20. "Holiday" - Madonna
Usually I am not all for dance music videos, where there aren't a lot of shots and it's just the artists and a few friends or hired extras dancing, but I do see that there is real talent behind it making the shots look good and having the dancing be on point. Good thing that neither of those went into this video. Madonna does have some good music videos, and plenty of good songs, but seriously, what was up with this one?
The first problem is the camera work, it has that afternoon soap opera feel, it's hard to explain but the characters never really feel like they're in front of anything, it's really weird and I've only noticed it in the soap operas my grandma watches. The beginning choreography is essentially just swinging her arms around and hopping, not jumping, hopping. Madonna also looks a little restrained doing this doesn't she? Like she wants to do something a tad more interesting, like kicks and spins but nope, just this. Then there is the elephant in the room, or rather the weirdo in the background, seriously what is he doing there? Whose idea was it to have this odd person in the background just watching Madonna and crew dance?
Beside that the video is just average, not particularly cinematic, but just so odd that I couldn't ignore it.
19."Come and Get It" - Selena Gomez
In some respects, this video shouldn't be too bad, it is cinematic and has some nice visuals, and we get to see plenty of those visuals, too much.
The main problem is that a lot of it tries to be cinematic, just for the sake of being cinematic. I mean what is the point of having the field of blue flowers and the dancing on the boat in the dark by fire-light? What does it really add to the song or video as a whole? Even in the beginning there are shots of hawks and waves and it just gives the sense of importance or grandiose that the song itself really lacks. It uses a lot of traits you would see in a movie, which makes sense when you see a music video as a mini movie, but a movie has some kind of story, even a lot of art-house films have some sort of story, and if this is supposed to be like an art-house film, than it fails by being uninteresting and having these visuals just because they look pretty. Lens flares, slow-motion and sexy clothing all appear in this video and none add anything note worthy to the video except making it look pretty.
What I'm saying is, this video is style over substance at it's finest.
18."Crazy B*tch" - Buckcherry
Okay, I'll admit that this music video has the right idea of placing the band in jail, the problem? Well, first it's kind of got that Memento style of video creation, where we see the end of the video at the beginning and vice versa. It worked in that movie because things got explained as the movie went along, this one moves along quickly, so I don't know what the group was arrested for in the video, at best I can see a parking violation, and I really hope that it isn't the worst.
The other main problem with the video, well it tries to sell itself with a woman dancing around in a sexy outfit. Granted, there are times when something like that works, but not with any song that can qualify as "Butt Rock". It just gives me the feeling of watching a bad stripper and I can't help but think that it kind of objectifies women at least a little bit. However, I will concede that there are worse offenders, such as...
17. "Call on Me" - Eric Prydz
There is a time and a place for pornography, there are also sites for pornography and I don't think people want to pleasure themselves to an ear-pounding song that actually makes Buckcherry sound pleasant.
Really, what else do I have to comment on? The complete sexist nature of the video in how it's a male fantasy through and through? Yeah, wouldn't we all like to be that one guy in a dance workout class surrounded by sexy women while they do pelvic thrusts and other sexual moves to a high energy song that assaults your ears and makes you wish you were listening to "Technologic". Even if the video wasn't intended to be like that, it still comes off as trying not to stare at your buddies girlfriend while she's bending down to get something, awkward and something we'd all like to forget about.
16. "Blue (Da Ba Dee) - Eiffel 65
Okay so the plot of this music video is that the frontman of Eiffel 65 gets kidnapped by these aliens and the other band members go to rescue him. Because that doesn't sound stupid at all.
Getting the obvious out of the way first, the aliens are f*cking gross. It's been said that their heads look phallic, I can see it, but I've seen worse. I am mostly talking about their movements, especially when they bob their heads up and down it looks so mechanical, and this is the guy who wasn't even weirded out by "I Feel Fantastic", which did not make the list. In fact, nothing about the alien's movements seem natural, it never looks like they are standing or moving on something so they look like a terrible, out-dated 3D effect from a movie like Jaws 3-D. The combat in this video looks terrible and the acting of the band's frontman is so bad, it's like he is being told how to act by someone with a thick accent.
Also, if you really want to see how bad the combat in this video is, look no further than the unarmed combat sections, which look more digitally altered than Pickle and Peanut, a show the features Photoshop images as main characters. Sometimes they don't even look like they're trying, and in the end of the video, despite being kidnapped and attacked, the band decides to go back and play for the weird blue aliens. Wow this music video is lame, and it's not even the worst CG I've seen in a music video.
15. "Let's Get Rocked" - Def Leppard
I'm perfectly sure that this would have been a fine music video, if it wasn't for that creepy, butt-ugly computer generated cross between a Weird-oh and Ash Ketchum. Really, who cares about any other issues the video may have? You'll never, ever get the image of that CG thing out of your head, and if you do you'll only replace it with a gag inducing shot of the inside of a CG mouth and dangling uvula, not just a dangling one either, it moves like a cartoonish booger. Just, GAH! Let's move on to something else.
14. "Through the Fire and Flames" - DragonForce
Seriously, standing there? That was the best idea you could've had for a music video? Yes I understand that this was early 2000s, but you know what was before the early 2000s? The music video for Aha's "Take on Me" which still looks great today, so even with the time period there is no excuse for how lame this video is.
Seriously, when you listen to this song what images come to your mind? Probably a large scale war, a fight with a giant dragon, you know something epic, fantastical, almost Lord of the Rings style, but what we got instead was standing there. Yeah the song is awesome, but that just makes the video worse because the video should have been awesome, even if actually having a large war was to expensive, animate it. Hire a good animator and animate something epic, like riding a griffon into the sky, charging into battle on a charcoal black unicorn with fire for a mane and glowing red eyes, slaughter a bunch of orcs, this could make for some really epic animated music video, but instead we got this. Joy bunnies.
13. "Hello Kitty" - Avril Lavigne
I've already talked about the song before and quite frankly the song may have put the video this high, but Christ this music video sucks.
Really, this music video can be summed up as "Avril Lavigne skips through Japan", and not any of the cool places like that deer park, or Mt. Fuji, or any of the Shinto Shrines, just through a very bright, hard to see city. When we do see colour, they are so cheerily colourful that it makes the video look quite vulgar, and why does she have those four women behind her? What real purpose do they serve and why do they do that awkward march?
As you know, this video caused a bit of controversy because of the depiction of Japanese culture being seen as "racist", I have seen worse, but in this day and age some would argue that a racism accusation makes things worse, I don't really agree but then again I have a feeling this wasn't done with any malicious intent, it was just a stupid video and that's it. The problem is, it's a stupid, pastel coloured nightmare.
12. "Tunak Tunak Tun" - Daler Mehndi
Surprisingly, I find that there is a lot to like about this video, I like how the artist characterizes the different elements, and the video has a very upbeat tone to it all. That is unfortunately where my praise ends.
Let's begin with the obvious, the CG is terrible, and I get the blue screen as sets would be very expensive, but at least build models, take some skillful pictures making the small buildings look large and dance in front of those or find some images of the places you want to dance in front of, but instead we got CG that would be embarrassing in ReBoot. It's especially noticeable when it comes to the effects for the elements, especially the Earth and water elements, with the former looking like something out of the Donkey Kong Country cartoon, and the later looking worse than the TLC video for "Waterfalls" which came out in 1994.
Also, even though I like how each elemental character is colour coded, it still would have been nice if there was some change in design, like little details that distinguished them all, like how the one for Earth would have his clothes together instead of everybody else's and the one for wind would look more (for lack of a better term) wind-swept. Then there is the dancing, which was funny at first but now just looks like drunks trying to impress people at a club, albeit a decent nightclub.
Also, why does the character representing wind look more like Earth, I always get those two confused.
11. "Mr. Blobby" - Mr. Blobby
Why couldn't I just forget about this travesty? Forgetting about the awful song that accompanies this, the video begins with some sci-fi thing, It's hard to really see through the smoke and what I assume are synchronized swimmers (I assume a lot about this song and video don't I?), then it moves into some party, but it moves simply to quickly so I can't even see what's going on. Then Mr. Blobby gets a massage, I think, then Mr. Blobby gets placed in terrible green screen backgrounds, and I thought the last entry had terrible green screen. Then the video decides to parody other, and as I often say in my creepypasta reviews, better music videos like "Addicted to Love" and that three-man point that ZZ Top does.
The video is a fuster-cluck of scenes and ideas if you can call them that, I'm not gonna call them that, and it just seems to stop eventually. Now, the horrifying this is not that this video exists, it's that the video is only number eleven... There are ten music videos I thought were worse than this.
And because I can't hold you hostage, I'll stop here, but this has been posted along side Part 2, so go read that: http://auditoryabominations.blogspot.ca/2017/01/auditory-abominations-top-20-worst.html
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