The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

There are many different opinions on just how bad Taylor Swift’s new song is, and the general consensus is: Pretty bad. And now I’m living in mortal fear of her new video also being bad. I don’t know why this should concern me. Swift has made bad videos for almost her entire career. She might not have made a great one before “Blank Space.” And yet I’m still getting depressed at the idea of losing Swift, the larger-than-life music-video artist. But even if the “Look What You Made Me Do” video turns out to be fiery garbage, it has already managed to overshadow the entirety of the MTV Video Music Awards, so good for it. This week’s picks are below.

5. Diet Cig – “Harvard” (Dir. Emily Dubin)

I don’t know why this would be, but it’s apparently impossible to make a less-than-great video if you shoot it at a roller rink.

4. Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire – “Bebop And Rocksteady” (Feat. Meyhem Lauren) (Dir. David Sakolsky)

Everything about this video is good, but two things are great: The silk shirts and the faces that the old guy makes whenever Mayhem Lauren raps anything. Those two things are just magical.

3. Phantogram – “Funeral Pyre” (Dir. Gianluca Minucci)

A series of tiny apocalyptic vignettes that, taken together, begins to approximate living in one of those end-time Summer Of Sam summers like the one we just had.

2. The War On Drugs – “Pain” (Dir. Emmett Malloy)

How can the city of Philadelphia be so beautiful and so ugly at the same time? And how can this video capture all of it? Because it really does.

1. PUP – “Old Wounds” (Dir. Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux)

In my years on this planet, I’ve appeared in a few music videos, including a White Stripes one that Michel Gondry directed. (I was tall Conan in “The Denial Twist.”) But I got to make my greatest contribution to the art of the music video when I got to write a goofy one-liner for one of the possible endings of this masterpiece. That makes me hopelessly biased here, but come on, you knew this was going to be #1 anyway.

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