Videos

The other day, I was eating at the cafeteria and they have these TVs that are constantly showing the "MTVu" channel (I guess the "u" means "university"). And what video was on, might you ask? Why, it was the Shakira video for the song "Loba" (link on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx5839kaxzs). Now, I think I've seen the video before, but this time it made me think about the concept of "sex sells" and all (watching the video makes it quite obvious why I'd mention that).

When I was younger and watched MTV, I always thought of videos as being a way to hear new music or to see my favorite artists on the screen. I was rather misguided. The whole point of videos is to make money by getting people to buy the artist's music. They are advertisments in the guise of entertainment and/or fun. Why else would artists even make videos, unless maybe they're multi-media artists and not just musicians? Not likely, most of the time.

I'm no prude, but this Shakira video just seems to be playing to the lowest of the low. When you watch this video, do you pay attention to the song at all? I know I don't, I'm too busy watching Shakira dance like a stripper in a box. It just disgusts me that the music is so insignificant.

Now, I realize we're talking about the commercial music biz and it is what you'd expect, but being that it's the "music" industry, can't the music actually have some importance? I'm not a fan of music videos in general, since they are distracting from the music, but this particular video doesn't even give the music a chance at all. It's like it was an afterthought and the video came first and then someone thought "we need a soundtrack to this Shakira porn! Wait, she sometimes dabbles in music occasionally? Use that!"

Switching subjects.....

I was reading the All Songs Considered blog, and they posted an absolutely hilarious video about a guy and his relationship to the Dave Matthews Band (it kind of sums up my feelings about them as well). Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2009/09/regrets_the_dave_matthews_band_1.html