Gwen has a real yen for style
Gwen Stefani featuring Eve
“Rich Girl”
Director: David LaChapelle
** 1/2
Stefani’s “Rich Girl” is -- like Madonna’s “Material Girl” -- a spry, campy homage to cupidity. Sure, the Dr. Dre-produced track pays lip service to love that’s “better than gold” but spends the bulk of its lyrics on monetary matters: shopping sprees, brand-name labels.
Fittingly, its video -- a scrupulously stylized affair -- is all about accessories. It begins with a gaggle of giggling Japanese girls, whose toy boat and dolls come alive -- and Ahoy! It’s Gwen and Eve on a pirate ship. Eve strikes a hip-hop “hands-in-the-air” stance and showcases her black eye patch. Stefani gyrates gleefully on the planks, swings from an anchor, wields a rapier and flaunts her midriff. She too has a prized accessory -- four of them: a quartet of “Harajuku girls,” named for the fashion-forward Tokyo neighborhood that Stefani references throughout her “Love.Angel.Music.Baby” album. Stefani “wore” the “Harajuku girls” to last month’s Grammy Awards (where they trailed her on the red carpet); here, they’re attendants in a Japanese-inflected boudoir scene, in which Stefani sports a white bustier and geisha hairdo.
Stefani’s bustier-and-platinum-blond look again brings Madonna to mind -- and so does much of the “Rich Girl” video. Madonna perfected the art of what we might call “culture mining” -- borrowing from the gay club scene for “Vogue,” sporting a kimono in “Frozen,” drawing on Jewish iconography for “Die Another Day” -- and Stefani too accessorizes by borrowing: from Japan, and also Jamaica. “Rich Girl” is a revision of an early-’90s track by British dance hall act Louchie Lou and Michie One (itself a play on the “Fiddler on the Roof” song “If I Were a Rich Man”), and among the looks that Stefani sports in the video is a reggae-inspired one: Skanking away in a knit cap and track jacket, she’s straight out of 1970s Kingston.
It’s not the first time Stefani has invoked Jamaica -- No Doubt’s “Hey Baby” and “Underneath it All” did the same -- but here, in conjunction with the video’s Japanese stylings, the homages go overboard. “Rich Girl” is a sexy, overwhelmingly ornate vision of a video, but it doesn’t do justice to Stefani: Drowning in her influences, she seems less a trendsetter than an adolescent experimenter, looking for a style to call her own.
It’s anything but ordinary
John Legend
“Ordinary People”
Director: Kanye West and Chris Milk
***
While “Rich Girl” luxuriates in its over-the-top display, three very different videos, shot in sundry shades of black and white, make the most of minimalism. On “Ordinary People,” John Legend -- Kanye West’s protege, sometimes described as a male Alicia Keys -- delivers a stripped-down, utterly sincere ballad about the ups and downs of real-world relationships. Backed only by a piano, Legend ensures that his voice is “Ordinary People’s” main dish; the song’s video keeps it that way.
Shot in crisp black and white, the video features a stark white background and a glossy black piano at which Legend sits, his face reflected in its glistening lid. He’s dressed austerely -- in jeans and a T-shirt -- and for every verse he sings, a different couple appears alongside the piano, each amid a heated argument that turns physical. The couples are of varied ages and races, but Legend’s lyrics address them all: “Why don’t we take it slow?” he croons.
Its concept is simple, and its domestic-violence theme lends it an after-school-special feel, but the “Ordinary People” video makes a statement with its understatement. The big attraction here is Legend himself: the voice, which stays with you; the piano, which amplifies it, and the lyrics, which -- like the video -- aren’t startlingly profound but are affecting and arresting enough to say it all.
Look who’s losing his religion
Morrissey
“I Have Forgiven Jesus”
Director: Bucky Fukumoto
*** 1/2
Some artists go to dramatic lengths to seem heretical. Madonna kissed a black Jesus figure in her “Like a Prayer” video, and rapper Nas was crucified in his “Hate Me Now” clip. Sturm und Drang specialist Morrissey takes a more subtle approach. After all, lyrics as wryly heretical as his -- how dare Morrissey talk about forgiving Jesus, when it’s Jesus who’s meant to forgive us? -- don’t need dramatic imagery to make a statement.
And so we get a sepia-toned scene in which Morrissey, at first alone and then joined by his band, walks down a deserted and bleak-looking block -- wearing a priest’s collar and rosaries. The video opens with a brief close-up of the singer, then quickly turns to a long shot of Morrissey strolling toward the camera, dwarfed by a gray sky that seems devoid of a higher being.
As Morrissey recites a litany of ills -- “by Friday, life has killed me,” he sings flatly -- the video offers us his close-up, and Morrissey plays to the camera: holding his neck, tossing his rosaries aside, looking to the heavens, feebly making the sign of the cross. By shifting between emotive close-ups and long shots -- of a lone man, wearing the trappings of belief in a cold, dark world -- the video suggests that faith can mean struggle, not salvation.
Everything’s falling into place
The Bravery
“An Honest Mistake”
Director: Mike Palmieri
***
It’s a tad incongruous to imagine a crew of rockers avidly watching the World Domino Championship, let alone being inspired to model a video on it. But such is the story behind “An Honest Mistake,” the spirited single from New York band the Bravery, whose album is due out via Island/Def Jam this spring.
Domino champion Robert Speca set up the video’s opening sequence, a whirlwind of falling dominoes that sets off a course of contraptions: pulleys and levers, robots and bows and a flaming arrow that, at the video’s end, just misses a bull’s eye. The band plays as the obstacle course unfolds around them, and it’s all captured in grungy-looking black and white, with occasional bursts of yellow.
The singular concept is just right for a danceable rock song such as “An Honest Mistake,” because it allows the video to look as kinetic as the music sounds. The domino-driven obstacle course becomes a visual representation of the song itself: a vigorous image of things spiraling out of control, of the snowball effect launched by one honest mistake.
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On the Web
A quick Google search will turn up links to most music videos, if you don’t feel like waiting for them to come up on TV. Gwen Stefani’s “Rich Girl” and John Legend’s “Ordinary People” are at the MTV site, www.mtv.com. Morrissey’s “I Have Forgiven Jesus” is archived at Video-C, www.video-c.co.uk. And the Bravery’s “An Honest Mistake” is at https://www6.islandrecords.com/thebravery/site/music.php
This new feature will be a periodic compilation of current music videos.
Videos are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).
