From graphic novel, smoking-gun lyric brilliance to DIY cubist animations, here we are in world with seven billion free will minds, seeing lyric videos continue to evolve into the best damn thing to happen to words since tuneage. Live it up, people. Humans still have control over computers so far. And who wants to see lyric videos made from soulless computers? Nobody. The answer is nobody.
N.A.S.A. – ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ ft. Karen O
Debuting back in this year’s Super Bowl over a Sonos ad spot, the disco-slick and handclap update to the Marley classic gets one of this year’s most creative lyric videos we’ve seen, courtesy of LA-based animator/director San Chareoenchai, and his reimagining of the justice thread with a take on Zane Grey’s 1921 Western novel The Mysterious Rider, so reports Rolling Stone. Smoke, blood, train cars, just some of the ways this sunset-hued drama rolls out in perfect lyric graphic novel form, complete with a shadowy band jam with all the characters towards its end:
Miniature Tigers – ‘Oblivious’
Following the summertime jangle pop crush of “Swimming Pool Blues,” the second lyric video tease from the Brooklyn Ben Kwelller-ian hearts’ LP4, Cruel Runnings, goes DIY with a boxy old-school computer animation guitarist Algernon Quashie has been dabbling with in his current design off-time. For a bitter-sweet synth-crunch jam about a one-way relationship, the cubist adventures of this Poltergeist-meets-Legos crazy house, narrated with plain lyric text in the footer gets the job done just right:
Powerman 5000 – ‘How to be a Human’
Still offering statements on what things are like, here Rob Zombie‘s little bro, Spider One, as he likes to call himself, breaking down the ways in which to be human, that’s pretty damn creative, actually, the way of a lyric vid. Basically, viewers are blasted with a digital font not too far off from an alarm clock, with ‘human’ percentage meters and silhouettes of Spider’s face, like you’re the Terminator chasing down Sarah Connor:
Madball – ‘DNA’
New York hardcore vets’ latest, Hardcore Lives, doesn’t drop until June, a project frontman Freddy Cricien has said is “for everyone and anyone with an open mind and heart,” while paying homage to a phrase Cricien shouted at the ripe age of 12 on their first album – “hardcore lives!” For “DNA” the band chose to roll out sentiments like a highlight reel of their touring-face best, boiling the point down to, essentially, that we are human, and fucked up, and that’s okay. Fans will dig the reel, but it’s not exactly raising any creative bars. Of course – human, fucked up, a-okay, oh well:
Major Lazer – ‘Aerosol Can’ ft. Pharrell Williams
Can’t tell if this is chalkboard grade school-era punishment or art installation. Either way, passion for lyric process, with loads of little animation text tricks that once again take first-wave lyric vids to the house, despite using a damn marker instead of an aerosol can like the damn title and song lace into metaphor:
