Hello and welcome back to Another Flavor! [Last week](/posts/im-not-that- innocent-baby-one-more-time/) I mentioned that the format for this blog will change starting this week. Well, it is now changed. What will it be like now? I’m glad you asked.

Monday (that’s today!): A post about a music video. Analysis, reviews, jokes. You may recognize this as the format that the blog has had since the beginning.
Tuesday: Twosday. I will look at two music videos with something in common.
Wednesday: This will be the same as Monday, a post about a music video. This is still the meat and potatoes of the blog, but I’m adding some other vegetables and exotic spices on the other days.
Thursday: Sartorial Sursday. You know how people in music videos wear clothes? Frequently these clothes are ridiculous. On Satorial Sursday I will examine a person’s clothes and we can all talk about it.
Friday: Free-for-all Friday. This is whatever I want. It could be another post about a music video. It could be a best-of list. It could be pictures of ham sandwiches, each more delicious than the last, until the final picture looks so good that you eat your computer screen.

Okay, so now you know what to expect. Good? Good.

Let’s get down to business, then. Today is Monday, the day of the moon, the day, therefore, of menstruating women. So I will be writing about a music video featuring a bunch of dudes with long hair playing a song called Even Flow.

We frequently use the word “pretentious”. I certainly do, anyways, because I am a huge asshole. Normally we mean someone trying to seem artier or smarter than they really are. At its core, though, pretension is about pretending to be someone or something you are not. Pearl Jam was pretending in a big way in this video.

Pearl Jam, along with Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden, is a grunge band that became popular in the first wave of that genre around 1991 (oh god, I sound so pretentious!). Grunge is considered a reaction to 1980s metal. Bands like Cinderella, Ratt, and Motley Crue (please mentally insert a bunch of umlauts) were considered too showy; all surface and no substance. Those [“hair metal”](/posts/lock-cellar-door-talk-dirty-to-me- by/) groups were open about wanting to be as famous as possible. They put entertaining the audience above artistic concerns. The grunge bands rejected this. They wore boring clothes, had boring onstage demeanor, and rejected the role of the rock star.

The most famous example of this rejection of 1980s metal was when Kurt Cobain appeared on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball in a dress.

He was making fun of MTV and metal in general.

Pearl Jam were coming from this same place for their video for Even Flow:

The video opens with the singer shouting, “This is not a TV studio. Josh, turn these lights out. It’s a fucking rock concert!” This happens over the sound of a cheering crowd. We’re supposed to think that Pearl Jam rejects the idea of making a music video and just wants to play live like the punk rock purists they are. But it isn’t a rock concert, it is a music video. The next thing that happens is a recording of the song starts playing and the band pretends to play along to it.

This is pretentious. Pearl Jam are pretending to be punk rock rebels, but they are playing the MTV game of making a music video to promote their album. There is absolutely nothing wrong with music videos or promoting yourself, obviously I write a whole blog about music videos so I think videos are important. But if the theme of your music video is that your band is made of rebels who don’t make music videos then you are trying to fool somebody. To see how a band acts if they think music videos are bullshit take a look at the music videos of The Replacements. Pearl Jam is not like that. Pearl Jam wants to become super famous for not trying to be super famous. They are making a music video of themselves pretending to not want to make a music video. It is laughable, in a way.

The pretension runs throughout the music video. First, see what the singer is wearing.

He is wearing a flannel shirt, which is the uniform of the grunge movement. The flannel shirt is practical and unglamorous. He is simultaneously wearing shorts, though. The shorts indicate that the flannel shirt is not needed for warmth but for fashion. There is no function difference between that shirt and the singer of Cinderella’s clothing here:

Pearl Jam: You are wearing outfits. Don’t deny it. It is even clearer when we look at the bass player.

That is one ridiculous hat. It combines the stupidity of a backwards hat with the poofiness of a [rasta beanie](http://www.rastaempire.com/p-2217-rasta- stick-beanie-cap-whiterasta.aspx?gclid=CI7t1PebobsCFahDMgodojIAEQ). Awesome.

More desperate than this, though, is when the singer climbs up a wall.

We are supposed to believe that he is engaging in spontaneous, wild behavior. I really doubt that anything here is spontaneous.

He jumps off, just like we expect him to.

And lands with his arms out like a rock and roll Jesus.

He is coming to save us from the mundane, pedestrian rock we are used to. But is he any different? Of course not. Just more pretentious.

There are a couple of other things I find funny about the video. One is in the second verse where there is a flashy guitar fill. What do they show? This:

That’s the wrong guitar player! He’s not playing a fill at all.

For the next fill they get the right guy, but his fingers are not moving in sync with the playing.

It really isn’t that hard to match the video to the sound, but music video directors can’t play guitar and can’t be bothered to ask someone who does. So they just show any shot of someone playing guitar and don’t worry about it.

The bad thing about this video is that this song is actually pretty good. At their best, Pearl Jam are like a less sex-obsessed Red Hot Chili Peppers. They can be very groove oriented and the verses of this song have a slightly funky feel. The bass player in Pearl Jam is excellent (just like in Red Hot Chili Peppers) and it really helps the music push. This song is almost danceable. So it’s a little frustrating that rather than making a video like the one for Give It Away they make this pretentious piece of shit.

Man, why am I so angry? I think there’s something wrong with me. It’s just these music videos, I want to love them so much.

-PTD

Say what you will about Britney Spears’s musical talent. Go ahead! I want you to say it. Out loud. Okay, now I’ll say what I will about her talent. Her songs (or her hits at least since those are her only songs I’m familiar with) are excellent. Catchy and danceable, these hits still cause every wedding attendee to immediately jump onto their chairs and wave their arms around.

I guess I don’t know how responsible Britney Spears herself is responsible for this. I don’t know if she wrote these songs or had a hand in selecting them or what. I’m certainly not going to try and find out because I’m too tired. Actually, this tiredness means I will try to keep this short and sweet. Anyways, since Britney Spears is the artist I think she is the responsible one. If the songs are good it is because of her. And if they were bad (which they aren’t) it would be her fault. Okay.

The song is called …Baby One More Time. That is strange because it starts with an ellipse and doesn’t contain all the words in the hook. Maybe she didn’t want to call the song Hit Me (Baby One More Time), but she has no problem singing that over and over. I mean, asking to be hit is bad, but I kinda think she doesn’t want to be attacked. It means something else, probably something to do with drugs. Also, the ellipse allows the song to begin with the word baby. That might be significant as we are about to see.

…Baby One More Time by Britney Spears:

At the opening, Britney Spears is bored.

Look at her hair! How old do you think she is supposed to be? 14? 15? I feel like any older than 15 is absolutely impossible for that hair. Now we see why the song is titled “Baby”.

She is a really sexy 15, though.

Are people really sexually attracted to 15 year olds? Or are they attracted to women trying to pretend they are 15? I wonder how old Spears is in this video for real. I remember her being quite young. Even if she was 30, though, the fact that we are supposed to be simultaneously attracted to her and to think she is in high school is ridiculous. What is wrong with us?

For the second verse she switches to a sports bra and sweatpants.

Her hair is different, too, but it is still in infantile pigtail-type things. Now she might be 16. Still way too young for adults. Okay, I understand that the target audience for her music and videos is not adults, but c’mon. Simultaneously dressing her as sexily as possible while making her hair as young as possible is fucked up, right? I don’t think it matters what the audience is. We shouldn’t want to have sex with Shirley Temple. Or at least I don’t. Is she even still alive?

The third verse at first glance makes it seem like Spears has grown up.

Once we can see all of her hair, though, it is clear that she is still sporting pigtails. Does she just have one off-center thing going on there? It is unclear. Not flattering. I think I’d rate this hairstyle appropriate for a 12 year old.

She’s still dressed super sexy, though.

She is also holding a ball while looking at us significantly.

That’s right, hold the ball! Hold the ball! Yes!

I wish that this video could be as great as the song. I have to stress that I really like this song and I think Britney Spears is great. It’s just that the sexy baby phenomenon is really depressing. We should think adult women are sexy and that young girls are not. This is my belief.

I just have more one thing to say about the video, which is about the lip synching. In this song there is one main vocal line and occasional oh yeah yeahs and baby babies that are more part of the beat than the vocal lines.

But for some reason they still show her singing them! It is weird!

Look at her oh yeahing here:

Just pick a single vocal line and have the singer sing it! If you have lip synching then you are presenting a fake live performance. If you then have people deviate from the main vocal line it takes away the veneer of live singing. It means I just get distracted.

Oh well. That’s it, I’m done. I’ll be back next week with more music videos and a whole new weekly format.

Are you excited? Get excited.

-PTD

My dad loves the Goo Goo Dolls because he says that they managed to be very successful without being very good. I’m not sure that makes sense, but I can see how he feels. All the band members (as of 1998, when the video for Iris was made [Can you believe that 1998 was 15 years ago? Man, now I sound like a YouTube commenter.]) the band members were in their mid-50s. I think the lead singer might even have been 60, but he is the best looking of the bunch. So the band has no appeal to youth. The song Iris only has one melody, the chorus is the same as the verse but an octave up. So how was it such a smash hit?

(Note: Have you noticed that it is really difficult to say “smash hit” without sounding like you are saying “sma-shit” or “smash it”? Really makes you think.)

Iris by Goo Goo Dolls:

This video gives no clues as to why people like the song. Also, this song was in the excellent Meg Ryan/Nick Cage vehicle, City of Angels, about a woman hounded by spirits, ultimately resulting in her death. I can’t distinctly remember why Iris fit in with that terrifying movie, but I feel like the video had a bunch of shots of Meg Ryan in the sunshine. Right? Is my memory failing me? Are the spirits that haunt me gaslighting me? Apparently they are, because there is no Meg Ryan to be seen.

The deplorable genre of movie tie-in music videos is a theme we have not yet explored here on Another Flavor. I definitely plan to tackle it once I coat all of my furniture with plastic to protect it from my vomit. I’m not joking. I’ll need to eat several large meals so I have enough in my stomach to throw up.

Anyways, the video mostly features the singer of Goo Goo Dolls being a creepy voyeur. I’m going to assume that this video does have something to do with City of Angels, Meg Ryan or no Meg Ryan. So I think he is supposed to represent god, or an evil spirit, or an angel, or something.

Note that he is neither happy nor unhappy with what he sees. He does not enjoy his voyeurism but is compelled to do it.

We get a decent number of shots of the band playing live.

This song is a ballad with acoustic guitar and a ton of strings on it. Why does he have his guitar so low? Are we supposed to think that he is a cool rocker? Is he trying to look like Jimmy Page? It’s not working. I don’t care if the guitar is around his ankles, he is not a rocker.

I love the bass player.

He really doesn’t fit in with the video. He looks like a middle-aged guy in a Misfits cover band.

The director of the video gets bored with the band-playing-on-a-road interspliced with singer-leering-through-telescopes.

He decides to switch to binoculars for a while.

We get some forced perspective. I think I screwed up this screenshot but if you look closely you can see two circle thingies as if we are looking through the binoculars.

It seems like the singer is looking at himself. Is the singer in the tower supposed to be a different person from the singer playing? Does this mean that god is one of us, a stranger on the bus? Or are we all god? Or was this video poorly planned?

The drummer and bass player are looking up. What could they be looking at?

The singer is standing on the ledge. Is he going to kill himself?

Unfortunately not. Also, notice that the weather is gloomy and bleak down on the ground where the band is, but quite sunny where the singer is in his tower. What does this mean? Is the singer in heaven? Or is it just a continuity error?

In the end, nothing happens in the video. Having the singer jump off the tower, seemingly to his death, but then flying away might have been cool-ish. No, it would have been stupid, but at least it would have been something. Maybe a scene where he kisses Meg Ryan on the mouth while winking at the camera. That would be decent. I think we are just supposed to look at the singer and think he is super cute.

Look at him:

They made everything look super washed out/put pancake make-up on the singer. They also tried to hide his face with his hair. They are really trying to hide how old the singer is. According to Wookieepedia, the singer died of old age seconds after they finished shooting this video, but still a generation of women are in love with him.

R.I.P., dude. We’ll remember you.

-PTD