2017 wasn't much of a year for films, but MVs more than made up for that slack. Whatever malaise is afflicting the broader cinematic culture hasn't made its way to the sub-cultural realm of music video. Many of the ones detailed here have already taken a place among my all-time favorites.
Honorable Mention:
From limited graphic components, a rudimentary post-cinematic affect is born. Glitches, visual effects, and digital imagery swirl into something hypnotic (and a little unsettling too). Like all the best music videos, the song and images combine into something irreducible to either half, bigger than the sum of its parts....also, we think that's a penis in the background.
The Best:
A really joyous start to the year. I'd just begun to realize my total adoration of MoMoMo, and that soon led into a broader love of the Cosmic Girls. I was very ready for this MV, and it was as wonderful as I'd hoped. The soft, glowing colors match the mood struck by the song's skipping and wistful beat. "Pleasant" is the word that keeps coming to mind, but with the Cosmic Girls there's always this subtle euphoria that makes me extra fond of their music. They do a better job consistently giving off effusion than most other groups I can think of, comparable with Carly Rae Jepsen in my opinion! I think they're one of the best K-Pop girl groups active right now, and I look forward to anything they have to give in 2018.
Not sure these held up all the way, but I liked them at the time. Sweet's the cooler song and video (credit to the great Ossian Melin for the latter). From the beginning of my general effort to keep track of impressive MVs.
Brilliant deconstruction. Not much I can say that this most self-aware of MVs doesn't already. Joseph Kahn mentioned on Twitter that he's been in this situation too, which must be so much more common than we know. It's a miracle any audiovisual art ever coheres.
Minimal flipside to the still-unbeatable WTF. Love that Missy co-directed. The way water is used creates a dream logic, like you could wake up at any moment and physics would return in force. But as long as that slow beat creeps on, you're submerged in Missy's world.
Never really got into Arca, but this song and video give me some insight. Bizarrely vulnerable, loss of control as fearful erotic fulfillment.
The biggest names in hip-hop enjoying themselves and basking in their own endless creativity. I have to be honest, I haven't kept up with any of these guys much in the past few years. But I respect the obvious amounts of skill that brought them such success; the concentrated weirdness in this MV is hard to deny.
Another low-key delight. Desiigner's enormous smile in this video makes me really happy, and I've always liked his voice a lot. Ebullient yet laidback, silly and serene, short but sweet. Hip-hop videos are a gift to the world.
Not much made me happier in 2017 than watching Wiley finally getting the respect he deserves. Not only did he release a victory lap album to his highest sales yet, he also published an autobiography and was made an MBE by the Queen herself. I'm no royalist, but I could tell how much that meant to him. Underestimated by some and under-appreciated by all, Wiley's been one of the best artists in grime for over a decade now. His influence on the music world, both material and artistic, is beyond calculation.
This track boasts some killer grime brass along with percussive flourishes that, when you listen to them at the proper volume, are razor-sharp complements to Wiley's bars. The man himself has nothing to prove at this point, but he's not one to rest on his laurels. Listen to that astonishingly nimble flow from :48-:55. If the rest of the song can't live up to this blistering first minute, there's no shortage of Wiley tracks that reach similar heights. Godfather II hits in a month, and I don't doubt it'll be one of the major musical events this year.
I discovered this one at the same time as that Meljoann video (thanks TSJ!), and it immediately became a strong contender for best of the year. Over a beat that owes more than a little to grime, Trippie Redd exorcises the bloody pain of a break-up in eviscerating wails. We were shocked to find out how young he is, but youth is definitely a virtue in this unapologetic wallow (I'm calling attention to his age not to infantilize him; rather, I deeply respect hearing that un-selfconscious vulnerability most adult artists outgrow).
At TSJ, emo was mentioned as a reference point for what Trippie Redd is doing in Love Scars. I think that's spot-on. Listen to the boyish frustration in his voice around :30 in the video and you can hear the heritage of that much-disdained artform in full melodramatic bloom. The sudden slurs and changes in volume recall Young Thug, but with Trippie Redd, the technique's crossed with youth's raw heartbreak. If this is the future of emo, I'm all for it.
(As for the video, it's a solid neon trip, though it comes up a little short against the hallucinogenic odyssey undertaken by another rapper soon to come on this list...)
The first of several appearances LOONA will make in this post. Of all the songs I've heard, this one took the longest to grow on me. I thought it was solid but unremarkable at first, especially when considered against my other favorites. But I've changed my mind since then. I actively look forward to hearing it now. I always love the lilting vocalization that repeats throughout the song, but I'd neglected to notice what a great voice Choerry has. It's the perfect fit for a song so lighthearted. Even her whispers on that V-Pop breakdown give unity to the unexpected stylistic shift. Don't make the mistake I made in underestimating this.
Best chorus of the year? Not much else can compare. HeeJin's the ostensible leader of LOONA, and while that might seem like a big responsibility, she already seems up for it. Her performance in this MV is very charismatic, and there's a ton of personality in her vocals. The long LOONA roll-out means she's been sidelined a little lately, but I'm sure she'll resume her place at the center before long.
Haunting loneliness, the decay inside your head....I listened to this song and watched its video while drunk a lot last year. Correspondingly, I tend to keep a watchful eye on the hikikomori phenomenon, a parallel way of life that could take over mine without notice. Claustrophobia of the mind finds its form in spatial distortion. There's a great Making Of video for this MV that reveals its visual effects are largely practical, though digital effects come into play too.
The first of several appearances LOONA will make in this post. Of all the songs I've heard, this one took the longest to grow on me. I thought it was solid but unremarkable at first, especially when considered against my other favorites. But I've changed my mind since then. I actively look forward to hearing it now. I always love the lilting vocalization that repeats throughout the song, but I'd neglected to notice what a great voice Choerry has. It's the perfect fit for a song so lighthearted. Even her whispers on that V-Pop breakdown give unity to the unexpected stylistic shift. Don't make the mistake I made in underestimating this.
Best chorus of the year? Not much else can compare. HeeJin's the ostensible leader of LOONA, and while that might seem like a big responsibility, she already seems up for it. Her performance in this MV is very charismatic, and there's a ton of personality in her vocals. The long LOONA roll-out means she's been sidelined a little lately, but I'm sure she'll resume her place at the center before long.
Haunting loneliness, the decay inside your head....I listened to this song and watched its video while drunk a lot last year. Correspondingly, I tend to keep a watchful eye on the hikikomori phenomenon, a parallel way of life that could take over mine without notice. Claustrophobia of the mind finds its form in spatial distortion. There's a great Making Of video for this MV that reveals its visual effects are largely practical, though digital effects come into play too.
Another early January arrival. How even to explain the effect this beer advertisement has on me? A big part of it is Toc Tien's charisma, unparalleled here. Every image of her is magnetic, often drawn out through slow motion. Whatever affection she's supposed to be expressing for Budweiser far exceeds contractual obligation, opening into something vast and moving. Though she's mostly smiling, her vocals suggest something more complex...maybe resignation? The Afrojack instrumental seems just as ambivalent, bouncing along softly when the beat isn't disappearing altogether. At those moments I'm just surrounded by the echoes of Toc Tien's voice, reveling in her emotional directness. She released another song of her own making earlier in the year, but frankly I much prefer this. A truly strange alchemy of corporate synergy, disposable to most yet precious to me. The big heavy drop at the end is like a bonus, the thing you'd expected in the first place instead of this beguiling anomaly.
It's hard to think of another song that aurally conveys wooziness so well. Even that reverberating Spaghetti Western guitar sounds like some distant memory echoing through an altered state. Travis Scott came out of nowhere to me, but he's big enough now that it seems to have become almost a cliche to be into him. Me, I'm still just stuck on this incredible MV. Visualized by BRTHR (who I clearly need to look into more), the video's an infernally psychedelic attempt to place Scott's subjectivity onscreen. The thing that chills me most is how Scott seems barely awake as he drifts through this bad trip. His presence is so minimal amidst the warped reality engulfing him. I can't lie, I feel that in a very personal way.
ViVi is my favorite LOONA member at the moment. She's so adorable, and I love this video dearly. It somehow manages to express that dreamlike sensation of exploring Japan (though this seems to be Hong Kong), a feeling that's always lingering in the back of mind. I even prefer this rendition of the song to its dance version, which almost never happens! It's just too beautiful to be improved.
(TW: domestic violence)
I spent a good deal of time with Asia Argento's art last year, and I'm beginning to think she's one of the major female artists working right now. Her film performances are well-known and widely acclaimed, but I think it's time for everyone to revisit SCARLET DIVA and THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS. Her direction in those films is just as uncompromising as her acting style, and each of them contains one of her very best performances. This music video is yet another crowning achievement for her, a bruising existential inquiry into male psychic damage. It's all the pain and torment of masculinity, compressed into a few scorching minutes...I can hardly describe in words how upsetting it is. When the first-person actor strikes Asia and he futilely tries to comfort her, it's one of the most raw and wounding moments in art that I can recall. It's so private that I feel disgusting even witnessing it. It's an outgrowth of his repeating desire to choke women, that almost automatic need to cause pain. He may function as an adult, but there's no disentangling the good and bad with him. He seems to swing abruptly from each extreme to the other. Or perhaps the bad is always burning a hole in the good, leaving only ashes where this man's conscience should be.
I can't even watch this video too often because it's so honest. A whole heritage of violence is summed up and seen through to its end, this man's life a blight upon himself and the people he fails to love properly. Experiencing it is like shock therapy to me even now. It's a fully-realized nightmare, a tragedy with all the filler stripped away. I love it profoundly, but I fear it too.
(The song's nothing special btw, but who cares? On another day I might consider this the best film of 2017, let alone the best music video.)
A fulfillment of the promise made by Happiness all those years ago: astonishing, blissful, effervescent K-Pop. It even has a fruit theme! I can only assume that's a conscious callback to Red Velvet's debut, which for us was like a whole new level of K-Pop in 2014.
Maybe this is just my own melancholia speaking, but it feels like K-Pop has plateaued in recent times. ~2009-2012 seems to be the consensus golden age, though I'd argue even up till 2014 there was no beating the best K-Pop. Each video premiere brought with it the anticipation of something freshly exhilarating. My girlfriend and I couldn't get enough. Our enthusiasm knew no end, and the embarrassment of riches just kept coming. 2014 felt like it could last forever.
In retrospect, it seems significant that we were to get the last 2NE1 album that year. No one knew it at the time, but that last release signaled the end of those unmissable early years. Myself, I'm still too sad to listen to 2NE1 much at all nowadays. Their music carries with it that optimism, so tied to a specific time, that I could look forward to many more years of 2NE1 at their peak. When they disbanded, a certain center of gravity vanished from K-Pop.
I'm not even sure K-Pop needs a center of gravity, considering the high bar its groups regularly set. But who could be considered the standard-bearers three years out? Red Velvet's as good a guess as any, except they're a bit too eccentric to command attention the way 2NE1 once did. I don't think elevating them above all the other groups does anyone any favors. Red Velvet are at their best when they experiment, even when not all their attempts succeed. In forsaking global domination, they've managed to accrue an impressive back catalog under the radar. This track is surprisingly minimal for long periods of time, given shape only by an irregular spray of percussion. But then that bridge hits. More than any other track since Happiness, Red Flavor basks in the pleasure of unguarded ecstasy. By the time the bridge makes its third appearance, revealing itself to be the climax of the song, I'm overwhelmed with joy. It's what I always hoped Red Velvet would go on to do, and I don't mind that it took them three years to get there.
LOONA haven't even debuted as full group yet, but this song would be the envy of many veterans. I don't even know how they do it, but 2018 will definitely be their year. If any K-Pop act could be considered the new apex, it's these girls.
This could be easily be in my Top 5, but since there's still another LOONA song yet to come, I'm putting it here just to maintain some variety. Eclipse is my girlfriend's favorite, and it's a close one for me too. It's just so gorgeously sensual and dreamy. K-Pop can nail that vibe when it wants to, and I'd love to see Eclipse become a classic for future acts to emulate. The video is also stunning: bathed in reds and pinks, everyone in thrall to Kim Lip's gentle charisma. Maybe the best voice of the group too, and that's no small feat.
Top 5 soon to come!
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