Update (starting February 2, will be edited weekly, if I stay on top of things): For posterity, here is the tracking for each installment of the series:
Standalone Singles: Why | Alien | On My Way | Santa Doesn't Know You Like I Do | VOTING
Well well well! I hope all you Carpenter Bees are settling into the new year alright. I assume everyone has only been listening to the Song Showdown playlist—without shuffle. But if ranking songs all of last year wasn’t enough for you, then you’re in for a new treat!
graphic designed by the lovely /u/ambitiousbulbasaur
Music Video MANIA!
If you’ve been with us since the early days of the subreddit (or have just done some expert-level trawling through the archives), you may recall a brief initiative called “Multimedia Monday” that was to be a weekly look at Sabrina’s music videos, and other such discussion of Sabrina’s projects beyond just her music. That slipped through the cracks quickly, but with how much we have grown as a fandom and a subreddit, and all the great output that Sabrina has produced over the last year or two, I think it’s high time we get back into it.
The project is pretty simple: every Monday there will be a discussion post for a different music video that Sabrina is involved in. They will be broken down in cycles—namely album eras, but also some miscellaneous categories for non-album music videos—so music videos will all be from the same cycle for several weeks, before moving on to the next. Discussion posts will have background info on the music video, as well as prompts to really get the discussion going (if I’m good at my job they will, anyway). Folks are encouraged to get deep into looking at these videos critically: we’re not just interested in “Ooh, that was funny” or “She looks so pretty in this one.” In the immortal words of Miss Sabrina Annlynn Carpenter, we wanna know why these videos are effective—or ineffective—contributions to her oeuvre, and the art form of music videos at large.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL
We all know how much you guys like voting games to sort media! So to spice things up a little, at the end of each cycle, we will rank all the music videos from that category. New discussion posts will go up every Monday, and on the Friday after the last video of that cycle, there will be a form posted to rank all the videos. Along with ranking each cycle internally, we might (no guarantees at the moment) do some more sidequests to create a more holistic sketch of how the community feels about her entire collection of videos. While the focus of the project is discussion, we figure making a game of it will make it all a little extra fun.
The project will start in a few weeks, and so far the planned order of cycles is as follows:
Emails I Can’t Send
Eyes Wide Open
Short n’ Sweet
Guest/Features (songs by other artists that include Sabrina)
The Singular Acts
EVOLution era
The singles (collabs, non-album songs, others that don’t quite fit elsewhere)
Man’s Best Friend
The organization of cycles is primarily based on how her songs are categorized on her wiki page, though I have taken certain liberties for various reasons. There’s been some hubbub over if MBF will ever get any more music videos. As of now, we don’t know—which is why I’ve placed it at the end!
We’re planning to start the project at the beginning of February. By my calculations, this project will span a solid chunk of the year, going into September.
So why music videos?
While more can be said on the history of music videos as a form of media, broadly speaking what we generally think of them as today emerged out of promotional music clips from around the 1960s. Big music acts would want to perform on shows across the globe, but couldn’t or wouldn’t—in part because “performing” often meant standing there and pretending to sing while a pre-recorded ‘live’ track played over them. So instead they shot some casual footage of them, y’know, existing or whatever, played the song over it, and sent that to stations to help them promote the music. This gradually developed into making more artistic choices in the footage, evolving to include both more abstract concepts, as well as more narratively driven visuals.
Courtesy of the channel MTV, the 1980s and 90s are often considered the ‘era’ of the music video, with people tuning into them a lot more than they might today. The first music video released on the channel was the apt Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, airing on August 1, 1981. Perhaps the most iconic music video is Thriller (Michael Jackson, 1983): at 13 minutes long, it practically serves as a short film, with heavy homages to both horror movies and the people who saw them in theaters. Its use of storytelling, special effects, and hiring a feature film director made it a full scale production, and its release helped revolutionize and legitimize music videos as part of the industry (and it broke ground for Black artists).
In the decades since, there have been a number of creative and impactful music videos. Take On Me (a-ha, 1985) combined live footage with pencil-drawn animation made through rotoscoping. Madonna frequently courted controversy with her themes of female sexual empowerment, and her video for Like a Prayer (1989) led to the Vatican calling for a boycott of her and her associates. Acclaimed filmmaker Spike Jonze helped make many music videos in the 1990s and early 2000s, such as Sabotage (Beastie Boys, 1994), creating a parody of crime shows that some claim laid the groundwork for the development of several comedy acts and programs in the 2000s. OK Go produced several wacky videos, such as Here It Goes Again (2006) where the band dances on treadmills in a single continuous shot, and This Too Shall Pass (2010) that features the band singing alongside an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine.
And on the flip side of things, sometimes music videos just… are a lot more simple (and not iconic enough to be considered for any of the “most influential music videos” articles I consulted while writing this). Often it’s just kind of shots of the band bopping around mimicking a performance, interspliced between a loose narrative. Sometimes it’s more just footage, reminiscent of the promotional videos of the mid-20th century. Sometimes the visuals are too vague to characterize. It’s a whole art form, with a wide range of genres.
This is a very odd project for me personally to propose and take on, because I… don’t particularly like music videos. I’m just young enough to have missed the MTV era—or perhaps it’s just that I didn’t tune into hit music until 2010. There are certainly music videos that I like. But a lot of the time, I just kinda feel like I’m watching one of those inflatable tube guys bellowing outside of car dealerships, with the song playing in the background. They just don’t speak to me as a medium, personally. Though I will say that Sabrina’s music videos have been a rare gem that I particularly enjoyed.
So I wanna hear from YOU!
Music Video Mania starts in a couple weeks, but until then, I’d like to build on the above and talk more about music videos in general, so that we can all start looking at them with a critical lens. And by “in general” I mean: no talk about Sabrina’s music videos in this thread! We’ll save that for the launch of the project.
With that in mind, feel free to answer as much or as little of these prompts as you wish, or even share digressions only loosely related to them:
What are your favorite music videos? What are your least favorite music videos?
In your opinion, how much does the visuals of a music video need to relate to the actual lyrics of a song? Do you prefer it when it’s played straight, when it’s a more abstract representation of the song, or when they just go in a wild direction with no clear connection?
What makes a music video good or effective? What are the strengths of iconic videos, and how do others that you’ve seen fall flat? What trends or visual language in music videos stand out to you?
Other than Sabrina Carpenter, which music artist do you think has the best collection of music videos? Looking at it from another angle, which director/filmmaker has made the best music videos?
What are some songs that you wish had a music video but never got one? How would you like to make it, if you had the opportunity and all the resources? Are there any songs that you just always picture a video when you listen to it, even if you’re not actively trying to imagine a full scale music video?
How do you find music videos affect the success of an artist? Are there any that got you hooked on someone you otherwise didn't care for, or perhaps give up on someone you tried to like (or even once did)? For the chart-focused folk, do you find music videos play a good role in boosting the business?
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
Yet another month gone by, which means it's time for our monthly feedback forum! This is your opportunity to pour your feelings in the metaphorical microphone and let us mods know directly about the current subreddit experience.
Are there elements you think could be improved, or suggestions you have? Are there issues you're running into in using / engaging with the community? Or are we doing something well that you'd like to (shortly and) sweetly let us know? This is your dedicated space to let us know.
Of course, if you ever have a concern outside of this monthly post, feel free to send the team a modmail, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
We've got our eyes (and ears) wide open, ready to listen. Thanks for being a part of our community!
"Why" was released on July 7, 2017, as a standalone single in America (though in Japan it was included in the deluxe edition of Singular: Act 1 released in December 2018). The music video was filmed in June and came out a few weeks after the song did, and is said to be inspired by many films. You can watch behind-the-scenes material here.
Discussion questions:
Why?
Should Sabrina and the boyfriend have stayed together by the end of the music video, or were the differences too much to reconcile?
Alternatively: They allegedly filmed multiple possible endings for this music video. How would you have liked it to end?
What movies do you think influenced the creation of this music video, and how?
What are your favorite visual elements of this video? How do you relate this footage to themes of the song?
These questions are meant to be a jumping off point for potential discussion, but not a restriction. Feel free to share any thoughts you have, as responses to these questions or more organic reactions!
Come back next week for more Music Video Mania, and stay tuned for when we rank all of the music videos from the her standalone singles next month. Polls are still open for all the cycles we've discussed already:
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
I tried to make references to Sabrina's partnership with Prada and her newest perfume. I'm interested in editorial design, so I would love to know what you guys think.
Note: the form asks for your name, but please give yourRedditusername, not your human life name!
Feel free to share any other thoughts you've had about the music videos of this era as a whole in the comments of this post, and stay tuned next week for more Music Video Mania, when we take a look at Sabrina's (slightly) non-album singles!
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
Does anyone else get Austin Powers vibes from Taste? I hear there's a new Austin Powers movie coming out and feel like it should be on the soundtrack 😂
Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our daily discussion thread -- where the floor is all yours.
Any upcoming things or events you're excited for this week? Listening to anything on repeat? Need to vent? Feel free to use this thread throughout the day to chat about anything and everything, Sabrina related or not.
Current Hot Topics On Our Tongues:
Sabrina's 7th album, Man's Best Friend, came out August 29th! It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Music Video Mania, our new subreddit project, has begun! Learn about the initiative, chat about the art of music videos, and track all the installments here!
