By Peter Quincy Ng
Photo: Sarah Meadows for YACHT’s Psychic City
The year 2009 has been a year of the weird, funny and fantastic and it seems the stranger, sexier and edgier the music video goes the better it gets. Take Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance video that you’ve probably seen a million times anyway and you know why right? Half the comments on the damn youtube discuss whether or not she overexposes herself. But you didn’t think you would see anything did you? Of course not silly, it’s called video editing. Anyway this isn’t about Lady Gaga unfortunately, and after doing a little bit of research and soul searching, these are my favorite videos of 2009 in alphabetical order.
Bat for Lashes – Daniel
I can’t quite describe the ethos of Natasha Khan, but that’s why she’s so deeply embedded in our hearts. Take this video of protagonist versus themselves featuring charred furniture and teddy bears, to being thrown around by men and women draped in black with balloons on their heads and a really crappy CGI car chase from nobody.
Camera Obscura – French Navy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3CkfvYMCWM
Oh my! This video is a bit of a sob story, but think about all the good times we’ve had together awww.
Chairlift – Evident Utensil
A video so bad it’s good. Ok when I first saw this video, I thought the plugin on my computer’s browser had failed and had started pixelating the video on youtube. But no this was done purposefully, and oh yes the video quality was so bad that this video technique found its way into the hands of Kayne West and Linkin Park.
Delphic – This Momentary
Shot in Pripyat, Ukraine, the city meant to house the workers of the Chernobyl reactor, the video documents the fragmented lives of those who continue to live and work by the restricted zone. Dusty and looted ruins are all that remains of the city in this beautifully haunting video.
http://vimeo.com/7407586
This video is just an utter joy to watch. Watch the adventure unfold as vocalist Dandi Wind runs into your favorite celebrity!
Fever Ray – Stranger than Kindness
If you were lucky enough to see Fever Ray on tour, you would have been blown away by their cinematic stage presence. Unfortunately due to unknown circumstances. I didn’t go and I had to find out later from pictures and bootleg videos how freaking awesome Fever Ray was on tour. So fortunately enough if you missed out on their tour, the Fever Ray franchise has branded itself with a whole slew of eerie and haunting videos for you. There’s a whole bunch of them actually and to be honest they’re all equally good, but this one has lasers and floodlights in it.
Girls – Hellhole Ratrace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcqwfFKagH4
Being a teenager or young adult, or whatever mostly deals with getting high and making out with boyfriends/girlfriends. Given those reasons, this is why this video is so great even though my teenage years were nowhere near this exciting of a video.
The Hickey Underworld – Blonde Fire (NSFW)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G1PIL5qq-Q
Ever wonder what it’s like to be God? It’s pretty damn awesome.
M83 – We Own the Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzge5vY72hE
M83 got tired of paying people to make really good videos, so they decided to let fans make the best damn fan-video possible. Of all the contestants, the one that won and the one you see here features kids flying kites before running away from giant floating shapes in the sky before running back embracing them and then falling in love. There you have it in a nutshell!
Major Lazer – Pon de Floor ft. Vybz Kartel and Afro Jack (NSFW)
It’s the NBA JAM of dancefloor moves. This video speaks for itself.
Rainbow Arabia – Omar K
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIYHILNRoLo
I felt this video was appropriate because it had a werewolf in a supermarket butchering a woman and dancing with hipsters. And you know because of Twilight that after vampires, werewolves are the next biggest thing.
St. Vincent – Actor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZW9NYX6JZA
Annie Clark’s St. Vincent persona isn’t deliberately cruel like I once asked her; it’s called dark humour. Like she said: “In the ‘Actor’ video I wasn’t exactly making people they were sort of auditioning for me and their role was to cry, it required them to fake or act like they were crying” and evidently yes they did end up crying.
Washed Out – Feel It All Around
You know how some people set their vacation video to music. Well how about a music video set to a vacation in a tropical paradise? How do you like them apples?
Y.A.C.H.T. – Psychic City (Voodoo City)
Despite their firm belief that they do not promote the occult, this deliciously sacrilegious video definitely raises a few eyebrows and ends off with a class-act finale.