if you don't know what this is by gif, you did not have a proper early 2000s experience. 😡😡😡😡😡😡
also, how dare you?!?! how can you go through life and not be mindfully relevant of daniel powter's "bad day" music video?!?! like, how could you?!?! we can't even fathom it!! the "bad day" mv (music video) is early 2000sAF and absolutely quality. not to mention that it is the bedrock of our childhood!!
a little fun fact about us, if you're interested, is that we both have serious recall and are able to remember things way way back in our kidhood (to quote our dad with that last phrase). now, it's not like we remember anything from the womb or shiz like that. we're not ptonomy from legion. but that being said, daniel powter's "bad day", which released in 2005 (meaning that the proud '03 babies that we are would've only been 1 at the time of the song's release and 2 at the time of the mv's release), holds a significant spot in our brains, qualifying it to potentially be our very first memory that we can remember. and we understand that having a conversation via text (or in our case, blog) vs. having a convo face to face can lose the emotional emphasis on things, so, imagine reading this next part in a very serious and momentous voice: the "bad day" mv rocked our world in all its 2-years-of-life glory. and for a simply shot love story, that's just overlayed with daniel's melancholy-feels track, you can bet our baby-selves thought we were watching magic.
but why is "bad day" such a big deal to us?? good 'q' of you. well, because "bad day" embodies our first music video experience, and, as you'll get to know throughout this sidenote, music videos are life for us.
so, without further ado it's time to begin....
THE
BREAKDOWN
OF MUSIC VIDEOS THAT
CHANGED
OUR
LIFE!!
let's go!!
FIDELITY:
if there is a mv that we can remember watching after "bad day", it hands down is regina spektor's "fidelity". fully taken place in a woeful, black and white, aesthetically pleasing room, our young eyes were possessed!! along with the soft spoken heart-ache that regina's track carries (that is, until its climatic swell), our hearts were stolen. it's hard to pin point exactly why this mv captured two 3-year-olds the way it did, but it is a good guess that it had to do with its storytelling and not the jcrew
model (lol). plus, what early 2000s kid didn't love
playing with colored sand. isn't that why we all
shook up our pre-school-sand-layered-water-bottle??
it's like regina says, "shake it up!!"
MAKES ME WONDER:
this one kinda makes us laugh as we think back to it, because, although we do remember watching maroon 5's "this love" mv, we-little-bitties absolutely loved this maroon 5 mv. and, yeah, our parents did make it a thing that we couldn't watch the "this love" mv because of the whole s-e-x of it, so technically we could use that as an excuse to why we were so h-bent on watching this one, but that would be a lie. we loved the "makes me wonder" mv
in all of its grooviness, even if it is basically just
adam levine being felt up and down by the early 2000s
idea of a 'sexy flight attendant'. there is a lot of fun
color in it - oh!! speaking about color, that leads us right
to our next one....
1234
a dance number at heart, feist's mv, "1234" was another one of our favs. clearly. it made this list after all. the moment in this mv that you see in the gif, where all the people pop out of - what toddlers may assume as - nowhere blew our young brains. and it wasn't just the blue, sequin jumpsuit that we wanted!! we also wanted to be in an empty warehouse (like at home depot or ikea or something) and break into a fun routine full
of colors of the rainbow. partnered with its one shot take,
makes the video even more mesmerizing!! and if you are
wondering, yes, we did try and do this at our house and
said warehouses above. and, yes, our parents had to stop
us. and, yes, we looked like weird kids, because we were.
HUNG UP
and speaking about dance music videos, madonna's "hung up" was critical in our journey!!
c r i t i c a l !! for one, after seeing mads "live life" by dancing her heart out in an empty dance studio, we thought "this is going to be what we do when we grow up!!" it was until our parents asked us how we would make money and pay our bills, that we knew that this life was not an occupation. yeah, we could've been dancers, but that took the fun away. ugh!! work. such an opposing idea for toddlers. essentially, this realization crushed our dreams. but we were still hung
up on this mv, and we knew that, if we couldn't dance
in a pink leotard for fun, we might as well do the next
thing that we loved. and that was film!! so, we have to
thank this mv for leading us down our favorite path!!
IT'S MY LIFE
when it comes to music videos that changed our life, no pun intended but, no doubt's "it's my life" has to be mentioned. it was epic - it is epic still!! being the first music video that's concept had us asking our family questions about what's going on, we were not only watching something, we were learning about crime and punishment. this was a heavy story too!! but a 3 minute and 51 second story with twists and turns. it was a proper agatha christie tale with gwen stefani on trial for
killing her bandmates. and her crying scene is hecka
emotional!! we felt like we were watching a movie!!
and this was the first mv that inspired us to make an
mv of our own. that one obviously, obviously being
a barbie doll recreation of this one, but it still was the
stepping stone for what would come later.
4 IN THE MORNING
we can't talk gwen stefani without bringing up "4 in the morning". easily introducing us to what an aesthetic was in the early aughts, this mv was simple yet beautiful. we are stripping things back to a simple, pale color palette, which only further compliments gwen's pretty, platinum blonde hair - the platinum blonde that no one else can rock as well as her. however, sidenote within a sidenote: our mom is totally gwen stefani. you may not see it, but you will definitely feel it. she is the coolest and such a bad apple. everyone should get to know her!!
LUXURIOUS
the other gwen mv that we can't miss mention of is "luxurious". serving us the chillax-ed early 2000s lifestyle that ends with a park party, which is not just a white persons gathering - like, it actually gives you culture and representation - this mv was a hit in our house. not to forget the iconic piñata "chi-chang" moment that is the perfect example of appropriate use of eye candy (lol). and you betcha that this was one that got a lot of replay!! so yeah, if you couldn't tell, we're gwen stefani
fans. but we are bigger fans (massively bigger fans) of
the goddess, and we can't talk about mvs without
talking about her!! so, let's begin....
STRONGER
we were born in the 2000s not the late '90s, so, unfortunately, we didn't grow up with "baby one more time" downloaded to our itunes. BUT that didn't stop us from getting our brit brit fix. and there are three mvs in particular that we adored!! the first one being "stronger". just an inspirational anthem on its own, the mv was nothing less. can you really get any better than telling a douche-boy off
with a classic britney "whatever"?? don't think so. plus,
this mv includes the classic "stronger" chair dance (well,
it's more of dance with a chair) and the scary driving in
the rainstorm scene (which we do remember associating
that scene with a memory as kids, and so we did think that
was actually our memory at one point????). anyways, the
next mv is....
OOPS!....I DID IT AGAIN
ohmygosh!! we loved this one!! but, honestly, who doesn't?? this was the first music video that we watched that included an intro. nowadays, artists cut up their music videos like crazy. intros, outros, in-betweenos - they've got them all. but for some 6-year-olds who are new to life and art, we were, once again wow-ed, thinking "what are we watching 🤩?!" equally, the motion in this mv is
off the charts crazy good!! lastly, we gotta mention
another classic....
WOMANIZER
AH!! this video is so great. it also brought on a whole conversation, because of our sensitive child-minds, about why britney was naked at the beginning of the video, and our mom told us she was wearing a naked suit (you know, mom just telling us something to defuse our weird hung-up brains), but we believed naked suits were things for a very, very long embarrassing time. but that doesn't
matter to the quality of this mv!! you've got dance
numbers, manipulation, wardrobe changes, and
cherry twisting!! this mv has it all, and we still love
it 'til this day. basically, all of brit's mvs taught us about
implementing power and attitude in storytelling. and man,
once we learned that....woo-eeee did it get interesting!!
FERGALICIOUS
next on our list has to do with up-leveling your mvs. let's see....you wanna talk sets, let's talk "fergalicious". now, yes, some of it is green screen. we know that. but, then again, some of it isn't. like the fergalicious boxes in this gif!! to say the most with saying the least: after we saw this music video, we wanted to live here. we wanted fergieland to be our home!! looking back at that, we say "good job" to the set department and "thank you" for showing us how purposeful set design can literally advance your entire
musical-entertainment creation. on the topic of sets....
4 MINUTES
this collaboration between madonna, justin timberlake, and timbaland was a bop. love it or hate it, it was a bop. a solid bop. and the mv was a banger. a banger with a bangin' ton of sets. going from a stage, to a restaurant, to a bathroom, to a street, to inside a car, back to the street, and then to grocery store - which has the infamous (infamous to us) walking on the conveyor belt - what is this mv trying to do to us except fall in love
with it!! and the sets here made this visualization even
more of a bop by making it dynamic to viewers. and
with that, we have to mention....
LOVE SONG
as you can see in this gif, the music video does rely on a bit of green screen, so we will not be talking more about sets. however, we will be talking about another element important to storytelling that this mv taught us about. and that element is unique stories. we know that sounds dumb. "oh, great. this story taught you about telling unique stories" - real original. yeah, we know. but with sara bareilles' mv about a girl who lives in a love song machine, forced to sing every time someone puts a quarter in the machine, we simply learned what you learn when writing for
characters in scripts or novels: the unique qualities,
all the little details, and every single quirk makes
your characters and story come to life in a personal,
realistic way. and we didn't need to be taught that by a
professor. we learned that from the "love song" mv. at the
age of 6, we would toot our own horn.
YOU BELONG WITH ME
you might've just looked at the title of this one and lost a little respect for us, presuming that our list of music videos that changed our life would be some scholarly, uppity list. in our defense, no kid in the early 2000s can say that they saw this video and didn't think it was cool. it's 2009 tay tay. it's 2009 lucas till. it's 2009 romance. and 100% cliché as it is with the band-nerd being seen by the hot jock, this is like fairytale literature. as
basic as this concept is and as stereotyped as these
character-types are, it's no different than learning from
og, classic literature (ex. fairytales) to understand the
fundamentals. it was the 2000s starting point and a great
one of that. in fact, another example of this is....
TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR
this taylor swift song alone was one of our favorite taylor songs as kids, and it still is a poppin' ballad today. so, if you are still rolling your eyes at the fact that we be plugging taylor in this sidenote, sorry. but whatcha gonna do?? ballads are terrific, and "teardrops on my guitar" was the one for us. this mv additionally has early 2000s stereotypes, but it showed us emotions. sure, rudimentary emotions yet emotional character-to-character relationships, nonetheless. especially, it showed us a different unfolding of plots -
one that doesn't end all happy and stuff!! WHAT!!
we know, but this was mind blowing stuff for our
baby-selves. and every little bit of learning is great in
our book.
DRIVIN' ME WILD
wrapping it all up, the last mv that we want to address is probably the most under-appreciated mv of all time. big statement, but this mv deserves it. common's "drivin' me wild" is a prominent part in our childhood. everything about this mv just takes us back, but we don't just love it for its nostalgia. its quirkiness with lily allen in an astronaut suit was definitely inspiration to us at a young age to make our films out-of-the-box, but the pixie-dust-glittery-feeling we get when watching this always sparkles a bit brighter
when it comes to the video's editing. the way it is cut
perfectly in sync to common's track has such an
obsessive-to-the-eye quality!! hence, we are purposely
ending on this video, because "drivin' me wild" is justified
for some lovin' that it didn't get in 2009. like seriously!!
the song is solid and so is the music video!!
all in all, these music videos are just a few highlights that catalog the beginning of us becoming better storytellers. more importantly, these music videos awakened the filmmaking beings in us.
we never really understood why we were so drawn to music videos. our mom once told us that she used to turn on the vh1 top 20 video countdown for us to watch while she would get ready, and that seemed to explain a lot. but the draw, specifically?????? we kinda just think it was fate or something (you know, if you believe in that).
because after that we just engulfed ourselves in music videos. we started to create them with our barbies since 5th grade. and at first they were crap. but then they got better. we experimented and played around with all sorts of film buff techniques to enhance our music video storytelling. and even though we want to become filmmakers now, we still have that passion for music videos and hope to create them in the future with our favorite artists.
but thinking about how it all started with daniel powter's "bad day"......🥲 that's a mr. keanu reeves woah!!
below we have included our version of "it's my life" (though it should be titled it's our cringe). AND we've included one of our other barbie music videos ("magnetic" - song cred to the amazing band: waterparks), if you wanna give it a watch :)
(it's our cringe)
(magnetic)
ps. all links to the music videos listed above have been hyperlinked to their gifs, so if you click on the gif, you will be taken to the music video on youtube :)