I have no musical ability at all. I like listening to music sometimes, and I understand the theory behind how these particular noises are made in quick succession to generate the music. I like lyrics. I can usually get poetry. But seeing musicians doing, or even pretending to do, music is really weird to me. I have about average physical coordination, at best, so seeing people dancing is a bit weird too. Put these things together in a format that has some weird all its own, the music video, and it can be a really surreal experience for me. What really hooks me in is when the band seems to know about and deliberately cultivate the weirdness in a coherent manner. I like music videos well enough as small musicals, but this is the sort of music video that I really get enthralled by.
Consider Panic At the Disco (They used to have an exclamation point.). The refrain has the lead singer writhing around, staring great-goggly eyed and mad into the camera like a charmed psychopath. He mugs and twists like something is alive and out of control inside him. Perfect. They also did a circus-wedding themed video where the lead singer is playing the conscience of a groom who is in denial about his bride-to-be cheating on him. The song is a little repetitive, but the video has a visceral but dreamy kind of magical realism about it. Come to think of it, both of these videos have a little bit of a circus theme.
By the same token, Matchbox Twenty's Mad Season has one of these moments halfway through when the police and the mob break into choreographed violence. Their Unwell is more surrealistic.
I think one of the things these examples have in common is they all involve some form of implied or explicit literalization of metaphors, whether by placing the whole piece as a sort of internal monologue with pictures or just bringing parts of it into the real world. The point of a metaphor in writing is supposed to be to show you something better than a straight description would. It makes good sense for a visual medium to invert that. It's not the most original thing, and music videos are not high art, but it's fun. It has a big punch for me. For my enjoyment, a good metaphor is big, involved, and has a lot of pieces hanging together. It should go just far enough that it takes a slight effort to keep straight. Ideally, the viewer has the same sense of movement that the written metaphor would give, or one of those times when the music suddenly changes tracks.
The same thing works for me in other media. That's handy when I watch anime and they start doing scenes, even whole episodes, that only happen inside someone's head. I guess musicals are an especially good vehicle for it. My introversion is probably a factor in the appeal too. I'm a pretty bottled-up person. I live alone. I only go out at night if I can help it. A musical where people sing there thoughts in gigantic dance numbers is about as far as you can get from that and some surrealism there taps into my sense of otherness about the whole process.
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2 comments:
I've lost most of my sense of music. There are few artists I like and I only listen to the radio when I go and come home from work.
Still, when I do find someone I like, I obsess about them, like MGMT, who are a recent find.
And there song (and video) for Time to Pretend is a funny metaphor on becoming a rock star.
There is Pandora Radio, which is a great "radio' station online. You put in the music you like, and while it plays them, it also selects groups that are similar.
But, over all, most music bores me. I love singer/songwriters, and while Matchbox Twenty was fun (and lead sing Rob kinda cute), I've found their later music only okay.
Eh, who am I to say anything about music. I still think The Safety Dance is a pretty good song.
I love The Safety Dance.
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