The Return of the Music Video

A couple months ago I wrote a blog post about how music videos were getting a bit monstrous. At the time, I didn’t yet find it odd that I was even watching music videos even though that MTV had long stopped playing them, and well, who watches the television nowadays anyway? Looks like the Internet brought them back in full force. Did you realize Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” is pushing nearly 75 million views? New York magazine published an excellent article earlier this week tracing the history of the music video, its death, and now its revival thanks to high definition streaming on Youtube and Vimeo and the fact that we’ve all become obsessive media consumers on the web.

A few of the directors (including Spike Jonze, back again) are even turning the craft into an art again. It seems that the purpose of the music video is primarily to become viral, so we keep seeing more and more outrageous, sensuous and all around captivating videos. A good gimmick works as well; after all, OK Go is credited with putting this beast on the treadmill. If you haven’t been keeping up, I’ve got some treats after the jump — a prison love affair between Beyonce and Lady Gaga, a hybrid human-panda intoxicated takeover of LCD Soundsystem, and Beyonce again, whoa.