're thinking right. Was this really the song that broke the Red Hot Chili Peppers? What a beautifully ridiculous world we live in.

The video for Pumping on Your Stereo makes it no clearer why Supergrass is pretending it's called that as opposed to the clearly audible Humping, nor why Gaz wossname is singing in a bad Bowie accent. But it does make it obvious that this sort of muppetry should only be done by experts. Also Muppetry, geddit?