The 9 Best Music Videos of April 2020
Each month, we’ll be running down memorable clips and celebrating artists who are breaking new ground with their visuals or choreography. In April’s edition, Rina Sawayama bittersweetly reminds us of the joys of karaoke sessions with friends; SiR reimagines Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, and TDE’s Black Hippy crew as King of the Hill characters; and Arca sets fire to the gender binary with a CGI blowtorch. Check out the best of the best below.
9. Baths: “Mikaela Corridor”
Director: Dan Streit
The surreal video for “Mikaela Corridor,” from the electronic-pop artist Baths, imparts two important lessons: Be yourself, and beware the hypebeasts. Directed by comedy veteran Dan Streit, who films in the style of a lo-fi VHS tape, the clip follows Baths (aka Will Wiesenfeld) as he creates an absurd, flashy outfit, then abandons it to try to fit in with a crew of streetwear hipsters. Decked out in a bucket hat and chain-print shirt, he joins the trio on a Beverly Hills shopping spree until he’s eventually demoted to their bag-carrying monster. The video is rife with weird jokes, cameos from friends and family, and one very supportive talking cat, like a Tim & Eric sketch with heart hiding in its humor.
8. KATIE: “ECHO”
Director: Paranoid Paradigm
KATIE is an L.A.-based singer who won the South Korean TV competition K-pop Star in 2015 and has been carving her own lane ever since. Her latest single, “ECHO,” is filled with Jai Paul-style electric guitar and a snapping R&B-tinged beat, and it comes with a video that makes extremely good use of its astronomical budget. From its opening shot of a spacecraft hurtling through the cosmos, the clip offers a series of scenes as decadent as fashion spreads, with eye-popping dancers, models, and backdrops (plus some strong eyewear looks from KATIE). There’s no narrative through-line, but the disconnected scenes suggest a story of deception: At one point, the hunky leading man is trapped in the trunk of a car as KATIE and her friends look on, unfazed.
7. Rico Nasty: “Popstar”
Director: Jason Joyride
“RICO NASTY PLOTS TO DESTROY THE WORLD” blares a newspaper headline in the lurid, collagist video for “Popstar.” That confidence and madcap energy has imbued all of Rico’s past videos, whether she was overrun with chaotic memes or flouncing in front of a CGI temple. For “Popstar,” the rapper is dressed in full goth-girl regalia as the camera side-scrolls through pop-art animation, replete with mouths rapping over her eyes. The video is a nod to Rico’s emo roots and yet another zany playground for her inimitable swagger.
6. Rina Sawayama: “Bad Friend” (Karaoke Video)
Director: Rina Sawayama
Rina Sawayama’s videos are usually bright and dynamic, dense with high fashion and higher concepts to deepen her rock-fueled pop songs. For “Bad Friend,” the centerpiece ballad of SAWAYAMA, she puts together something much simpler: a lyric video with selfies of her singing karaoke with friends. All of her pals’ faces are blurred out, leaving just an exuberant Sawayama enjoying herself as she belts out hits. The photos give an extra dose of wistfulness to the song’s head-rush of sadness about losing friends over her own selfishness. Sawayama’s sincere clip acts as a bittersweet reminder to cherish time with friends, and it’s even more powerful now.
5. Young M.A: “Foreign”
Director: Aplus
Young M.A dropped the video for “Foreign” on her 28th birthday, and what a present it is: a gaudy spree through cars, women, and blockbuster visual effects. Watch as the rapper does doughnuts in a mustard sports car and struts in epic slow motion away from an explosion. She even ascends an entire stack of sports cars into the heavens, brushing off would-be girlfriends along the way. Young M.A has always maintained an image of braggadocio and untouchable cool, and with “Foreign,” she takes it to action-hero heights.
4. SiR: “John Redcorn”
Directors: Daniel Russell & Dominic Polcino
“John Redcorn,” a highlight from R&B singer SiR’s 2019 album Chasing Summer, is named after a character in the animated sitcom King of the Hill, a sage Native American masseuse in a longtime affair with the wife of a gullible exterminator. The music video takes the inspiration a step further, depicting an all-black alternate version of the show with SiR in Redcorn’s role and Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, and the rest of the Black Hippy crew animated to look like the cast. It’s a nostalgic and fitting treatment for the song, which laments a similar love triangle in honeyed tones over rolling trap hi-hats. The clip preserves the show’s down-to-earth appeal while heightening the drama to match the song’s troubled soul.
3. Faye Webster: “In a Good Way”
Director: Faye Webster
On “In a Good Way,” the latest mellow folk-pop song from Faye Webster, the Atlanta singer’s arch earnestness feels especially cutting: “You make me wanna cry,” she swoons, “in a good way.” For her self-directed video, Webster leans into the sly humor at the song’s core, sporting a silver, sequined dress and swaying in front of a plain black backdrop as she performs an interpretive dance that bursts into a series of energetic thumbs-ups at the chorus. The move reaches Elaine Benes levels of awkwardness, but the appeal is all in Webster’s commitment: She adopts a serious, actorly air that’s funny and affecting, just like her music.
2. Missy Elliott: “Cool Off”
Director: Daniel Russell
Last year, MTV staged a pop-up exhibit in New York called “The Museum of Missy” to honor their latest Video Vanguard recipient, allowing visitors to pose in front of iconic backdrops lifted from her videos. I like to think Missy saw the exhibit, went home, and decided to one-up the concept entirely. For “Cool Off,” the hip-hop legend’s latest future-forward clip, she casts herself as various exhibits in a Guggenheim-inspired space, then comes to life in electrifying ways. It’s Night at the Museum meets Hype Williams, veering between popping-and-locking copper statues and neon circus gymnastics. As Missy bobbles around looking like an oversized Weeble toy, you’ve got to applaud her continued commitment to the artform.
1. Arca: “Nonbinary”
Director: Frederik Heyman
For Arca’s first single from forthcoming album KiCK i, she presents a thesis on her own multifaceted, nonbinary identity. Over gunshots and clanging bells, she raps urgently against a world that wants to box her into one category: “I don’t give a fuck what you think/You don’t know me.” For the video, Arca contorts her body through various fucked-up CGI settings: pinned naked to a mossy rock by a pair of shears; pregnant and held by stirrups as sinister cyborgs operate on her; paying strange, robotic homage to The Birth of Venus. It’s an unsettling vision of self-reckoning and a graphic feast for the eyes.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
