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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: video

  • New Single! Jason Mraz “I Won’t Give Up”

    New Single! Jason Mraz “I Won’t Give Up”

    I Won't Give Up
    When we think of the kind of pop stars that thrive on periodic self-reinvention, we generally think of women. Madonna, of course, is the mother superior reinventer, but it’s basically a fact of life for even a minor female pop star that you don’t wear the same look twice and personae should be changed as often as underwear. You know – to stay fresh and stuff.

    We don’t think this way about the guys though, do we? And maybe it’s just because in the last 30 years or so, there have been so few male solo artists who have sustained careers in the pop spotlight past their first or second hit that they either don’t stick around long enough to reinvent themselves – that or their reinventions go completely unnoticed. Let this be a warning, Jason Derulo! This is why “I Won’t Give Up”, the new single by Jason Mraz is so surprising.

    It’s not the music so much (although there’s that too): it’s the look. I don’t know if it’s more 1971 hippie or 1991 grunge, but Mraz has made a clean break with the my-life-is-a-sunny-beach, dorky-straw-fedora thing that made him a star. Check out the new video, which got a much-hyped premiere on the E! Network on Thursday:

    “I Won’t Give Up” sounds to me a lot like late 70s Poco (I mean that in a really good way), only with a bridge that sounds somewhat plagiarized from the Starland Vocal Band (regretfully, also meant in a really good way). I kinda like this song. It’s not the instant charmer that “I’m Yours” was, nor do I think that it will have that song’s legs (has “I’m Yours” ever really dropped out of heavy rotation on Top 40 radio?).

    On the other hand, it’s also missing all the things that made me hate to love “I’m Yours” – the cheesy, white-boy-scatting vocals chief among them. On the other hand (is that three now?), this video feels awfully emotionally manipulative (the electrical poles as crosses in the background – sweet touch there) and it makes me like the song less. I’m not looking forward to hearing this one played behind every inspirational Olympics montage, or American Idol introductory video, or PETA commercial for the next two years.

  • You Call Can Him… John Wesley Harding

    John Wesley Harding's New Album: ''The Sound of His Own Voice''
    Back when I was in high school, British folk-rocker John Wesley Harding first wooed me with an earnest acoustic guitar cover of Madonna’s (then quite recent hit) “Like a Prayer” (from an EP he called God Made Me Do It), and then with a great big horn-backed celebration (?) of the dark side of mankind called “The Devil In Me”. Although he’s been a most prolific artist for the past two decades, I lost touch with him somewhere between high school diploma and college degree. But with his latest video, he takes me all the way back to middle school, with some help from his comedian pal Eugene Mirman (better known perhaps as “The Fertility Clown”). The song is called “Sing Your Own Song”, from the album The Sound of His Own Voice, and as much as the video borrows from a Paul Simon classic, the song itself is a virtual re-write of Mama Cass by way of Sesame Street.

    Oh, and did I mention you can download the song for free from Amazon? You’re welcome.

  • This Is Awesome: Fanfarlo’s New Song and Video “Replicate”

    Is it dead enough yet? It is still enough yet?
    “Will it replicate inside our bodies now?” That’s the question at the center of a new song from the British quintet called Fanfarlo, and every time I hear that line, it makes me want to go back and listen to the verses to try to discern just exactly what “it” is. And I still haven’t quite got it.

    Fanfarlo’s debut album Reservoir was one of the more charming records of the last couple of years – a collection of lyrical indie-folk songs, delivered in Simon Balthazar’s lilting troubadour tenor over all manner of acoustic strings, horns, piano and percussion, roughly splitting the difference between (the band) James’s most bombastic moments and the The Decemberists’ most modest, with a loving nod to the singer-songwriter pop of the 70s. Not only are they an effortlessly charismatic live act, they’ve also put out some great videos, as evidenced by last year’s Twilight Zone-ish “Fire Escape”.

    Following some extensive touring behind that first record, the band retreated to a “remote slate quarrying town in Northern Wales” to record its follow-up, and are previewing the album with a video (and free mp3 download) of “Replicate”. The song is a surreal and suspenseful compendium of unanswered questions, sung over tense strings, diabolically playful little organ doodles and haunted house woodblock percussion. Its verses feel like an update on a Bernard Herrmann film score, and after asking one last time – Will it replicate inside our bodies now? – the song comes to an abrupt end without reaching any kind of catharsis or resolution. Just: over.

    I can’t wait for this album.