Quote:
Originally Posted by TheRainbow
How is that a new "low," if I may ask? (Not attacking your opinion, just curious.) There are many videos like this, with very few theatrics/props/etc. Off the top of my head: Duffy's Warwick Avenue, Janelle Monáe's Cold War or Björk's Pagan Poetry. They're great, imo, because they focus on the artist conveying something directly to the viewer but leaving a great deal of space for interpretation. It's nice.
On my first viewing, I would guess she's somewhere in limbo or purgatory. The light is swinging like a clock pendulum to show time and the blackness gives a sense of depression or eternity. With her movements, I think she's either trying to live with herself, put the pieces of her "soul" back together or fighting with someone/something that's tortured her for a long time.
I could be looking too much into it, but at least the video made me intrigued enough to make my own storyline to her video. And there's room for a plot to have been told, just maybe not be explicitly. I prefer that to "Oh look, the buff guy likes the girl because she looks/feels like Ayu now" (FTL) or "She's not that great of a dancer" (Lelio) or "This doesn't fit the song at all" (Melody) at least.  |
I watched Duffy's video. I've also seen Pagan Poetry and Monae's Cold War. In Warwick Avenue, Duffy is clearly on her way or leaving Warwick Avenue and going through the motions in the backseat of the car. In Pagan Poetry, Bjork is actually shown receiving a corset piercing that's part of the elaborate dress she wears in the final scene.
And Janelle... well, I can't think of a single thing Janelle has done that I thought was interesting. I watched the video and the read the lyrics, and I think that video is intended to just be her without any props or fancy editing because the lyrics talk quite candidly about her feeling put down and told she's not good enough the way she is. (I think it has to do with her being black?) But I honestly can't take her seriously. She is, and I don't intend this to be offensive if you're a fan, but she is quite brutally just another neo-soul/old school singer, and those singers were already a dime a dozen before she debuted. Hell, the UK got Paloma Faith just months before Janelle showed up, and this was only a year or so after Adele and Amy Winehouse showed up and a year after Joss Stone hit #2 on the Billboard with her third first album (because every new Joss Stone record is somehow her new debut... over it.)
I think this would be a reasonably okay video if Ayu weren't singing a song about what's happening between her and another person... to another person. I could see if this were like a "curtain call" type of song, something heartfelt directed to the fans, but these lyrics are actually quite a bit more detailed than The GIFT, the production is honestly better developed as well. And the The GIFT is the PV that clearly got the money to tell a story.
Quote:
Last Minute
Parts of you leave me one by one and I feel cold
It hurts, as if a piece of my body has been ripped from me
Craving someone, hating someone, trusting someone
I live with the scars I caused in the end
You think these are our last words, don't you?
I don't want hear even a second of those
Once you turn into a memory, you exist inside me forever
And that's the cruelest thing there is
Give me myself back
We still smiled sweetly at each other
When we could still see a tomorrow
We knew there is no such thing as forever
But we didn't feel the end was near either
Fading into the night, dissolving at dawn, I lost my heart
I want to forget everything so badly that I can't see even say goodbye
I don't want to know what your last smile looks like
I'll pretend to be sleeping and then disappear
I want to be loved, yet I can't love anyone
I know you have…
You think these are our last words, don't you?
I don't want hear even a second of those
Once you turn into a memory, you exist inside me forever
And that's the cruelest thing there is
I don't want to know what your last smile looks like
I'll pretend to be sleeping and then disappear
I want to be loved, yet I can't love anyone
I know you have noticed
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I would've not done a PV than put out this... well, it's trash. It really is. It could've been filmed on an iPhone 6 set up on a mini tripod, and between cuts Ayu could've reached up and knocked the light around to keep it moving. She could've bought the dress at Ross or Marshall's (you can clothe an entire family for less than $100, according to the commercial). It's just really disturbing, and I say this because there's a point where the money could've been better spent... like fixing that mixing problem with the vocals on the chorus that someone else brought up.
I, personally, would've spent the entire budget for this PV on hiring a real drummer for this track, so it didn't sound like synth drums compared to the rest of the rock tracks on the album.
I don't want this to start a trend that later results in Ayumi filming PVs in the bathroom because she can reasonably take a %@#$ and work at the same time. I don't care how pretty her dress is at that point, I'm over it.