Top 3 Music Videos

   I immensely enjoyed both of the music video classes and found it hard to narrow them down to three. One of the following videos I had seen a head of time, but it still deserves the acclaim. Without further ado, here they are.

    #3) Hurt by Johnny Cash

 Johnny Cash's outstanding final song is a masterpiece. Who would have thought that a cover would be one of his best? Despite it's perfection, I always have a hard time listening to the song. It truly is haunting given the lyrics and it's job of depicting Cash's empire as nothing. It's understandable though, what's truly important in the final years of one's life? To Cash, it clearly wasn't fame or fortune, and the music video does a fantastic job of displaying this. For instance, when the woman, his wife, is watching over him, she is saddened by what she sees. She realizes that Cash is in a dark place and there is no changing that. It's reassurance that Cash is afraid of death and nothing will alter that. On top of that is the abundance of darkness in the video pushes it even farther. A simple effect that adds so much. Cash's Hurt may be too dark for some, but it's essential viewing for anyone interested in DMA.

#2) First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes

Bright Eyes' wonderful song is just great in every way. It's such a happy song about love that anyone can enjoy, or perhaps I just enjoyed it because I have a girlfriend back home in Maine that I'm dying to see. Either way, the music video is just delightful. So many different kinds of people are brought together and almost all of them display the same result, happiness through love. It's so simple, but it hits home for so many because everyone can relate. No matter if straight, gay, black, white, young, old, or even maternal love, it's all the same. It's something that people argue about all the time, but this video allows them to just take a moment and realize that we're all the same, nothing more, nothing less. Bright Eyes did it in about three minutes, who else can do that?

#1) Allaxis by Kaly Live Dub

Best incorporation of Dirty Harry in any song. Wow, this video was stunning. I'm not gonna lie, I wished I had minored in Animation. The style of this animation was astounding. The animators on this project took a whole new take on the song, a practically wordless song I may add. That's difficult, especially when it's something as huge as a path to suicide. The way I look at the video is that the driver tried to see himself as everyone but himself and/or tried to fit in with anyone, but nothing did the job of fixing his problems. As things, or his personas, got bigger, he couldn't handle it, hence why it didn't fit in his car, but he keeps trying these personas in hopes of finding the right one. Think of the car as his body, and even when he committed suicide he still didn't want to be himself, hence again why his arm changed personas at the very end. That's my take on the video, and because of it and the animators' incredible job, it was my favorite music video that we watched.