Hello! My name is Ben, i'm excited to welcome you to my TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 2012 list! I've been doing this list every year since 2004, also known as the period when the Britney vs. Christina battles on ATRL were about their music, not about which music competition show they judge is better*
*OK, that's unfair. I really like "Red Hot Kinda Love" from Lotus! Does that give me any cred???? Do I need to add a GIF to that statement?
Over the next few weeks (read: over a month), I hope you get a chance to read what I have selected as some of my favorite things in culture in 2012. It's truly the most wonderful time of the year, not just because I get to work on my own list, but also because I get to see everyone else's, and get new suggestions and recommendations that I would have never thought of on my own. What's coming up?
- As soon as this intro is posted, i'll be posting THE TOP 10 SINGLES OF 2012. I really enjoy working on this list each year, and I hope you find some enjoyment out of it, as well.
- Next: The Top ____ Movies of 2013. This is one of my favorite things to work on each year, and 2013 is shaping up to be another great year at the theater. Why? You'll have to find out later this week!
- Top Music Videos of 2012. This will be posted after the 2013 movies list.
- Top TV Shows of 2012. This will be posted next week, as a couple of the Sunday shows will have completed their runs by then. Also, a part of the TV Shows of 2012 list will be a Top 5 Adult Swim Shows of 2012 list, to give a spotlight on a truly great year over at Williams Street (and also because ranking 11 minute shows with the others was proving to be difficult)
- The Albums That Missed the Top 40. Last year I think I had around 40 albums that missed, and i'll probably end up having just as many this year. That'll go up in late December.
- And finally, the main event: THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 2012! I can't set up an exact timetable for when the first part of this list will be up, but at the earliest it will be later in the week, and at the latest it will be next Sunday. That's not confirmed, though. I'll try to have the 2013 Movies list and the Music Videos list up beforehand, so there will be plenty of things posted this week even if I can't get the albums list started up right away.
"When The Pick of Destiny was released it was a bomb. And all the critics said that The D was done."
That's the first line you hear on "Rize of the Fenix," the first song and title track from The D's triumphant comeback album released this year. As is the case with all comedy music, this song would not rank at all if it was just a funny song. Like Weird Al, The Lonely Island, Flight of the Conchords and other great artists, The D write great songs that just happen to be funny. The song is one of the best rock songs you will hear all year, and it gets me fired up every time I listen to it. Like the album (which will be on my Top 40 albums list, so i'll get into it more then), the song is kind of moving, as it really charts the demise and later rise (or "rize) of The D in 5 minutes and 53 seconds. Any song that can get you emotionally invested in the listener getting a new Tenacious D tattoo (after having it lasered off) must be doing something right. Long live Jables and Rage Kage.
09.The Band Perry – Better Dig Two
I liked The Band Perry's breakthrough single "If I Die Young," but "Better Dig Two," the first single off of their upcoming 2013 sophomore album, is the first song where I can say I am definitely a fan of theirs. The song is confident, assured, and haunting, with Kimberly Perry belting out the killer line during the chorus "If you go before I do, i'm gonna tell the gravedigger that he better dig two." The song's appalachian strut reminds me at points of FX's Justified, which you can't say for much of country radio currently. I mean, another great line from the song: "Well, it won't be whiskey, won't be meth, it'll be your name on my last breath." As good as it gets! While the majority of their upcoming 2013 album is said to be produced by Rick Rubin, "Better Dig Two" was produced by Dann Huff, a Nashville country music vet, which makes it feel all the more subversive. I hope the rest of their album stacks up to "Better Dig Two," but if it doesn't, oh well.
I'll have more to say about Future's album Pluto on my Top 40 Albums list, but "Turn On The Lights" is quite possibly the highlight from the whole album. In a hip-hop climate where much of it is predictable, with the same rappers guesting on each other's songs over and over again, Future is a breath of fresh air, as he is bringing something completely new to the table. He has given autotune a purpose, as he delivers much of his music on the verge of tears, making each syllable count. Whether you like him or hate him, you have to respect that Future is doing something completely different from the rest of hip-hop. And that "Turn on the Lights," a love song dedicated to his dream woman that has a beat that sounds closer to a Deepak Chopra meditation tape (with added 808's) then anything else on hip-hop radio, can be a minor hit? That's huge! Hooray for originality.
07. Rufus Wainwright – Jericho
You know how sometimes, when you are in a public place and you hear a song play (in this case, piped in from the building), and it just instantly hits you like *POW*? A song that you know and enjoy, but for some reason, in this public place it becomes even better? That's what happened with Rufus Wainwright's "Jericho," a beautiful song from his excellent 2012 album Out of the Game. Hearing it unexpectedly in a public place last August made it seem like it had been out for many years and was a classic. What helps make it feel like a classic is its timeless quality, as the album recalls '70s poprock (aided by producer Mark Ronson), which is a big soft spot for me. Wainwright's performance on the song is just simply incredible, as he makes it seem so effortless when in reality what he's doing is very accomplished and amazing. The bridge (which happens at 1:39) in particular is just stunning, and really as good as pop music gets.
06. Ty Segall featuring Brigid Dawson – The Hill
(Note: I try not to choose music videos for the YouTube clips, as this isn't a music videos list, but this was the only good video I could find. You will be seeing this video again on my Music Videos list)
Ty Segall owned 2012 for me. He released three albums, with all three of them being excellent and charting on my Top 40 albums list. To pick just one Segall song on this list was very tough, but i'll go with the first song released off of Segall's Twins, "The Hill," a John Lennon-y blast of fuzzy psychrock greatness, featuring the vocal stylings of the incredible Brigid Dawson of Thee Oh Sees. If anyone wonders where rock went in 2012, play them this song, and they won't be asking that dumb question again. As hinted above, I will have plenty more to say about Ty Segall's banner 2012 coming later on in my year-end list. Stay tuned!
It feels funny to say now, but there was a point this year where I thought that Kendrick Lamar's major label debut (which ended up being called good kid, m.A.A.d city) would disappoint, and he wouldn't release anything as good as this psychedelic rap masterpiece "Cartoon & Cereal." While I was proven very, very wrong on that front, there's still a part of me that believes that "Cartoon & Cereal" is still the finest song Lamar has ever made, even if it didn't make the album. Released in February 2012, it's a truly singular hip-hop song, featuring Looney Tunes clips, Gunplay barking out his bars, some of Kendrick's best rapping ever, and just in general an audio collage of amazing soundscapes and wonderment. If you enjoyed the Kendrick album (and who didn't?) and haven't heard "Cartoon & Cereal," you have to check it out. It is really great!
04. Aimee Mann – Charmer
Aimee Mann is one of my northstars in music. You can always depend on her clever and moving lyrics, her great singing, and her always wonderful albums. 2012's Charmer (both the song and album) contains some of my favorite work from Mann ever. If I could describe the music for this song, it would be like if Aimee Mann transported herself back to 1978, just as Mike Post was about to record a new TV theme song (ala Rockford Files). That little musical sting that is all over the song has been stuck in my head ever since I first listened to it. And the lyrical content of the song, about, well, charmers ("When you're a charmer, you hate yourself") is classic Mann. Just the lines on this song: "When you're a charmer, people respond. They can't see the hidden agenda you got going on" "When you're a charmer, the world applauds. You don't know that secretly charmers feel like they're frauds." "This is a battle you cannot fight. No, you only can surrender" I mean come on, this is as great as it gets! Catchy, fantastic lyrics, great musically, it's one of my favourite Aimee Mann songs ever.
03. Bob Mould – The Descent
(Note: Like with Ty Segall, this is the best video I could find for this song. It's the official music video, but it won't chart on my Music Videos list. It's a good video though, so it is definitely worth checking out)
In 3 minutes and 54 seconds, "The Descent" shows you why Bob Mould is still vital and important at age 52 and why he is one of the Good Guys of Rock. Inspired by his guest appearance on Foo Fighters' Wasting Light, writing a must-read memoir titled See a Little Light, and touring with his old band Sugar playing their classic album Copper Blue in its entirety. Mould along with his touring band (which includes Superchunk/The Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster) has made some of the most immediate and exciting music of his career, and "The Descent" is maybe the finest example from it. "I didn't want to play the song that gave people so much hope. I turned my back and turned away, here's the rope that made me choke." That's a fantastic line from the song, which he then follows up in the chorus with "Can I try to make it up to you somehow?" lines that are likely directly influenced by Mould embracing his old songs again and looking back on his career. It's a thrilling song, and a song that automatically makes me happy every time I listen to it.
Superchunk charted at #2 on the singles list back in 2010, with "Digging for Something." In 2012 they are back, with "This Summer," and they chart at.... #2. Poor Superchunk! Always the bridesmaid, etc.
"This Summer" was released as a 7 inch single (with the b-side being a really great cover of Bananarama's "Cruel Summer") last summer, and it wasn't tied to any album. Superchunk felt like they hadn't recorded a summer song, so they decided to take a crack at it, and they end up with one of my favorite Superchunk songs ever. From the handclaps, to the amazing guitars, to Mac's really great singing (especially on the chorus, which leads into him saying YEAH! and a great guitar solo), I love every bit of it. The lyrics are just so vivid and amazing, lines like "My parade of hits, and a tape full of hiss and the sleeping bag on the floor." I am relistening to the song as I am finishing this write-up, and I am just getting moved by it anew. Of all the years of having songs placed at #2, this song is basically #1 as well. If you haven't heard it, please, please do. This is one of the greatest songs recorded by anyone this year, I think. Superchunk are in the recording studio right now recording a new full length album, and if they can make a song like this so effortlessly, 2013 may finally be the year in which they hit #1. And I can't wait for that to happen. Until then, listen to the brilliant "This Summer" which is without a doubt one of my favorite summer songs ever. "So come and erase this summer with me, erase this summer with me, yeah."
Sidebar: With The Mountain Goats' "Cry for Judas" in the Just Missed section, Bob Mould's "The Descent" at #3, and "This Summer at #2, drummer Jon Wurster appears on the list a whopping three times! He's the best!
01. Blur – Under the Westway
The kinda-reformation of Blur is one of 2012's great music stories. They returned to play a concert at Hyde Park after the London Olympics, and for the occasion the entire band recorded two new songs. One is called "The Puritan," a Britpop-throwback song that's kind of fun. The clear highlight though is "Under the Westway," an incredible ballad that reminds you that Damon Albarn writes and performs ballads better than nearly everyone else currently playing rock music.
Not to use a word i've used often in this Top 10 songs list, but you absolutely can't help but be moved by it all, especially when Albarn sings the line "Give us the day, they switch off the machines" followed by Graham Coxon's "SWITCH OFF THE MACHINESSSSSSS" which just, I mean, gosh. For a while Albarn and Coxon couldn't get along at all, and now they are singing and playing with each other again? It just makes me so happy! As much as I love the studio version of the song however, this song wouldn't be #1 without having heard the Hyde Park concert (released digitally and on CD as Parklive), which just sends the song into the stratosphere. In a set full of Blur's classic catalogue, they slip "Under the Westway" in, and not only do they perform it as great as you could ever want, but it fits right alongside their other classics (they play it after they did "This is a Low" and "Sing" and before "End of a Century"). These new songs recorded by reunited bands, especially when it is unclear if they will ever record a full album, are not supposed to be this great. They are supposed to be tossed together, just as an excuse to play the hits. In Blur's case, they have made one of my favorite songs of theirs, and if this is what they can do under short notice, I cannot even imagine what a full album would be like. I really, really hope it happens, but if it doesn't, "Under the Westway" is as good of a way as any to conclude this chapter of one of the UK's most important bands of the last 20 years.
Sidebar, in case I don't get to it later: You should absolutely give Parklive a listen, if you haven't. It's one of the best live albums i've ever heard, with a band at the peak of its powers, and a crowd that could not be loving it more. It got me back into a big Blur swing, which i'm very thankful for.
A whole lot of stuff that I haven't listened to (which I almost referred to as "stoff". A BUNCHER STOFF DER!), but I bet I'll make up for that by listening to all of them at some point in 2013. It's a good bet that I'll listen to Kendrick first.
I was so happy when I saw that this thread had been posted. The people who don't comment on this thread will be MISSING OUT, yo.
Ben! So great to see you here, man. This time of year is so awesome, and that's heavily owed to your always racuous set.
Shame that the Shins missed out on the top 10 - hope the album gets an appropriate due on your list.
Shocked on that Band Perry inclusion, but also intrigued.
Kendrick Lamar was an interesting end of the year success story - good stuff there, and I obviously gotta check out this Blur song.
Thank you to everyone who has commented, and has said really nice things. I really appreciate it, and I love reading what you have to say.
I won't have anything new up until Wednesday, when i'll likely post the first part of the 2013 movies list. If not that, i'll do the 2012 music videos list. Either way, both of those lists will be completed within the week. After those, i'll post PART ONE of the Top 40 albums list. I'll have to revise my original plan, and say that at the earliest it'll appear is on Sunday, and if not then probably that Monday. But until then, I hope you get some enjoyment out of the two sidelists.
Do you by any chance follow KEXP Song Of Day's podcast and/or BIRP's monthly playlists? I've found many of the artists I've seen here such as Aimee Mann and The Mountain Goats.
As you said on my countdown, so glad to see Bob Mould with The Descent here. It's most likely going to be Top 50 on my lists. His album, Silver Age, is very strong overall. Quite an achievement for a 50-year-old person if you ask me.
Charmer, Cry For Judas, Simple Song. All of them rock. There are many songs I don't know. I want to give them a listen after my trip as I need some new music, so I might add further comments. Very good stuff so far sir!
can't wait for their next album. and i'm dying to get parklive, i haven't heard the album because it haven't released here. They are really amazing without any excuse
These are my favourite music videos of 2012. The ones I personally responded to. So you may ask where “Gangnam Style” or M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” are on the list, because while I enjoyed those videos, everyone knows about them already. I hope these videos listed are ones you haven’t seen before, which is really the entire point of year-end time, I think.
20. Redd Kross – Stay Away from Downtown
Directors: Jeff McDonald and Dave Markey
This is a simple video. It features the members of Redd Kross performing in front of a green screen, as they wear KISS make-up. That’s it. Redd Kross has had a long fascination with the band KISS, so this video grants them the chance to finally rock out like their heroes. Oh, and it also helps that the song ****ing rocks, but we’ll get into that during the Top 40 Albums list. The video was directed by Redd Kross member Jeff McDonald, and Dave Markey, who directed the seminal ‘90s rock documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke.
19. OFF! – Cracked
Director: Whitey McConnaughy
The first of two Whitey McConnaughy directed OFF! videos is “Cracked.” This is a video where if I describe it, it’ll lose its charm. All i’ll say is that it stars comedians Ron Babcock and Andre Hyland, and the plot revolves around those people you see who hold those spinning signs that advertise a business (fast food places, car dealerships, etc). It’s just two great comedians being funny, with an unexpected ending. 1 minute and 27 seconds of fun!
18. Eleanor Friedberger – Heaven
Director: Scott Jacobson
The first video on this list directed by Scott Jacobson, a great comedy writer who has written for The Daily Show and currently writes for the wonderful Bob’s Burgers, is this delightfully weird video for Eleanor Friedberger’s “Heaven.” The video takes you inside one of those heaven pamphlets that people hand to you on the street, and goes in a very funny direction with it. It suits the song really well, and it’s just a mesmerizing video to watch, on top of there being some good laughs.
17. OFF! – Wrong
Director: Whitey McConnaughy
The second of the Whitey McConnaughy-directed OFF! videos is this ass-kicker clip for “Wrong.” It features Jack Black (who will be making another appearance on this list in a little bit) as an actor in an old Saturday Afternoon Movie titled LETHAL JUSTICE. It’s only a minute and 33 seconds, so you should just watch it for yourself, but needless to say, there’s some really great low budget Grindhouse-y kung-fu action in this video, with Black coming off as convincing as an ‘80s style action star. Hey, Hollywood: cast Jack Black in the next Taken-style movie! It would be the best!
16. Ty Segall featuring Brigid Dawson – The Hill
Directors: Ty Segall & Peter Grimm
I’m not really certain if this was an official music video or not, but I really love it, so i’m including it on the list. I can’t really describe it, beyond that it’s this really weird and wild collage of images, like if you saw the Chuck E. Cheese band on acid. And just the whole VHS-style presentation of it (including the Digital Cable reminder for The Boondocks popping up) really puts you in a spacey state, but I love it. Ty Segall for life!
15. Nude Beach – Some Kinda Love
Director: Tom Scharpling
The first video of many by Tom Scharpling to appear on this list is this really funny clip for Nude Beach’s “Some Kinda Love.” The premise is, what happens when a Pop Up Video-style person runs out of fun facts for the band he is talking about, and also happens to find out his girlfriend is cheating on him? You have your standard performance video playing, as the on screen graphics guy is having a nervous breakdown and making up facts about the members of Nude Beach. It’s all very funny and very Tom Scharpling. To partially use a quote from this video, anyone who thinks this video isn’t exciting enough can pound walnuts.
14. Tenacious D – Roadie
Director: Jody Hill
Directed by the great Jody Hill (Eastbound & Down co-creator/director/writer, Observe & Report) and starring Danny McBride, “Roadie” is a very funny video. The majority of its 7+ minute runtime is just the scenes before and after the song, involving Tenacious D interviewing/hiring a new roadie for their band, with McBride playing Sebastian, a Kenny Powers-esque figure who says many laugh-out-loud things in the video. That’s all this video is, really. It’s the video for a great song by a great band, directed by one of my favorite directors, and starring one of my favorite comedic actors, and it made me laugh a lot. That’s all I want!
13. JEFF The Brotherhood – Leave Me Out
Director: Jen Uman
This is one of those videos that sneaks up on you, and it just kinda blows you away with its low-key grandeur. The video involves Jeff The Brotherhood playing in front of a looped karaoke screen of various images. There’s nothing really more to it, beyond that the video complements the song really nicely. It’s directed by this great artist named Jen Uman, who directed the video for Ty Segall’s “Girlfriend” last year, which consisted entirely of Uman editing together clips of Salem the cat from Sabrina The Teenage Witch to form the music video for Segall’s raucous “Girlfriend.” With both that video and “Leave Me Out,” Uman has a real knowledge of matching certain perfect visuals with whatever the song is. It’s a real art, and I look forward to whatever her next music video is.
12.Nick Lowe – Sensitive Man
Director: Scott Jacobson
The second video by Scott Jacobson on the list is an all-star comedy extravaganza, featuring Marc Maron, Tim Heidecker, Conan writers Todd Levin, Brian Stack and Andres DuBouchet, Ted “@Trumpetcake” Travelstead, Rich Fulcher, Maria Thayer, and also the band Wilco and Robyn Hitchcock. Star-studded! It’s a fun and sweet little video, that involves Marc Maron taking a course in how to be a Sensitive Man. Nothing is funnier than Maron looking uncomfortable, so this is the video for me. His opening “Oh, Christ” when he enters the room always gets a huge laugh out of me every time I watch it. And of course, the song by Nick Lowe (off of Lowe’s sensational 2011 album The Old Magic) is fantastic.
11. Hospitality – Friends of Friends
Director: Scott Jacobson
The third and final video by Scott Jacobson on this list is another sweet and funny video, that is filled to the brim with comedy all-stars. It stars Alia Shawkat (Maeby from Arrested Development) and Videogum’s Gabe Delahaye as girlfriend and boyfriend, and it also features Bob’s Burgers writer Lizzie Molyneux, Maria Thayer, @Trumpetcake, Host of IFC’s Bunk Kurt Braunohler, among others. It’s a clever video that has Delahaye playing a real douche of a boyfriend to Shawkat who lives in New York and wants to make their relationship work long distance (“No way, dude. LA is my now” he says). As the video goes on, and Shawkat is with her friends in NY and Delahaye is with his friends in LA, Shawkat is the one who’s happy, while Delahaye is miserable. And now Shawkat is the one who ignores her phone, as Delahaye tries to call her. As the song goes, “I got friends that are new friends, friends that are old friends, and friends looking out.” I also love how the video has the “New York” scenes take place in L.A., and the “L.A.” scenes take place in New York. It’s a neat idea that adds to the video.
10. Hot Chip – Night & Day
Director: Peter Serafinowicz
The first of two videos that brilliant comedian Peter Serafinowicz directed for Hot Chip this year has many wonderful qualities. But let’s start off with the best part: Malcolm McDowell lipsyncing the words “I DON’T GOT NO ABBA. I DON’T PLAY NO GABBA. I LIKE ZAPP, NOT ZAPPA. SO PLEASE QUIT YOUR JIBBER-JABBER,” and then he ends it by repeating the phrase, with amazing conviction “DO I LOOK LIKE A RAPPER?” With all due respect to A Clockwork Orange and his other great performances, i’m fairly certain that this is the best acting of McDowell’s career.
The video features many other amazing things, including Reggie Watts in a spaceship of some sort, crashing with a woman’s spaceship and forming the Yin & Yang symbol, dancing monks, some weird egg thing, and many other insane and wonderful images. Believe it or not, this is the more normal of the two Hot Chip videos that Serafinowicz did this year! But we’ll get to the other one in just a bit.
09. Guided by Voices – Keep it In Motion
Director: Todd Lamb
Jon Glaser in a Guided by Voices video. What more could anyone possibly want?? Glaser plays a magician getting ready for his performance, and Glaser is one of the all-time funniest people, so he can make even the slightest thing funny. There’s not a lot to this video, but i’m just such a fan of both Glaser and GBV that I had to include it high on the list.
08. The Shins – Simple Song
Director: DANIELS
This video is impressive. Just when you think you’ve seen the most exciting part of the video, it throws you for a curveball, and *BOOM* something else happens. It’s one of the most beautifully shot music videos i’ve seen in recent memory, and the premise (a family gets together at the old family house and plays the video will of their dead father, played by James Mercer. To say anything more would spoil the fun) is really well-done. I’ve seen this video compared to Wes Anderson’s work, and I can definitely see that. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s thrilling, it’s as great of a video as you could want from one of the best singles of 2012.
07. Benjamin Gibbard – Teardrop Windows
Director: Tom Scharpling
The second video by Tom Scharpling on this list is a clever deconstruction of Ben Gibbard’s image. Kurt Braunohler plays the record executive who thinks Gibbard is too much of a nice guy, and he needs to become a bad boy to sell more records. The opening with Braunohler is so funny, which includes maybe one of the funniest lines i’ve heard anywhere this year - “BAD BOYS MAKE WAMPUM.”
The video then goes on to show Gibbard following a checklist of things he needs to do to become a bad boy, which includes getting his own reality show titled GIBBARD HOUSE, which has a cameo from the great Julianne Smolinski (@BoobsRadley on Twitter). Gibbard decked in Ed Hardy gear is a very funny image, and this video proves that he has a great sense of humour about himself.
A beautiful account of a small indie wrestling match, from Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner picking up one of the wrestlers in his car, to backstage, to the match itself, it’s just a really great video. The way director Zack Spiger uses the Lambchop song is really expert, from Kurt Wagner singing it backstage as they get ready, to the instrumental portion being when they get ready to walk to the ring, it’s just really poetic, and treats the sport seriously. You don’t have to be a wrestling fan to appreciate this low-key gem of a video.
05. Aimee Mann – Charmer
Director: Tom Scharpling
The third video by Tom Scharpling on this list is this really hilarious video for Aimee Mann’s “Charmer.” The video starts with Mann at a lunch with the hilarious John Hodgman, in which Hodgman alerts Mann to a service that would allow Mann to stay at home, while a robotic version of her does all her touring, and album promotion. She agrees to it, and a crate comes to her door, which contains the robot Aimee Mann. Who plays robot Aimee Mann? Laura Linney!! Unreal! Everyone knows that Linney is an amazing actress, but the way she plays the role of this robot is so funny and so entertaining to watch. It’s a really funny video, as you watch how the robot goes off the rails, as she parties with John Hodgman and doesn’t even recognize the real Aimee Mann. It suits the song, and it’s further proof of Scharpling’s amazing skills as a music video director.
04. Real Estate – Easy
Director: Tom Scharpling
Speaking of, here’s the next Scharpling video! This video features Chris Gethard, Gabe Delahaye and Leah Giblin as the Real Estate street team, who drive around in a van and try to spread the word about the band. They are very forceful (I love the part where Gabe forces the headphones on the guy’s ears and just backs him into a wall), and really insane in their dedication to the band. That then leads them into a radio station, where the great Jake Fogelnest is DJing, when the street team tries to do some payola tactics to get Fogelnest to play Real Estate on the radio (which includes the hilarious offer of cocaine). Not to explain the entire plot of the video (though i’ve kinda already done so), but that then leads to a Sopranos-esque abduction of Fogelnest in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. The revelation that comes at this point is so good and so perfect, that I won’t spoil it, just to say that the video becomes oddly sweet, especially in Chris Gethard’s case, in which he goes to the library and... Well, I won’t spoil it. But it’s a moment that is simultaneously hilarious, sad, and beautiful, all at once. “Easy” is yet another Scharpling homerun.
03. Aimee Mann – Soon Enough
Director: Ben Berman
“Soon Enough,” the second video by Aimee Mann on the list is directed by Ben Berman, who works for Tim & Eric’s Abso-Lutely production company, and directed the majority of the episodes of Comedy Central’s sadly cancelled Jon Benjamin Has a Van. “Soon Enough,” is a fun goof on A&E’s Intervention, with Tim Heidecker playing the ridiculous head of a company named “Innovative Interventions,” and it also features JBHV’s Nathan Fielder (who will have his own show on Comedy Central in February, titled Nathan For You) as the cameraman. Heidecker always makes me laugh so hard, and he’s in great form in this video. The faces that Heidecker makes when he does the guitar solo (followed by Fielder’s hilarious expression as he holds his camera) are so funny, and so absurd. What I love about Aimee Mann is that she writes these really sad and beautiful songs, and for the music videos, she usually turns them into goofy comedy sketches. Also, a fun fact about “Soon Enough”: Tim Heidecker co-wrote the song with Mann!! So, he’s goofing on the song that he wrote, though it really does fit the song, with the line at the end of the chorus “What’s more fun than other people’s hell.”
02. Hot Chip – Don’t Deny Your Heart
Director: Peter Serafinowicz
The second video that Peter Serafinowicz directed for Hot Chip this year is one of the weirdest and most absurd videos i’ve seen in a while. The premise of “Don’t Deny Your Heart” is that Hot Chip are playing a soccer (football) video game on the tour bus. The world of the video game includes N64-level graphics, Peter Serafinowicz and another person doing the play-by-play (with Serafinowicz doing his best Alan Partridge impersonation, and the other announcer taking the job of saying the most obvious things possible, such as “One team is in the lead now!”, “These two teams are playing a game of football!”), and well... At a certain point, the video becomes something very, very absurd. Like, if I were to say that at some point a Giant Space Mouth spewed out thousands of footballs, you would maybe have some idea, but you would truly have no idea what that entailed. And that’s only a sliver of what happens throughout the rest of the video, suffice to say that the title of the song is very fitting. It’s a work of comic genius by the amazing Serafinowicz, who has proven himself time and time again to be an amazing director of music videos.
01. Aimee Mann – Labrador
Director: Tom Scharpling
The final video directed by Tom Scharpling, and the final video by Aimee Mann is my #1 favorite video of 2012. It’s a perfect encapsulation of everything that makes both of them so great.
The video is a shot-for-shot remake of ‘Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” video (if you aren’t aware, 'Til Tuesday was Mann’s former band in the ‘80s). The video has greatest human Jon Hamm in the role of “Tom Scharpling” as he explains the concept of the video, Superchunk/The Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster in the role of the boyfriend, and also some great cameos from people such as Ted Leo. When you watch the video, you have to also watch the “Voices Carry” video (or you can watch them side-by-side!!), to get how super-specific and amazing this video is. The “Labrador” video proves definitively what a great sense of humour Aimee Mann has about herself, how brilliant and talented Tom Scharpling is, and that the world of music videos would be a whole lot worse without either of them.
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I'm sorry if some of what I typed is incoherent, but I hope my passion for all 20 of these videos comes through.
Next up: the start of the 2013 movies list, for real this time!
And to Charlie, I haven't heard of BIRP, but I do listen to KEXP sometimes. A great station! Not aware of those Song of the Day podcasts, but i'm so glad you found out about Aimee Mann, The Mountain Goats, Bob Mould, etc. They are the greatest!
Seeing as I have not seen any of these videos but will see them soon enough (I especially must see FIFA 2000: Now With Absurdity!), so allow me to comment on some of the awesome band/artist names. I'm especially a fan of OFF! (there better be an artist named ON!), Nude Beach, and, of course, JEFF The Brotherhood.
So amazing band.
