The 9 Best Music Videos of May 2020
Each month, we’re running down memorable clips and celebrating artists who are breaking new ground with their visuals or choreography. In May’s edition, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande carry out dance battles in outer space, Bronx rapper 645AR takes an unhinged field trip to Times Square, Kate NV sends a brilliantly campy news broadcast from Russia, and more. Check out the best of the best below.
9. 645AR: “Yoga”
Director: BRTHR
Join rising Bronx rapper 645AR on a haywire, DayGlo spree through his city. In the video for his airy latest single, “Yoga,” 645AR starts at home, trapped and subjected to progressively more apocalyptic coronavirus news alerts. Then a pink alien named Flexo-19 drops through his window and they take a neon-splattered trip to Times Square, encountering flashing holograms and sharing blunts along the way. The rapper’s flow, landing somewhere between a whisper and a squeaky door hinge, heightens the clip’s manic energy.
8. Teyana Taylor: “Bare Wit Me”
Director: Teyana Taylor
Whenever Teyana Taylor appears in a video, she brings eye-popping choreography and inventive outfits. For the newest single from her forthcoming record, The Album, she takes the directing reins. The clip for “Bare Wit Me” is a 1930s-comic-style short film starring Taylor and her husband, NBA star Iman Shumpert, filmed in dim lighting with bright pops of color: a Dick Tracy-yellow suit, blood-red lipstick. Taylor plays a murderous femme fatale speaking to a police detective and recounting her killings—all men, of course. She’s eventually flanked by a crew of dancers in similarly bespoke suits, and together they break into incredible choreography on their chairs, twisting into different poses with stunning precision.
7. Dehd: “Loner”
Directors: Ryan Hart & Emily Kempf
A Biblical feud is given a freakish twist in the clip for “Loner,” from the Chicago rock trio Dehd’s forthcoming album Flower of Devotion. After Angela the angel plummets from heaven into the Joshua Tree desert, she has to reckon with Queen Satan, a dominatrix who runs a local saloon/strip club staffed entirely by hot devils. If that’s not enough to sell you on Dehd’s delirious vision, consider that Angela is played by a drag queen, there are enough slyly fetishistic nods to make Freud roll in his grave, and the angels and devils burst into choreography that would make Jesus weep at its beauty.
6. Standing on the Corner: “Angel”
Director: Gabriel Rodriguez-Fuller
Standing on the Corner’s “Angel” is a staticky, wounded ballad that sounds like a radio broadcast from another planet, so it’s fitting that the video beams us directly to the cosmos. Blaxploitation icon Melvin Van Peebles stars as an astronaut set adrift from his spaceship, drifting towards a black hole. The video blends Afrofuturist-inspired CGI with lo-fi effects, as the black hole suddenly transforms into a group of masked dancers who stand and unfurl an enormous, dark blanket before him. It’s a haunting image that imparts a hypnotizing song with even more mystery.
5. Fontaines D.C.: “A Hero’s Death”
Director: Hugh Mulhern
Twilight Zone-level eeriness meets surly post-punk theatrics in Fontaines D.C.’s latest clip. Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen plays a talk-show host whose characteristic cool starts to slip before an episode. He gets weird looks from the gaffers, is upstaged by his puppet co-host Marty, and the musical guests (played by the band) are all deeply unimpressed by him. That’s all before people’s faces start to morph into warped versions of themselves—and his parents. It’s a surreal trip that calls his sanity (and ours) into question, giving the band’s urgent, confrontational punk a potent dose of anxiety.
4. Rosalía: “TKN” [ft. Travis Scott]
Director: Nicolás Méndez aka CANADA
In the clip for “TKN,” Rosalía’s latest flamenco-tinged pop single featuring Travis Scott, the two endure a babysitting gig from hell. A feral crew of children run rampant over them, climbing over Rosalía’s shoulders like tree limbs, gleefully racing through empty streets, and feasting on cake with their hands. They’re also fantastic dancers, joining the Spanish star for energetic choreography in empty rooms and surrounding Scott as he raps in the middle of a dark street. Rosalía’s videos are always strikingly artful, and with “TKN,” she delivers us another beautifully strange fantasy.
3. slowthai: “BB (BODYBAG)”
Directors: THE REST
slowthai’s “BB (BODYBAG)” is a pure shot of adrenaline, with rapid-fire threats delivered over a relentlessly rolling beat by Mount Kimbie’s Dom Maker. Its video ups the ante by dropping us into a tense game of Russian roulette in a parking garage, and it never eases up on the dread: The Bajan-British rapper sports a mask made of cigarette butts, raps through the POV of an open mouth like the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, and plays a knife game with his hand as flames rise behind him. Menace runs deep in slowthai’s feverish rap, and here he amps up the imagery to brutal new highs.
2. Lady Gaga: “Rain on Me” [ft. Ariana Grande]
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Look, if Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande want to release an insane video filled with neon latex costumes, CGI wigs, and a bunch of gays in space, then it’s getting real estate on this list. Gaga’s latest single from her new album, Chromatica, is a fizzy house-pop earworm primed for the dancefloor, and its video picks up where the Power Rangers-style storyline in “Stupid Love” left off. This time, Gaga takes us to a futuristic city on a planet doused in colorful rain, where disputes between factions are settled with elaborate dance battles. In lesser hands, the camp Jetsons outfits and rainbow-bright cityscapes could have come across as trite, but in Gaga and Ariana’s, they’re an example of music video excess at its most fabulously deranged, building up to a giddy hug between the two pop stars. What more could you possibly want?
1. Kate NV: “Plans”
Director: Kate NV & Pavel Kling
Moscow pop experimentalist Kate NV is a collector of unusual inspirations, from ’80s Japanese pop music to ’70s Russian children’s shows. Together they form a tuneful, unconventional vision of pop music, with dreamy lyrics in French, Russian, and English. The video for “Plans,” the upbeat latest single from Kate NV’s forthcoming third album Room for the Moon, is her best yet. In a screwy take on public-access television, she creates “Kate TV,” a station where she’s the lead news anchor (in a suit and severe makeup that channels both Laurie Anderson and Christine and the Queens). The clip takes full, cheeky advantage of its green-screen conceit, with a miniature version of Kate dancing on her own gloved hand, a dance sequence in front of a weather map that catches fire, and a cast of confused reporters who reappear in increasingly ridiculous outfits. The joyously absurdist clip leads up to an ecstatic, confetti-showered climax that perfectly channels Kate NV’s winsome charm.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
