Tuesday, September 1, 2009

These are the best?

The Internet is made for top 10 lists (or top 50 or 100 or whatever).

They're great fodder to draw in readers and they provoke all kinds of comments and debate.

In fact, I'm going to fuel the fire with one of them, Pitchfork's 50 best videos of the 2000s.

This is actually one of the worst "top whatever" lists that I've ever seen. Most of the videos are pretty terrible.

Well, terrible in anyone but the minds of Pitchfork's "we're so indie and hip" staff writers.

Example: MGMT's "Time To Pretend." Great song. A personal favorite from last year. That's the song though. The video? It's awful. It's just a bunch of random images and day-glo crap, very little of which is clever or interesting.

In my opinion, a video should be pretty memorable to be in the top 50. This is especially in an era where anyone can film a music video on the cheap with a handheld digital video camera and a copy of iMovie (and quite a few folks have).

Anyway, they did have some good ones. Some favorites on their list: Elton John's "This Train Doesn't Stop There Anymore," Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg's "D*** in a Box," OK GO's "Here It Goes Again" and Justice's "D.A.N.C.E."

What did they miss? A few of my favorites from the last 10 or so years are:

• Matt & Kim's "Yea Yeah" is a great example of cheap and lo-fi, but hilarious and also matches the song's energy.

• Gnarls Barkley's "Smiley Faces" places C-Lo and Danger Mouse within America's musical fabric in pretty clever and funny ways.

• I hate to endorse anything these guys do (and this song is pretty truly awful), but Nickelback's "Rockstar" video is chock-full of great cameos (including several actual rock stars) as well as weird and dedicated fans.

• How about any one of 10 different Foo Fighters videos? "Breakout," where first date goes horribly awry. "Long Road to Ruin" has the rockers posing as soap stars. And "Learn to Fly" was from '99, but it's still hilarious.

• The Pitchfork list has a few fan-made vids, but they forgot to include one of the best of all time: the "hands" video of Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Do you have any favorites that myself or the Pitchfork folks missed?

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