Controversy begets an endearing No Doubt edit, Eminem sullies his career even further with a goo-splattering Skylar Grey provocation and more in this week’s round-up of the intranets’ finest lyric spins on tuneage, complete with a God reference. Another weekly reminder that lyrics are just better in animated form. And flames are always en vogue. Until next week…
Skylar Grey – ‘C’mon Let Me Ride’
Session hip-hop pop starlet Skylar Grey gets all Ke$ha on the world with this tease from her forthcoming sophomore effort, Don’t Look Down, using twee toy piano and sacharine casio fills to pink-highlight a cavalcade of metaphors about sex. Executive producer Eminem pops in at 2:21 and just confuses matters further while images of bananas and goo get curiouser and curiouser. The auto-tune Queen nod doesn’t save it. But the text is cleverly animated:
C’mon let me ride your bicycle
So fantastical
On your bicycle
Beast of Burden – ‘Shadow Puppets’
We thought this was a videogame trailer for a good Mortal Kombat-esque 30 seconds of blistering thrash courtesy of East Tennessee metal heads, swapped out with shadow puppets for warriors. Instead, we were treated to the unstoppable flames and mushroom cloud backdrops of a self-esteem booster:
You make the difference
Just stand up and be heard
Now we take over the world
Stooshe – ‘Betty Woz Gone‘
X-rated Spice Girls export turn their Fresh Prince of Bel-Air homage, “Betty Woz Gone,” into a graphic-novel treat of mid-90s hip-hop calligraphy montages, that almost, almost, makes their limey R&B punkisms tolerable:
In London City, where we were born and raised
On an estate where most of us spent our days
Jamming and cotching, acting all cool
As we were smoking Areefa outside school…
Hawk Nelson – ‘Words’
Words. Words are like bullets, you see. And also the weapons of the christian rock army. Do not let the block lettering hypnotize you – a painful page from the spiral notebooks of middle-school poetry, right here. And just when they near manage to evade the ‘word’ of the lord, in coms a character break with a Big ‘G’ man ref:
God your voice is the only thing
We need to hear
No Doubt – ‘Looking Hot‘
Created after the backlash to their “Cowboy & Indians” style vid that has since been removed amid racial stereotype controversy, America’s favorite pop-ska crew dressed the second single from their near decade-hiatus comeback album with this scrap-booky edit celebrating “hot”-ness. Using only fan submitted photos, with lyrics creeping in like an iPhoto theme, it ain’t a bad spin, for as lackluster as a song it is anyhow:
Do you think I’m looking hot
Do you think this hits the spot?
How is this looking on me?