... telling Kanye the answer is actually "Sledgehammer"

Okay, so we're now about a month away from the Kanye Incident, where the pulled an ODB and jumped up on stage at the MTV VMA to defend the wife of his BFF by saying that "Single Ladies" was the best video of all time, by default making it better than the winning video by Taylor Swift. While most people tusk-tusked and shook their heads at his behavior, it did go on to win Video of the Year meaning that he actually did have the inkling of a point (Which is interesting considering that it wasn't the best video made by a woman, but it was the best video of the whole year...but that's something other than else).

(Sidebar: Have you seen those "literal videos" where they re-dub the video and make it sound like the singer is singing about what it going on in the video. Sure you do. You could not do that for the Taylor Swift video, because it pretty much is that already.)

Now, I've come to terms with the ridiculously short half-life that both pop music and its history have in recent times. I've also come to terms that what passes for a great, award winning video these days is pretty lame (Seriously, "Cryin'" by Aerosmith over "Sabotage", "Heart Shaped Box" and "Everybody Hurts"? Most people don't even remember which video "Cryin'" was. It's the other one with Alicia Silverstone. No not that one, the other one.). What did bewilder me a little bit was that a lot of people came to Swifts' defense that it was a rude thing, but no one actually took Kanye up on this statement that "Single Ladies" was the best video of all time. ALL! TIME!

Before I go too deep into this, I do want to say that "Single Ladies" is a good video. It's not unpleasing to the eye, and actually does tie into the song's subject matter nicely. It's not exactly an original work though. It's a copy of a Bob Fosse routine, and that rarely gets mentioned. And I won't get into the fact that Beyonce's dancing is like David Fincher's film making - technically perfect, but in the end leaves me unmoved. I admire it more for the execution than the passion.

So...let's answer the question that hung in the air that no one really wanted to answer: The greatest video of all time (ALL! TIME!) is....



It seems almost trite, doesn't it? A lot of people will say "Of course it is. That shows no insight."

THAT'S just how good this video is!

Let's forget the claymation and the special effects and file them under "Fincher" since I've dismissed above the idea that technique trumps passion. "Sledgehammer" itself is one of Gabriel's most overtly sexual songs. It's one long double entendre set to a funky combination of American and African rhythms that pretty much should just be called "sexy". It would have been easy to push the envelope and make a titillating little video and call it a day, which is what he would do later with "Steam" and "Kiss that Frog".

What the video does is extrapolate the ideas of the song onto a larger canvas. Yes, men (in this case, The Man) are (is) driven by sex and the pursuit of it, and as a species we're also fixated on sexual images and sounds (for lack of a better term). The video puts the come-on of "Sledgehammer" into a universal context, starting with sperm and egg, creating a person who then dreams of trains, planes, and once he masters those he dreams of entertainments (notice - train + airplane leads to roller coaster - a flying train. The bumper cars and blue and pink, traditionally associated with male and female). It is after all of this that The Man turns his mind to those elemental pursuits (water..fire...ice) which are all subdued, smashed by the sledgehammer.

Now it gets interesting. Because now that The Man has taken over his environment and has sexualized it, he now starts thinking of why - and the video and song starts using the images of evolution as the components sexual proposition. The video and song now have more natural images in them (fruit, honey bees, and one of the starting points of evolution in the fish that swim around Gabriel). Even as he considers that he is just a part of nature, the sledgehammer comes back in, building around him as well as destroying those walls - creative destruction, if you will.

If I have to tell you what the sledgehammer is then you might not be my target market.

The instrumental contains what has to be the most striking image of the whole video - the chicken and egg vaudeville routine. To me, this is where it all comes together. Evolution, reproduction, and desire all come together in a song and dance that mirrors the chicken-and-egg debate. The video is summing up its main argument - is love and desire driven by evolution, or is evolution driven by love and desire.

The song ends with an increasing crescendo, a climax, as Gabriel finishes his proposition. The video winds down with the sledgehammers getting combined into people, but the second real pivot point (after the chicken/egg) is in the coda. Gabriel, exhausted having gone from zygote to embryo to person all in three minutes, collapses exhausted into an easy chair. He then merges into the starscape - The Man's final step into the cosmos, echoing the line "this is the new stuff/I come dancing in".

Most people look at "Sledgehammer" as a funky, borderline dirty song. A lot of people also say it was emblematic of an age where the video could make a song a hit. That's true. But it's also like saying that "A Hard Day's Night" was only popular by virtue of its inclusion in A Hard Day's Night. Both are actually independent pieces of art that might appear trite on the surface, but actually have something to say about how we perceive our place in the world, and each take advantage of changes in the visual media to express it. "Single Ladies", which a good and striking video, never really gets beyond the level of "Look at how good and striking this video is".

So Kanye, I'm proud of you standing up for your friend, and I'ma let you finish, but "Sledgehammer" is the greatest video of all time. All! Time!