The very best music movies of 2020
The year in music was a strange one at best. Despite the struggle, uncertainty and restrictions that the pandemic has placed on the music industry this year, music videos have still thankfully been made.
However, the pandemic has affected the style of work. For example, we've seen an influx of animated promos from well-known stars, including Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Beabadoobee, and The Strokes. We've also seen an adoption of other techniques that didn't require live action footage. Some musicians opted for CGI like Ashnikko and Blackpink or Teams that cleverly use stock images.
The way artists use music video has changed, often adding weight to them or presenting them as part of a larger project. Beyoncé started Black is king in July she wrote, directed and produced a musical film and a visual album, a number of which then became separate Music videos published as part of it. And then there was Riz Ahmeds The long farewell, a short film by Aneil Karia, which was released at the same time as Ahmed's album of the same name.
Mammoth efforts have been made by artists big and small to create videos that feel original, innovative, and fun. Here are ten of our favorites to celebrate.
Salvatore Ganacci: Boycycle. Director: Vedran Rupic. Production company: Business Club Royale
We put the pairing of Salvatore Ganacci with director Vedran Rupic on our best-of list last year, and again they created something weird and brilliant that turns Ganacci into a half-man-half-motorcycle hybrid, like a centaur for the industrial age .
In this story, boycycle is discovered by an old man who cleanses him up and nurses him back to health before chaos ensues. What annoys this video the most is the realistic nature of Gannaci's harrowing transformation made possible by the VFX team at Haymaker in Sweden.
Piero Pirupa: Braindead (heroin kills). Director: Yousef. Production company: Prettybird
We showed the video for Piero Pirupa's braindead dance piece (Heroin Kills) on the CR website back in March, in which the actor Shaun Williamson, aka Barry from Eastenders, a star of British pop culture, stars. Since ending his role on The Soap in 2004, Williamson has turned Barry into comedy miles, particularly in Extras, where he drew on his character's tragic comedy.
Award-winning director Yousef worked with production house Prettybird on the video in which Williamson speaks about the dangers of drug use in a public announcement style before being taken on a hallucinatory journey himself. A nod to Brass Eye's classic 1997 cake review, the video does an excellent job of engaging the senses on all sides.
Lil Uzi Vert: Wassup (feat. Future). Director: Yasha pits. Production company: Big Dada Limited
Lil Uzi Vert's video for Wassup explores the possibilities of our new fascination, deepfakes. In the film, Lil Uzi Vert appears to be calling several celebs like Nicki Minaj, Kanye West and Donald Trump with “Boom” (aka Zoom), and viewers are shown endless scrolling scenes in which the rapper appears as characters from the story .
The video took a month to produce and features two forms of deepfake technology – a traditional method that transfers the entire face of another celebrity onto existing video, and a more groundbreaking method that creates animated video content from a single still image. Bill Posters, the founder of Big Dada Limited, and his team created lip-sync videos that were used to create thousands of AI-generated animations from portrait photos of celebrities.
Katy Perry: Daisies. Director: Vallée Duhamel. Production company: Partizan Entertainment
Julien Vallée and Eve Duhamel, who make up Canadian director duo Vallée Duhamel, are best known for their live-action films for Apple, Google, and Hermés, but they decided to try something new for Katy Perry's lyric video for Daisies.
Due to the restrictions of the lockdown, the directors combined their own style with their love of graphic novels to create a surreal, animated world full of clean lines and bright colors, with a faceless protagonist chopping off large stones and objects in her home. Daisies is one of many animated videos from this year and has a strong visual style.
Disclosure: My High (feat Aminé and Slowthai). Director: Simon Cahn. Production company: department
This video, shot in Mexico City with Marco Escobar, shows a young man who was brought to A&E after a car accident. Unfortunately, his ordeal doesn't end there.
Directed by the French filmmaker Simon Cahn, the young man finds himself in a series of funny and extreme scenarios, with the guest singers Aminé and Slowthai only adding to the comic madness. Continuing the chaos theme on this list, it makes sense that the video was named best UK dance / electronic video at this year's UKMVAs.
Bronson: Keep moving. Directed by StyleWar. Production company: smuggler
Another UKMVA winner was this clip for Bronson's Track Keep Moving, which was named best lockdown video in the Special Projects category. Swedish directors collective StyleWar takes us back to the office, but this time there are no jokes about the water cooler or powerpoint presentations to yawn about. Instead, it is pure slaughter when suitable workers fall down escalators and bosses ignite in flames.
The video was created entirely from stock footage of fluorescent-lit offices and large corporate meeting rooms filled with smiling employees who are then completely disrupted and distorted using various clever visual effects. After the team found the appropriate footage, they shot appropriate close-ups of mouths that dubbed the lyrics. They also built the offices in full CG to match the look of the stock footage. A dystopian ode to office life, the video is a reminder that working remotely may not be as bad as we think.
Idle: Model Village. Directed by Michel and Olivier Gondry
The video for Model Village was created in collaboration with WePresent and brings the small town mentality to life through paper collages and CGI. The video was directed by Michel and Olivier Gondry, who, as well as their individual projects, have been hailed over the years for working together for The Chemical Brothers.
Another video that was created in Lockdown pays tribute to the socio-political issues in the Idles' trail by creating a village with paper cut-outs in which pig-like cartoon characters live, based on the poetry: "There's a lot of pink skin in the village" . Michel was working on the hand-drawn pieces of paper in his LA studio, building and filming various pieces on his iPhone. Olivier took these collages and brought them to life through CGI. The aesthetic is like a happy kids TV show, but there are darker undertones everywhere, with it a dash of surreality that is addicting to the audience.
FKA branches: Sad day. Director: Hiro Murai
At the end of the summer, FKA branches worked with director Hiro Murai. Best known for working with Donald Glover on the Atlanta TV series and Childish Gambino music video This is America. The video for Sad Day from Twig's second album Magdalene was inspired by three years of training in the Chinese martial art of Wushu under the guidance of Master Wu, the highest ranking Wushu master in the West.
The video was shot in London before the lockdown and stars alongside actor Teake. The musician transforms into the hero she always wanted to see in mainstream cinema when she was growing up. She used her skills with a sword. In CR's October interview with Murai, he said of the project, “It felt like a very crazy gift. It felt like someone gave me the key to a sports car or something where she had practiced wushu for three years, and she had that skill but didn't know what to put in it, so it was my job now come on a ship for those three years of hard work. "
Slowthai: Feel Away (feat James Blake and Mount Kimbie). Director: Oscar Hudson. Production company: Pulse Films
Another Bonkers video that proves we all had to escape a bit of the monotony and grief of everyday life this year. This time around, it's director Oscar Hudson's promo for Slow Thai & # 39; s Feel Away that features the melodic reflections of artists James Blake and Mount Kimbie. The video is in a maternity ward where it turns out that Slowthai is pregnant. It's shot in a POV style, so it feels like a cross between an episode of Peep Show and Alan Brookings' classic commercial The pregnant man.
But the best? When the rapper and his newborn baby turn into cake and Slowthai's limbs are devoured. The baked items were created by hyperreal Cake Maker, The BakeKing we spoke to in November. "It was the first really weird concept I did that was so far up my street," he said on the piece. “I like to be as off the rack as possible with my designs. I always try not to step over the line and have to rein in myself. When they got in touch with me it was amazing. I've wanted to have a baby for ages but just thought it might be a step too far. I didn't know how it would be received and I couldn't possibly cut it … "
Tierra Whack: Dora. Director: Alex di Corte
The video for Dora, released in late October, accompanies Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack's first new music since she released her song Stuck, which is based on Alanis Morrisette's Ironic and dedicated to those stuck inside during the pandemic. US-based concept artist Alex Da Corte directed the animated clip for Dora and it's a colorful, toy-like spectacle from start to finish.
With several surreal shots of pop culture and childhood favorites, the video features shows appearances by Sesame Street characters like Kermit and Gonzo as well as scenes showing Whack, animated in 3D, riding a plastic turtle and as a shiny, green M & M. It's ingeniously strange and fits the visual language of the bonkers Whack in established their videos.
Take a look back at CR's most popular music videos from 2019 and 2018