One Republic – “Feel Again”

  We start off with a nice nature shot of, well, not sure what it is, some bit of land with trees that hasn’t been turned into high-priced condos that nobody really needs or wants. Here comes lead singer Ryan bopping along a little path like he can’t see the camera right there. What he can see is a glowing orb plunked in the middle of the trail, which he promptly picks up even though it doesn’t have his name on it and one really shouldn’t mess with things that have no visible source of energy.

  Ryan studies the orb for a bit, and apparently his jacking around with it causes a little side path to light up and tempt him further into the trees. He hesitates for roughly two seconds, and then he happily heads into the trees, like nothing bad ever happens to people who follow strange lights into the forest at night, all alone and not carrying any survival gear. I’m thinking Ryan should spend less time without some form of supervision.

  Anyway, sparkly fairy path eventually leads Ryan to a clearing where there are lots more little lights, some of them making interesting patterns, as well as some folks dressed like futuristic hippies and dancing in the fairy light. (Didn’t see that one coming.) Ryan, instead of heading for the hills, wanders further into the clearing to find more pretty lights, ropes and panels of them, as well as the rest of his band. (You’d think they would have said something if they knew about this place, but sometimes the people in bands keep secrets from one another until their solo album is ready.)

  While the secretive members of the band keep playing, Ryan starts fondling some of the light strands and trying to figure out what’s going on. Before he can quite do that, a woman dressed in more of the odd clothing, and who is clearly a descendent of Esmerelda from Bewitched  based on that hair and makeup, throws an important switch and suddenly we have tons more lights blinking and dancing through the trees. (It’s like a Skittles factory exploded, only in a happy way, and the survivors decided to decorate with the fallout.)

  Ryan pauses to sing with the band for a little bit, because even if they are plotting a coup of some kind, they still have a recording contract to fulfill and they might as well get that part done. Then Ryan goes back to studying the colorful décor and citizens in this place, including some dancing stewardesses from the 1960’s, a woman who is rudely listening to something on headphones when she’s got a live band right in front of her, and a couple who appear to be playing badminton with a ball of light.

  This inspires Ryan to pick up an old-school megaphone and start hollering the words of the song into it. What he expects to accomplish by doing that is unclear, but he seems to be enjoying it so we’ll let it go for now. (He also raises his left fist in the air so we can see he’s wearing some really cool bracelets that you can probably order at the end of the video.)

  Hold up, Ryan’s breath is now coming out as a string of lights which then proceed to run up the trees around him. This is a very interesting superpower to have, although I would personally choose something that can destroy evil warlords instead of help passing spaceships land. No matter, Ryan likes that his very essence can light the world, and he seems quite pleased with his new ability. Now all he needs is a phone booth where he can change into some tights.

  While he looks for that, we get little vignettes of the other citizens, with some of them giving each other flowers that light up and some of them blowing air kisses that look like rainbows. Since we’re nearing the last section of the song, all the folks gather into a large opening and start dancing, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in music videos when you get to this part of the song, even if you live in an odd village with mystical lighting.

  Because Ryan is really wailing the lyrics by now, the words are shooting out of his mouth like a much happier version of Pong. (Side note to the youngsters out there: Pong is a video game that old cave-dwellers like me played hundreds of years ago on an ancient device made by a company called Atari. You can still find rusty examples of this contraption in antique stores and buried in the pyramids of Egypt.)

  As the song and music fade, we get a tight shot of Ryan and his chest, where we can see that is heart is lighting up with each beat. Then the camera shoots up into the sky and we swivel back down to watch a last few bursts of color over the trees before the little happy place disappears.

  The next morning, Ryan awakes from his dream and discovers that he has eaten an entire bag of Lite-Brite pegs….

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Rihanna – “S.O.S.”

  We start out with Rihanna shimmying about in front of some tree-bush thing. She’s sporting lots of that body makeup where her skin sparkles like she got a finger caught in an electrical outlet, and she’s performing a dance that seems to be based on the fact that her breasts are fighting desperately to escape the pretty but functionally-questionable dress that she is wearing. There’s a nice breeze blowing that gently caresses all of her various body parts as they compete against one another to get our attention.

  Eventually we switch to Rihanna and an unnamed male companion cavorting in a spotlight that is being splashed on a grey wall. (They didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the set design for this bit.) Rihanna is showcasing a new outfit (something about tight blue-jean cutoffs and eye shadow) and a new dance that involves rubbing against the back and buttocks of her little friend before dropping to the ground on all fours and searching for her water bowl. (The camera catches the guy staring at Rihanna like he really didn’t expect this type of behavior when he innocently picked her up to go get some sushi.)

  We jump again, this time to some place where there’s lots of pink and purple lighting, and a random stylist has made the decision to pile all of Rihanna’s copious hair on top of her head in a sort of poofy, curly bun that is bigger than some planets. (I would imagine that this hair-piling process was a major operation, and that the production team had to hire some extra contractors just for this scene.) She’s accompanied by another male companion, or possibly the same one, who seems really invested in waving his arms around so that they reflect the pretty lights in different directions.

  We zip back to Cutoffs Rihanna in that spotlight, where she has modified her choreography to include energetic movements that make her hair whirl about like she’s helicoptering troops to a secret deployment site. Sidekick Dude has been instructed to clutch at Rihanna’s body in a manner that allows his head to be positioned dangerously close to her hoo-hoo. There appears to be a very interesting story here, perhaps we’ll get to the details in a bit.

  But first we check back in with Green-Dress Rihanna as she continues her advertisement for body cosmetics and whips her really fancy earrings about with complete abandon. (Operation Breast Escape update, for those keeping score: the twins are still bravely fighting for liberation, but the dress is apparently made out of some miracle fiber that manages to keep the detainees in lockup.)

  And now we’re off to another location and another outfit, where Rihanna and four of her horny male posse are doing a line dance that involves arm-waving and baseball caps. In the background, we can see what might be giant ice cubes with their own internal power source that allows them to be lit-up and sparkly like Liberace forgot to put his cufflinks away. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of those things, because you don’t spend obvious cash on set pieces and only allow them to be in one brief scene.

  Over to Pink-Lighting Rihanna, where she and her hair have wandered into a House of Mirrors, creating an army of Rihannas wearing high heels and a backless jumpsuit. Seeing herself reflected that many times has gotten Rihanna even more lusty than usual, and she proceeds to rub her booty on as many surfaces as possible and do more of that crawling around on her hands and knees business. (Meanwhile, her little companion is enjoying his own set of mirrors, writhing around and loving his own bad self while still managing to keep his sunglasses in place.)

  I guess the two of them are really enjoying this part of the shoot, so we spend a lot of time watching them frolic and undulate while those samples from the old-school Soft Cell song are blaring from the speakers. But even the hardcore fans can take only so much of this symbolic masturbation, so we cut to another scene and outfit, this one involving Rihanna dancing with some other ladies who have discovered the joys of smearing glitter on your skin and then cavorting in places where the wind blows your hair just right.

  All of these lovely lasses have libidos that completely control their bodies, because that’s some sort of requirement in a Rihanna video, so of course they immediately engage in a line dance that allows them to leap about like somebody sprinkled paprika in their panties, as if they were wearing any. While they are doing that, we revisit Green-Dress Rihanna to confirm that the chesty inmates are still trying to jump the walls of the penitentiary.

  Now it’s time for the inevitable product placement, so we have Rihanna wearing Capri pants and fiddling with a Nokia phone whilst she relaxes on a leather lounger. It seems that this is a very special phone that you simply must have, because exploring all the high-tech features of the device can apparently cause you to have instantaneous multiple orgasms, based on the way Rihanna is arching her back and curling her toes in complete ecstasy.

  As if that wasn’t enough excitement, we head back to the room with the spotlight and the boring grey wall, so that Rihanna and all of her various dance partners can perform solos while the ever-present wind whips across the soundstage. The main motifs with this bit of tag-team shimmying seem to include touching your head repeatedly and trying to hump the wind that never stops blowing. Then we jump back to Pink Rihanna in the House of Mirrors, where she is now invested in doing lots of sultry maneuvers that showcase the fact that she is very limber and has legs strong enough to snap your head right off.

  Then we head over to that room with the giant electric ice cubes (I knew we were going to be seeing more of those things) where the whole gang has gathered for more choreography and hormonal release. We kick things off with a drill-team routine where the camera runs down the line of anonymous dancers and allows everyone to perform a signature move that will hopefully transform their careers from “hip-thrusting guy #7” to international megastar. This doesn’t immediately happen, from what I can tell, but you never know.

  Of course, this is really all about Rihanna in the end, so we quickly kick off a montage of Rihanna twirling and kicking in that one spotlight, including some fancy dual-screen imagery in case just one Rihanna is not enough for you to make it through the day. This sets up the grand finale, where Rihanna is hoisted on top of one of the electric ice cubes so she and two of her closest dance partners can perform an energetic ménage a trois based on the insistent beat of the song, with Rihanna’s odd pantyhose (or possible henna tattoos) serving as the centerpiece of the action.

  After a brief return to Pink Rihanna and her beau loving themselves in front of the pleasure mirrors, we close things out back where we started, with Green-Dress Rihanna sparkling in front of the tropical foliage whilst the last few after-tremors of her Nokia orgasm work their way out of her system. For the records, it appears that the prison uprising has been quelled and the naughty prisoners are still locked in their dual cells…

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Oasis – “Wonderwall”

  We start out with a clown and… I’m already not a fan of this video. There’s just something fundamentally wrong with clowns, can’t quite put my finger on it. But I’ll try to be nice. So this clown is walking to the middle of a mostly vacant warehouse, where he discovers an old-school record player just sitting on the floor. No one asks him to, but the clown decides to start the record and then he disappears and leaves a mess for somebody else to clean up.

  Why does that remind me of the George Bush administration? Hmm.

  Next up is a guitar player sitting where the record player used to be, and he’s strumming the opening of the song. This is much more pleasant than the damn clown. Until we get a brief shot of some evil-looking saws swinging on a metal rod. That can’t mean anything good. But then we have a nice showgirl posing beside some harmless acoustic guitars, so we head back to the happy place once again. I’m not sure why the video editor is throwing all these images at us, but maybe he’s preparing us for the eventual close-up of Liam Gallagher and his startling eyebrows.

  And there it is, with Liam staring into the mirror of a giant compact and crooning the first lyrics of the song. Then we cut to a montage of the various band members alternately sitting on a long bench and possibly preparing to perform in this empty warehouse. It’s really not clear what they are doing, other than moving around a lot and screwing around with instruments and random ladders. To make it even more confusing, everything is in black and white. This could be a nod to nostalgia or an indication of a budget issue.

  Then we’re back to a close-up of Liam, and he’s sporting some John Lennon sunglasses that are reflecting what might be dual Ferris wheels. (I understand that Liam has a fancy for recreational drugs, at least at one point in his life, so it might be a good guideline to just let some of these images roll by without comment. If I wasn’t there for the trip, I’m not going to understand the souvenir photos, sayin’.) We pull back from Liam so we can see that the rest of the band is behind him, still wandering around without any apparent focus or itinerary. (Again, shades of the Bush Administration.)

  This is followed by a montage of shots involving the playing of a bass violin, the damn clown not going away like he should, something that might be a mechanical cowboy, more of the band members sitting on a bench like they really have to wait for a bus like the common people, and some mess where Liam is rotating around what might be a giant dartboard or a leftover still from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Oh, and the clown appears to be having a torrid love affair with a ventriloquist dummy that looks like Stockard Channing if someone threw her in a dryer.

  Did I mention drug usage? Thought so.

  We jump around for a bit more, then we’re back to Liam and his John Lennon glasses sitting in a chair with his crotch thrust forward. He’s using one of his index fingers to point at his crotch, in case you were unclear about what such a thing might be. And another montage kicks off. (Actually, the whole video is a montage of randomness, but I’m trying to give this some story structure since the writers, if there were any, didn’t bother to do so.)

  This new rush of whimsy involves more of those swinging death-saws, the band playing, the showgirl, a spinning record album with some type of twisted Brady Bunch tribute, the clown still not leaving, and people fiddling with that mechanical cowboy. (Closer inspection of said cowboy reveals that he might be a slot machine, and pulling on his business lever makes coins shoot out of him in a rather homoerotic way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just didn’t see it coming or I might have put on a more sexy outfit.)

  Odd scene with college professors making music with those slasher-film saws, then we cut back to the band members on that bench, with the camera panning along their various faces. Why are none of these people smiling? Did Liam and Noel get into it again, what with their history of loving then hating then loving each other within a five-minute span? I guess it doesn’t matter. I think all explanations clearly went out the window when that bastard clown stuck his hand up Stockard’s backside.

  Another John Lennon close-up, with the added attraction of Liam possibly being electrocuted.  He manages to survive this rude event, much to the relief of his agent, and he again shoves his crotch at us for our viewing pleasure. (So thoughtful of him.) We jump around a bit more, then we start messing with more of that Brady Bunch shenanigans with the various band members appearing in little squares. (None of them have hair of golden like their mother, just in case you were wondering. It’s black and white, love, there’s not a golden anything.)

  Brief bit where the band decides to play a game of darts, because the death-saws and the orifice-invading clown and the eyebrows are not dangerous enough.

  Somebody brings out a megaphone, probably not the wisest decision, and the band members start using it to torment each other, because you’re really not a family unless someone is doing something completely annoying. Happily, they quickly get rid of that thing and go back to another montage, this one involving more Brady Bunch, bass violin, showgirl (who is really starting to get on my nerves with her lack of purpose), the cowboy (who is still oddly hot despite his lack of a pulse), crotch, professors, bench-sitting, and some actual playing of instruments.

  Then Liam finally hops out of his John Lennon chair and goes off to do something else, so we start to wind the video down, especially since we’ve gotten to that part of the song where nobody is actually singing. There’s another montage, but it’s more of the same, with random images that are somewhat interesting but really serve the purpose of stretching out the video to accommodate the really long instrumental bit which sounds great on the radio but causes a video director to clench and take stomach-acid pills.

  The final shot is of the blasted clown returning to turn off the record player. Which is NOT like the George Bush administration, because they never came back to fix anything that they broke.

  Cheers.

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