max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#402: lou reed & john cale - style it takes (from songs for drella, 1990)

if this sounds like hallelujah, only with no allusions to the old testament and a lot to pop art, it’s because john cale was a year or so away from making leonard cohen’s song famous when he and lou reed recorded songs for drella, their warhol eulogy. style it takes isn’t just soft and sweet, it gets nostalgic and furious—it’s downy but a downer, the combination that makes hallelujah so good. but leonard cohen’s song is probably better, what with its references to biblical coitus and all.

#401: paul simon - boy in the bubble (1986)

if the prettiest, sharpest, most sparkling american pop album of the 1980s wasn’t thriller, then it was graceland. it just so happens that paul simon and michael jackson shared a music video director, jim blashfeld, who made a clip for boy in the bubble that looks like james rosenquist making out with claes oldenburg (in a room decorated with the collage just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?). then there’s his video for leave me alone from the jackson film moonraker, a movie that includes an all-children version of bad called badder.

#400: michael jackson - don’t stop ‘till you get enough (1979)

don’t stop ‘till you get enough, michael jackson’s first solo video, is the one i’d take to a desert island, with no disrespect to billy jean’s bioluminescence, thriller’s gigantism, bad’s melodrama, and black or white’s crotch-grabbing. it’s not just that the tuxedoed 20-year-old looks so rapturously demented when he shimmies in front of green-screened marbles, it’s that his song’s velocity, its over-brimming melody, the berserk backdrops, his liquid legs and his falsetto come-ons (“i’m melting like hot candle wax!”) combine so incontrovertibly. it’s as if pop music had always wanted to look and smell and feel like this, but just didn’t know how.

if george clinton’s funk was intergalactic and james brown’s funk was coital, this is from wonderland: a shy introduction (“you know i was, i was wondering, you know, if you could keep up, because the force has got a lot of power, and it makes me feel like—it makes me feel like—oooooh!”) that collides into batty strings from the man who had arranged paul anka’s album earlier that year. the video’s director was a production assistant on thx 1138, the wonderful early george lucas film about escaping from a future where love is repressed and forgotten. “the theater of noise,” a hologram says in the movie, “is proof of our potential”—which is a nice thing to say about a disco clip that struts and sparkles so hugely.

it’s music with ferocious gleam, though saying michael jackson gleamed is like saying elvis shook his hips well.

#399: sparklehorse - sad and beautiful world (1995)

the sad thing about this downtown honky-tonk nightmare ballad isn’t that there’s sadness in its title and opening line (“sometimes i get so sad”), it’s that no matter how glum sparklehorse’s mark linkous was feeling when he sang the song, he was still a year away from mixing so much alcohol and valium and antidepressants that he passed out for more than half a day on a hotel room’s bathroom floor, leaving him crippled for months because of the cut-off circulation to his legs. but the nice nature footage makes things ok! especially the open-mouthed baby birds.

#398: big daddy kane - smooth operator (1989)

instead of apologizing for his long and beautiful affair with “a dear, dear friend from argentina,” governor mark sanford should have just been like, “girlfriend, you’ve been scooped like ice cream, so just swing or fling a gathering, try to cling, because it’s a big daddy thing. and i’m loving them, right, word is bond, so just play marvin gaye and let’s get it on… when it comes to this there’s none greater! sincerely yours, the smooth operator.”

on the other hand he does get points for actually saying, and i transcribed this myself during the press conference, “i would never say, ‘yo, i’m completely right with my heart.’”

#397: david bowie - rebel rebel (1974)

not that appearances are so important (only kidding, of course they are), but i resisted rebel rebel’s clammy, glammy, extra-warm, super-sticky, late-saturday-night charms until i watched bowie pretend to play it on a red guitar in spandex overalls, a polka-dotted neck scarf and an eye patch. outerspace rockstars who look like lesbians on mid-70s dutch television just have that pull.

#396: merle haggard - tonight the bottle let me down (1968)

merle haggard can wear a pale blue suit but still sound like a man whose only pleasures in life are bad booze and good ditties, only because he grew up in a converted boxcar, ran away to texas at 14, was arrested in california for robbery a few months later, became a day laborer, a short-order cook and a truck driver, was arrested for truancy, ran away from a boys home, was put in a high-security prison for 15 months, beat up a local during a robbery and was sent back to prison, met lefty frizzell after his release, started playing clubs at night while working oil fields by day, got married, moved into his family’s converted boxcar with his wife, tried and failed to rob a restaurant at 10:30am (he thought it was 3am), was arrested that day, escaped from prison, was sent to san quintin, found out his wife was pregnant with someone else’s child, started a prison beer-brewing racket, was caught and put in isolation, where he turned his life around, then he reunited with his wife. so he moans, snarls, drawls and licks his lips and he means it.

#395: violent femmes - american music (1991)

for a band of shlubby, depressive milwaukee guys most famous for a folk-punk ditty about masturbation, the violent femmes are awfully good. not only is american music a catchy song about catchy songs, but it seamlessly and accurately condenses popular culture into proms, drugs and loneliness—plus, better yet, its video was shot by the man who made baby’s got back and love shack.

#394: eric b. and rakim - i ain’t no joke (1987)

considering that eric b. and rakim are wearing sweet matching jumpsuits, and that this is the first song on their glorious first album, and that it includes the classic line “i hold the microphone like a grudge,” and that public enemy’s flavor flav randomly appears to do some excellent dancing on a basketball court, one can only sit back and nod in silent appreciation when rakim says, “i got a question, it’s serious as cancer: who can keep the average dancer hyper as a heart attack?”

#393: elis regina - àguas de março (1973)

elis regina sounded like cotton, tasted like blood, smelled like pipe tobacco, and looked like wine. the only thing better than watching her sing àguas de março alone is watching her sing it with cardigan-wearing, flute-holding tom jobim, beaten only by watching her sing it with him alone in a studio where they can whistle and giggle in peace.

#392: otis redding - try a little tenderness (1967)

the most thrilling music ever made by a man wearing a mustache and white pants.