This is the video for the first single off Aguilera’s upcoming album Bionic. Not Myself Tonight is produced by Polow da Don and is synthesizer crazy. Aguilera’s signature vocals do kick in so it’s not candy coated.
Let us know your thoughts on the song and video below.
The guys in Hot Chip are only too aware that they are not high-school locker pin-up material. But that has never stopped the quintet of English synth-nerds from fancying themselves as the kinds of cheek-boned pop idols guys like me followed avidly in the pages of Smash Hits 25 years ago. Over the last 10 years, they’ve become indie darlings while perfecting a dance pop sound that, for hipsters, comes dangerously (and for me, deliciously) close to something you might hear on Top 40 radio with their fantastic latest album One Life Stand.
In the hilariously confounding video for the album’s second single “I Feel Better”, an alluring Auto-tune seduction over skipping beats and syncopated synth-strings, the guys play on the notion that they sound like Top 40 but aren’t by portraying themselves as Britain’s Next Boy Band. Six-pack abs and blank supermodel eyes abound! In fact, the parody is so dead-on that it actually fools one of the video’s commenters (“Don’t like boy bands, that said I think English ones are Much better than American ones.”). Those who actually know Hot Chip know immediately it’s a joke, but then the video turns on itself and the joke gets weirdly violent. Only then the video turns on itself again. And gets weirdly violent again.
Maybe the band is making fun of boy bands, or maybe they’re paying tribute to their own Inner Boy Band, or maybe the band is just video-game laser-zapping the notion that there’s any meaningful distinction to be made between the pop of Hot Chip and the pop of, say, Taio Cruz. And if there is a meaningful distinction to be made there, we need to be ready to see that distinction erased. Interestingly enough, the video implicates, and destroys, not just “Hot Chip” (the boy band), and “Hot Chip” (the resurrected boy band with new lead singer), but also the audience for both (including the real life Hot Chip, who get zapped around 3:25), which is obliterated with the cold efficiency of War of the Worlds martians.
Hot Chip – I Feel Better
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Did anyone else miss Erykah Badu?
The Dallas native has been singing heavy thoughts for a long time, and New Amerykah Part 2 is no exception. The album dropped this week, but single Window Time is causing a stir because Erykah strolls through Dallas and sheds her clothes on the street where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
Window Time’s lyrics are as apolitical as possible. I adore her spoken outro after the song. Of all things, though, the video distracts from the song for obvious reasons as you wonder who is in the crew and why aren’t more people looking at this naked celebrity. News reports focus on how Erykah could have gone to jail (as if) or been arrested (more plausible). The same reports dwell on how the video was shot was at the landmark in one take without a filming permit.
You can catch the Window Time video on Erykah’s site. She has wisely blurred out any actual nudity so it’s probably not the thing to watch in a conference room at work, but it’s as tame as anything on broadcast television.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to the whole album, but even if the concept album premise from her last release is still working, today’s is a different world with individual track purchases and video streaming sites. I can tell you the lyrics are strong, and there has never been any doubt about the power and control in Erykah Badu’s voice.