Here's something interesting happening: music videos are being called visuals nowadays, and not for mere pretentious farce.
It's because music videos are becoming harder to categorize. Are they short films, clips, mood pieces?
Whatever they may be, the people creating them have gotten more immensely creative for sure. Music videos released in the past decade range from genuine attempts to create artistic masterpieces through music or simply promote the artist's latest single through mashed clips of them performing at a concert.
Nowadays, however, there's a real payoff when an artist takes a music video seriously. Beyoncé even did a whole film for her 2016 album Lemonade a spectacular marriage of music and visual poetry.
That being said, below are the top music videos that graced 2017.
7. 'Slip Away' By Perfume Genius
Adam and Eve meet a snake coiled up in a tree that offers them a fruit, which they eat and regret immediately afterward upon coming awash with the illumination of shame and awareness about themselves. In "Slip Away," Perfume Genius and Teresa Toogie Barcelo play as Adam and Eve, only they're not Adam and Eve and this is not a Biblical story.
In a way, though, it is because it's a spiritual plea to "let all them voices slip away." They eat the fruit again and again, with no shame, guilt, or fear. There's no snake that offers the fruit to them, however. They just eat it. After being chased, they end up near a fire pit, but they're clenched together like human limbs one can't tell apart.
6. 'Will He' By Joji
Joji, better known by his YouTube persona Filthy Frank, dreads the thought of a former love clinging to a newer love in "Will He." He projects a variety of anxieties toward her just to quash his own: will he be a better lover than me? is his essential plea.
Yet, the video isn't about the girl. It's about the boy, and what happens to him when the party is over. Here, blood is a drizzle of mood lighting, and a shattered mug doesn't produce sound upon impact. That's because it all takes place in Joji's head, all the ugliness intact.
5. Untitled EP Film by Mas Ysa
Mas Ysa made a whole film for Untitled EP, his latest release. The first image is a toddler eating, scored by rough synths, and Mas Ysa's wailing vocals in "MapQuest."
Then, a lady is driving with a dog on her lap. Then, a little girl is caressing what's presumably her pet horse. Then a trio of women is in a diner eating sandwiches and fries. What else? A man, his back to the floor, is contorting in different shapes. Then an older man is gawking sentimentally amidst a lush garden.
There's no action; there's just activity, and Mas Ysa highlights it all — the mundane, the usual, the not so special and captures it as they happen. A small portion of human life in different stages.
4. 'Dum Surfer' By King Krule
King Krule rides on a gurney on the way to his next gig — not so much as rides but is wheeled there by some unseen force. Gravity? Friction? We're not sure but he gets there. Where is "there?" It looks no more than an emptied, barely-tidied diner in the middle of nowhere, with dead-eyed patrons who look so bleak, they might as well have been slumped on the table despite standing upright.
No matter, Krule plays for them even if they look jaded. In fact, he might have created them, and the diner might be a place in his mind where he can express his self-hatred. Then, the gurney wheels away sans body. Does he want to leave?
3. 'Dis Generation' By A Tribe Called Quest
In "Dis Generation," A Tribe Called Quest thinks this generation is black and white. They hang around places far below where everything repeats itself.
They gather in crowded venues and seemingly cheer for the little black boy on top of a car exclaiming,"Dis generation!" Only the applause is not for him, but for a giant man lying down in the dark. As all this happens, one question looms in the mind: where is the light coming from?
2. 'Yuk Foo' by Wolf Alice
The beginning of this article talked about music videos often being visuals rather than short films. "Yuk Foo" is an example of that distinction. There's no story. There are no characters.
There is just a pack of figures in an empty, dilapidated room, bathing in hot rapid flashes of light and making music. Is there a point, a meaning in this? "Well, I don't give a s***," the song says.
1. 'Truth' by Kamasi Washington
"Truth" combines the most potent elements of the form to make not just a visual, a short film, or a mood piece, but a presentation. It premiered during the Biennial at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art this year as a 14-minute film about many things: youth, beauty, love, religion, and many other themes.
In one scene of sheer poetry, a boy transitions into the cosmos, which then transitions into a bed of flower petals circumscribing two men wrestling without much agitation or hostility. The "fight" is less about violence and more of naked limbs in contact.
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