Neil Young calls it like he’s been seeing it since Mother Nature began to be on the run, a Christian husband-and-wife duo take on the Syrian refugee crisis, Blink-182 pay homage to suburbia and more in week eleven, of the year’s Best Lyric Vids.
Neil Young – ‘Indian Givers‘
Perhaps 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:
Gungor – ‘Who We Are’
Another political lean, this one aiming closer to those compassion strings and the Christian agenda in the face of the Syrian refugee crisis, asking fellow Christians to show their true colors. Using a reverse ink-blot animation, some horrid images of what humans can do to one another reveal themselves aside the husband-and-wife’s Sarah McLachlan-esque balladry:
Blink-182 – ‘Parking Lot’
A bonus cut from California, in which the alien-obsessed Tom DeLonge parted ways with the band he, um, created, and Alkaline Trio‘s Matt Skiba took his place, a little wasted opportunity with the also ink-blot-themed video for this homage to suburbia that manages to both rep Joni Mitchell‘s infamous environmental pop nugget about replacing shit with parking lots, the psychedelic lettering that follows and the tales of catching Naked Raygun at the Metro in Chicago and skate-or-die-ing saves the day:
Queen – ‘Radio Ga Ga’
In tandem with the karaoke treatment for Queen jam past on everything from “Another One Bites the Dust” to “The Show Must Go On,” here we see the dystopian-themed gem from 1984’s The Works, in all its “Video Killed the Radio Star“-esque glory, complete with all those choice lines referencing Orson Welles, H.G. Wells and Winston Churchill spliced about scenes from the 1927 sci-fem gem, Metropolis, and the band flying around in a car plane. They don’t make ’em like they use to, as they way:
Kyle – ‘iSpy‘ ft. Lil Yachty
The story goes the 23-year-old LA talent plunked a simple melody out on a piano while dicking around in the studio one day and a sex-joke and internet-cruising song was born. The misogyny gets a little predatory at times, but at the end of the day, it’s a light-hearted affair made infinitely more pleasurable with this animation sing-along that’s half Adult Swim, half kooky Japanese karaoke montage:
