Some videos, 2009

[koganbot]

I had an ongoing list of videos I liked, then back in May I forgot to keep up with it, so here are some vids from early '09. For further viewing pleasure visit Kat's tumblr.

Will Young "Let It Go": Superhero in his mind, life doesn't cooperate, he tries to adapt. The song hadn't hit me on the album: the chord changes seemed to acquiesce too easily, turned this into a "nice" song while the voice was trying to do something sadder. The video delivers what the music alone couldn't. Will is precisely accurate as the would-be boisterous drunk, flashes of jollity and rage, ultimate defeat, while the bouncers are giving him the old heave-ho.

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Untouchable ft. Hwa Young "Tell Me Why": petronia wrote, "What I'm getting is that the 'interrogation scene' takes place in the head of the male protagonist. His fiancée rejected him, fell into an obvious deep depression and attempted/committed suicide in such a way as to make it seem the relationship was the problem (tearing up photos, etc.), except the guy was basically blindsided - so the rest of the vid is a reification of his warring emotions of anger and confusion (TELL ME WHY YOU DID THIS TO ME) and helplessness at not being able to save the Korean Sylvia Plath from herself (stuck on the balcony watching the proceedings). Why he had to call in a pop group to aid him in the effort I don't know though - presumably Untouchable speak to his emotions during this difficult period in his life?"

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The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain "I'm On A Boat"

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Enrique Iglesias ft. Ciara "Takin' Back My Love": Modernist design elements become subject and object of "action painting" approach to rearranging apartment.

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Nikki Awesome "You Say (It Was Supposed To Be)"

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Timberlee f. Tosh "Heels"

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Zero"

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Britney Spears "If You Seek Amy"

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Taylor Swift "White Horse"

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Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"

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And here's a recent one, "Caesar" by I Blåme Coco ft. Robyn [EDIT: well, this was taken down, and if there's (another?) copy of the music video I can't find it so here's the track but no mv]:

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Comments

[koganbot]

My father is the child of immigrants, but he said they never spoke Russian or Yiddish in the home. Maybe they assumed there was just no going back, psychologically as well as physically. Both his parents had spent time exiled/imprisoned in Siberia (my grandfather escaped from a Czarist prison and made his way to North America by way of Vladivostok); but I don't think they had any thought of returning after the revolution (there must have been a period before it became clear how bad the Communists were going to be; but then, the anti-Semitism was sure to remain; both of my father's parents died when I was a child, before I would have thought to ask them their reasoning). I don't know what the immigrant community was like on the Chicago west side of the '20s and '30s when my dad was growing up, what its attitude was towards language and such (and it's only recently that I realize what a dumbfuck I was for not asking): I don't know if Russian, Yiddish, and Ukrainian were still vibrant languages there or were just what old people spoke.

[koganbot]

Here's a working link for my old Drunken Tiger review (annoyingly, the Village Voice re-did their URLs, destroying old links in the process). Among my many ignorances when writing that review was that I thought all the members of Drunken Tiger had been born in the L.A. area and came late to the Korean language. That may have been true of Roscoe Umali, possibly was true of DJ Shine (Wikip doesn't list a place of birth though gives South Korea as his "origin"), but definitely is not true of Tiger JK, who was born in Seoul, moved with his family to the U.S. at age 12, went back and forth between the two countries making music as a young man, and now seems to work mainly out of South Korea. As petronia notes above, he's married to the excellent rapper and singer Yoon Mi-rae, a.k.a. T, born in Texas (mother Korean-American, father African-American), whose career began in South Korea when she was a teenager.