Now that facts officially don’t matter anymore, it’s an ever curious evolution of the lyric video as high internet art — for all we know, lyric video directors and bands could be screwing with us, animating lyrics that aren’t even correct.
At face value, though, we still have yet to see a video that can oust Dylan‘s channel-flipping “Like a Rolling Stone” entry out of the the soon to be un-neutral web canon, but nevertheless 2017, right there with 2016 and the year before it, was chock-full of gallery-worthy entries.
For starters, at least two bands (Geotic and Deerhoof) created lyrics for songs that don’t even contain them, solely for your eyeball entertainment. Whereas surf-bro Jack Johnson made a damn stop-motion political video out of building blocks on his iphone for $0. The rules are out the window and we’re all the better for it in this particular medium.
To that end, so go 15 of the finest vids we caught this year that all extended the hot jamminess of their sonic predecessors, in addition to taking the art form to another visual-narrative level, and of course, most post-truthiness important, entertained us.
Animal Collective – ‘Kinda Bonkers‘
Dropped in tandem with the Maryland experimental pop crew’s EP, The Painters, back at the tail end of February, not only have Animal Collective been a prime candidate for the lyric vid medium — their already non-sequitor narratives are hard to discern on their own let alone paired with their cacophonous, absorbing sound — but they nail it out of the gate here, marrying that psychedelic mantra with a kaleidoscopic, disappearing ink-meets-graffiti swirl of an experience. For a song about how beautifully weird this world is, the moving typeset doesn’t get more perfect than this:
Anti-Flag – ‘Racists‘
Punk and politics, regardless if even coherent, are just one of those bread and butter pairings that at the very least, lets off a little steam. It helps that these dudes came of amplified age in the Bush Sr.-era and who kind of had a little bit more to say in the mid-90s than their Warped Tour-ilk peers. At any rate, this one comes out swinging at the madness that happened in Charlottesville and fights back against racism, ignorance and bigotry with myriad singalong punchlines and a protest-sign spin on a visual checklist:
J Balvin, Willy William – ‘Mi Gente‘ ft. Beyoncé
As far as humanitarian efforts go, ‘Mi Gente’ leads the pack in spades this year, Beyoncê vowing to donate all the proceeds of the song toward hurricane and earthquake relief. Pop-star studded with everyone from David Guetta to Diplo, and of course Beyoncê, this new remix of the Columbian reggeaton monster fusion dance smash builds upon the Latinidad pride of its narrative, Beyoncé sings in both Spanish and English, using her English verses to tell an allegory about love — wink, Jay-Z, nudge — alluding to how actions speak louder than words. Tying it all together is a grainy VHS karaoke supercut aesthetic of everyone shaking their asses in solidarity, while little dancing Beyoncê, J Balvin and Willy William heads make sure you can sing along to the lyrics below:
Beck – ‘Dear Life‘
Warholian animator Jimmy Turrell‘s depiction of Beck’s about-face pop direction has been one of the coolest pairings this year. ‘Dear Life’ may not be as cool as its kaleidoscopic pop art sibling, “Wow,” also created by Turrell, but where it lacks in psycho killer face-swaps and ‘elephant-irrelevant’ rhyme schemes, it supplements with flaming cars, rooftop fights, and drop shadows on all its florescent lyric weaving to pair up with the introspective modern urban man questions Beck and the video are exploring:
Deerhoof – ‘Singalong Junk‘
We’ve seen plenty of interactive and high-art vids over the Best Lyric Vids series, but never a fill-in-the-blank number, a la the Bay Area art-pop crew, Deerhoof, here. With a jazzy, Dirty Projectors-ish orchestration, a bevy of “la la”s from front-woman, Satomi Matsuzaki, and a counter full of oranges, the band chose a Madlib creative direction that combined with a #singalongjunk hashtag for fans to share submissions and a nod to Paul McCartney‘s debut solo album, McCartney, that substitutes cherries for oranges, was thoroughly entertaining:
Geotic – ‘Actually Smiling‘
Baths creator Will Wiesenfeld’s more space-chill side-project Geotic is essentially a lyric-less affair existing in the organic electronic realm. Both Baths and Geotic are pretty straight-forward affairs the way of atmospheric journeys. Which make it all the more entertaining in this scripted video by Wiesenfeld that puts fictitious lyrics to a lyric-less song, bound around a narrative in which two friends confront their fear of hair length and the ocean’s receptiveness of allowing simmers to enter it:
Gunship – ‘Revel in Your Time‘
How these kids managed to clear copyrights on every 80s teen-cult classic worth a VHS tape is beyond us, but props to the editor for pairing everything from The Goonies to Risky Business with lyric-specific scenes, all tailored around this synth-dream of a do-anything-for love story. It’s like a coming-of-age promo video for everyone born before 1985:
Jack Johnson – ‘My Mind is For Sale‘
Jack’s broken-hearted bro-sagas and surf-life aesthetics have always hung on his shoulders in a burdening, pigeonholed way, but this year he proved he’s got some political jokes up his sleeve. To punchline the humor he created this homespun stop-motion building block treat with his kids for the low, low cost of $0. There were many a song written about our current administration this year, but Jack’s beach-jam take it easy, loving nothing approach to getting through it is pretty one-of-a kind:
Alex Lahey – ‘Lotto in Reverse‘
With so much good tuneage coming out of The Land Down Under these days, especially women singer-songwriters with street-literati dexterity — Courtney Barnett, Julia Jacklin — Lahey’s straight-forward pop-punk lovelorn darts were refreshing, as is another simple approach to the lyric video craft, in which Lahey hand wrote her way here through all the baggage of an ex that wouldn’t quit her psyche, until she quit it:
Oasis – ‘Talk Tonight‘
One of Oasis’ most storied break-up lore narratives was bound around a time when Noel Gallagher went into despondent rock star mode on tour with a girl he met backstage in San Francisco in the early 90s, fed up with the whole lot of it and on a mission to leave everything behind. What happened next is this classic b-side/(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? deluxe gem that just this year received a gorgeous animated accompaniment straight out of a modernist graphic novel. A sinewy trip down memory lane with drawings superimposed over a setting airliner sun, this is how you breathe new visual air into an old tune:
Shabazz Palaces – ‘Shine a Light‘
Before Sub Pop unlisted it from YouTube to make way for the black-and-white sacrificial vibes of the non-lyric video, everyone’s first encounter with the whirring golden-era, buttery disco-smooth soul gleam of this space gangster theme was this simple, beautiful strobe and light animation, which was one of the year’s best reminders of keeping the things simple some times:
Slava – ‘Skit‘
Of all the budget-deprived lyric videos amidst the vast YouTube inter-tundra, these Italian rappers created a series of videos so damn bad they’re good. Roaming across affluent suburbs of Italy in their Beamer, rolling up to gas stations, hangin’ at the local vending machine, and my personal favorite, a locker room, laying down bars over canned beats, it’s a page from the playbook of every rich white kid ever known to grace an instagram hashtag, but somehow it works, here. The camera never moves, only the lurchest of them all raps, the others are props, while the narratives roll out like post-film credits. We know the chorus means “zero thirty,” though, whatever the hell that is code for:
TLC – ‘Way Back‘
The first single from the fifth and final LP from T-Boz and Chilli without the late-Left-Eye tosses Snoop in the mix and kicks it like it’s 1996, as the three wax nostalgic about the glory days. Well Snoop just reps his creepster sex prowl schtick, while T-Boz and Chilli discuss their kinship. Anyway, the whole color scheme and video is pure genius throwback, coming off like a box of legos mashed with the opening sequence of In Living Color:
White Reaper – ‘Judy French‘
It wasn’t enough for the Louisville glam cock-rockers to create the soundtrack to a perfect PBR-swilling summer adventure in irresponsibility near you in chase of tail, so they doubled-down on this pretty clever exercise in every high-schooler’s worst nightmare — a standardized test formatted with multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, etc. adventures in the entire song’s narrative. Ah to be young and only a school-bell away from invincibility. Clever stuff, for such a simple song. But then again, that’s the point:
Neil Young – ‘Indian Givers‘
Not as visually stunning as the paint-in-motion on the non-lyric video for “Peace Trail,” the sentiment creeps about just as wake-the-fuck-up potent on “Indian Givers:” America — rapin’ lands and screwin’ the peoples who were here first since way before 1776. Cue the images of Yosemite blasted out of the frame by oil drills and clouds of black smoke. For anyone who considers them a fan of Mother Earth and indigenous peoples, and/or enraged by the injustices carried out during the Dakota Access Pipeline, Uncle Neil didn’t disappoint with this one this year:
