MUSIC VIDEOS

When I first got home from the hospital, I spent a lot of time in front of MTV. Herewith, I attempt to justify that particular time sink. (After the nasty comments from Clash fans angered by my review of Westway to the World, I'm really hoping I can tweak the Jewel fanbase, just to restore some sense of balance to my world.)

JEWEL, "Intuition," 2003. [C]

Remember when Jewel was the sensitive Alaskan songwriter with the big tits and the pretensions of being a poetess? She recently told an interviewer that she has now realized that women can be sexy and smart – at the same time! Good for her, since her breasts look real pretty in that push-up bustier. I give her credit for pulling me about 30 seconds into this video before I realized that it wasn't merely a hysterically misguided attempt at career rehabilitation. I duly noted the mock product-placement shots, in which our singing/songwriting protagonist tilts her head back and swigs a fictional brand of soda or shakes her moneymaker in front of a light-up sign like the ones you see at road construction sites reading "JEWEL." (And, amusingly, "BIG PIMPIN'.") Ah, I thought to myself, nodding my head furiously. This isn’t actually a crass commercial pop move — it’s a satire on the idea of a crass commercial pop move. Which, if you’ve hired Shakira’s producer to calibrate your sound for maximum sales, is a pretty crass idea in itself. And here’s the best part – while the video openly mocks commercialism, the song was pre-sold to Pfizer, whose Schick division is using it to sell Intuition-brand razors that keep America’s women looking all hairless and girly. Ah, such irony! Such self-awareness! Tis a pity she’s a whore.

LIZ PHAIR, "Why Can't I," 2003. [B+]

A straightahead performance piece that takes place mainly inside of a Liz Phair jukebox, where every CD is a loving homage to jacket design strategies from the history of pop music. Each album title draws lyrics from the song, with Phair and her band performing on the CD cover. Everyone is shown off to their best advantage in this, one of Phair's best videos. Despite the album's allegedly Avril-derived slant, this clip seems tailor-made for people of a certain age who love their record collections. I haven't seen this on television, but it's available for streaming here.

MADONNA, "Hollywood," 2003. [B-]

A big improvement over the abortion that was the "American Life" video, which wound up being perhaps the most boring thing she’s done since "Take a Bow." Nothing new in this song’s platitudes about celebrity, set to the electro beat she embraced one record ago, but some sharp photography and images laden with carefully contrived sexuality hold the attention. (Dig that lusty handmaiden!) The singer herself is lookin’ pretty good — she even does a credible impression of Kylie Minogue.

NELLY, P DIDDY and MURPHY LEE, "Shake Ya Tailfeathers" [C-]

As I write these words, "Shake Ya Tailfeathers" (the plural appears in the video itself, although MTV claims the song is called "Shake Ya Tailfeather") is showing simultaneously on MTV, MTV2, and BET. On MTV2, the clip led into "Making the Video: Shake Ya Tailfeather," featuring what is inexplicably described in voiceover as "the world premiere" of this already dominant video. All of which just goes to show that when a certain set of naughty bumps are certified to constitute the feel-good hit of the summer, the saturation campaign that follows rivals the media blitz accompanying the booking of something like Bad Boys II — for which the song and video are designed to shill, and vice versa, in a cross-promotional clusterfuck — on thousands of theater screens worldwide. Without meditating on the aesthetic qualities that P Diddy and Jerry Bruckheimer may have in common, I can say it's clear that this one is engineered for the broadest possible appeal. It makes "Hot In Herre" sound positively idiosyncratic. Over a servicable groove, the three rappers extol the superficial virtues of sexy ladies: "how ya dance/how ya fit in your pants." Booty-shaking ensues. I've got nothing against the lascivious display of the female body, per se, but something still rankles about the utterly generic way it's deployed here — not to mention the way our superstars seem in every frame to inhabit a well-dressed world quite apart from the one in which their barely-clad dancers shake it and make doe eyes for the camera. At least the video for last year's big summer hit made it look like Nelly was actually enjoying his female company, rather than using the women as just another display of opulence. Eye candy, sure, but also another endorsement of the horndog hip-hop patriarchy. For cheesecake, I'll take the new videos by Beyoncé or Mya, which are bootylicious on the women's terms — even if the record company dudes are pulling strings just off camera.

KENNA, "Freetime" [B]
Dir: Marc Klasfeld/Vern & Tony

Something I've never seen before – a narrative video photographed almost entirely from the knees down. The story is a more humane version of the first-person debauchery of the Prodigy's notorious "Smack My Bitch Up," with a boyfriend making his girl cry, then taking to the streets. He grabs a flask away from a bum steals a bike that he crashes after riding a few blocks later, then limps into a drug store. And so it goes. Nice work, promoting a song and an artist I'd never heard of.

JANE'S ADDICTION, "Just Because" [B-]
Dir: Alex & Martin

Frankly, these guys have no business, 13 years on, looking or sounding this good. Sure, the manic edge that drove Ritual de lo Habitual is long gone, with the music taking on a packaged and highly produced feel. But they're rocking really hard, and they're blessed with a sound that's familiar but remarkably current after the passage of so many years. The swinging guitar-and-drums crunch has lately been done to death on the radio, but it feels like forever since Perry Farrell's weirdly nasal voice soared over the top of those beats, delivering a sensation of geeky transcension. The video is a low-key performance piece, shot beneath an overarching, light-studded gridwork dome, that underscores musicianship and gives Farrell a chance to posture like it's 1991 again. No, it's nowhere near as good as "Been Caught Stealing," but what is?

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