Archive for the ‘Music Videos’ Category

‘Love Will Set You Free’ Video Review

Friday, May 6th, 2011

Whitesnake released a new album awhile ago, and they’ve released a video for the song ‘Love Will Set You Free’.

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Ozzy did a video of John Lennon’s ‘How?’

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

It occurred to me today that I never did a post about this song and video.  I’m not sure why I never did.  I checked the blog posts from back when it was first released for Lennon’s birthday back in October, and I think I missed it during the excitement over the new Greatest Hits tracks from Bon Jovi.

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‘Let Me Hear You Scream’ Video Review

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

After I had reviewed the video for Ozzy’s song ‘Let It Die’ last week, I realized that I hadn’t reviewed the video for ‘Let Me Hear You Scream’, which had been released earlier.  So I went over to Ozzy’s site and watched the video.

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‘Let It Die’ Video Review

Monday, January 24th, 2011

The music video for Ozzy Osbourne’s song ‘Let It Die’ has been released.   I did review the album itself back in July, and this was one of my favorite songs from it.

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‘What Do You Got’ Video Review

Monday, September 20th, 2010

The video for ‘What Do You Got’ is up on BonJovi.com now.

I actually like this one better than the last couple of videos that Bon Jovi has put out.   It’s a definite improvement over the last major video that the band did; the video for ‘Superman Tonight’ really just didn’t work for me.  I mean, I understand the point that Jon was trying to make, but I thought that it just kind of clashed with the song itself.

This time out, the video stayed on-topic and worked together with the song, and I think the effect was much better.

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When We Were Beautiful Video Review

Monday, May 10th, 2010

The video for ‘When We Were Beautiful’ is available on the Universal Music Portugal site (in case you didn’t already know).

First off, it’s not in black and white, which is a relief. Bon Jovi has a tendency to over-use black and white as an effect in their videos. This is just a straight-up concert video (which shouldn’t be a surprise, seeing as how it was recorded at the show in Dallas about a month ago).

The visuals are mostly what I’d expect to see on the big screen at a show, actually–just shots of the guys, blending in and out. There’s an occasional shot of the audience mixed in, which is a good move; it really reinforces the live feel of the video.

I would actually have liked to see Richie get a little more face time during the solo. (Usually during live shows they show Richie or a closeup of his hands during the solo. Great for the Richie girls, but it does tend to deprive the girls in the back from seeing some of the dance moves that Jon does during the solos.) In this case, with Jon dominating the screen during the verses, it would have been nice to see Richie during the solo.

That being said, Jon was hot. That sweaty slice of chest on display was just plain gorgeous.

All told, I thought that this was a decent video. A bit of a back-to-basics approach. Performance videos have usually worked out well for Bon Jovi in the past. This one shouldn’t be any different from the others.

Superman Tonight Video

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

I guess it’s about time that I get around to reviewing this…

I know it’s been out for some time, but it just didn’t seem to be a priority for me to get around to watching it. That’s actually kind of odd now that I think about it, since Superman Tonight was one of my favorite songs on The Circle.

I watched the version of the video over at bonjovi.com. I initially had some trouble with the video loading. However when I played it a second time it worked fine.

All told, I found it to be a rather unremarkable video. Most of the background imagery with the tunnel and the lens flares echo the cover art from the album.

The video explores the wealth of small-scale heroes in everyday life. Whoever came up with the concept of the video (and the person who directed it) did a nice job of paying tribute to all of the heroes of everyday life. I’m sure that the concept originator was most likely Jon–this seems like one of the many ongoing influences from his charitable work to carry over into the band’s music. It’s good to see at least some musicians drawing inspiration from positive sources rather than purely negative.

Jon’s hair on the other hand, not so good. It’s better than it had been, but I stand by my assessment from the Grammys–it’s starting to look like politician hair. Richie did look great though, keeping up the streak started with the video for ‘We Weren’t Born to Follow’. If Richie keeps it up, he might be able to steal me away from Jon completely…

We Weren’t Born to Follow Video

Monday, October 12th, 2009

The video for We Weren’t Born to Follow is up on bonjovi.com. (I spent the weekend working around the house, and I don’t really want their feed cluttering up Outlook or my live bookmarks, so I didn’t get it that way.)

Fortunately, the video includes the new solo, and with Richie’s rework it seems to have been cleaned up quite nicely. Even with an actual solo, though, I still think Jon’s yell of “Guitar!” right before is kind of ridiculous, and it still strikes me as being something more suited to a Poison song.

At least this time the primary video of the band is in color, and the black and white is restricted primarily to the marginal images. Since many of the chosen images of “nonfollowers” are only available in black and white, this was more of a necessity than an artistic decision. However, the inclusion and use of the black and white video footage seems to have been carefully considered and is well-balanced. (I’d still like to see Bon Jovi go for a whole album without using black and white for any of the videos.)

Jon and Richie are both looking good in the video. Richie had been looking rounder again, but he seems to have slimmed back down. Also, being happier seems to work for him; his face doesn’t look anywhere near as drawn as it had for awhile. That alone makes Richie look much younger. Jon’s hair in this video is better than the poofy thing he had going on in the TBS ad. It could still be longer, though, but that’s my personal preference.

Also, does anyone else find it ironic that they titled the song “We Weren’t Born to Follow” and then set up the video like a rooftop concert, which is only one of the biggest cliches in rock that I know of? Couldn’t they have come up with a setting for the video that was slightly more original? I realize that by now somebody has filmed a music video in almost every conceivable location, but there has to have been somewhere more original where they could have filmed this.

Midnight in Chelsea on MTV Newsroom

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Jon’s video of Midnight in Chelsea was featured as the Wake-Up Video on the MTV Newsroom.

Interestingly enough, the second paragraph of the article is quite complimentary, praising Jon’s ability to fit his music to what’s currently popular. I don’t think I’d call It’s My Life ‘computer rock’ though. It’s more of a pop/rock influenced song. (Now, One Wild Night 2001, on the other hand, is definitely dance or technica influenced–but that’s not the song that they referenced.)

Unfortunately, they blow it in the third paragraph. I’m not sure how they can claim that the video for Midnight in Chelsea is remotely relevant to the beginning of Jon’s career. Destination Anywhere isn’t anywhere close to the beginning of Jon’s career. It isn’t even his first solo album!

All that being said, it doesn’t detract from enjoying the video. If anyone still goes to MTV for music, this should introduce a few new people to what Jon can really do when given the chance.

Bible Black Video Released

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Heaven and Hell (Black Sabbath, with Dio instead of Ozzy) released the music video for Bible Black, the first single from their new album. Now I’ve been a fan of Dio for quite some time, probably even more of a fan of Dio than Black Sabbath, so I had to go out and find the video online when I heard. It took some doing to find a good quality video, but I tracked down a quality Yahoo video embed of Bible Black on Rockdirt.com.

When I saw that the video was animated, my first thought was “what is this? This is not metal!”

But I gave it a chance, and as it turned out, the video does get more metal as it goes on. Also, the song itself rules. The lyrics are classic Sabbath/Dio, and it rules. Also, unlike a lot of music videos, at least they bother to make the video look like it belongs with the song.

I’ll be interested to hear the rest of the album when it comes out. This is starting to sound more and more like a must-have for my music collection.