Tuesday, December 05, 2006

"Hey!" vs "Do You Love Me", or "why Tasha and Dishka jumped the shark"

You decide:

The 10 Million+ "seller"

The new release

"Hey" is a fairly crap Pixies song that probably spawned a million crappy Deerhoof songs. Formless, tuneless, pointless. "Do You Love Me" is amazing, a classic. It's a lot easier to mime a video for a crap song because the pictures can outshine the music without much effort. While watching the "Do You Love Me" video, all I can think about is how great the song is, which strongly detracts from the girls, who are supposed to be the real stars.

I hate being an indie elitist, but it was cool to see a fairly lowbrow Pixies song (or ANY Pixies song) on Youtube. Everybody already knows "Do You Love Me" (multiple generations have rediscovered it thanks to "Dirty Dancing"), and it is the Contours' best moment by far.

The word "gritty" might have been invented to describe "Do You Love Me". It's not exactly the best song to choose when you want to act silly and ham things up in your backyard.

"Hey" was sexy even though it didn't really try to be. When you watch it, it feels like it was knocked out in an afternoon without much effort, even though they surely put a lot of planning and work (and editing) into it. People enjoy the clip because of this perceived simplicity -- it's not so different from the reasons why music mags keep falling for 21-year olds who write catchy guitar-pop songs. In addition, the girls are very very pretty, but their antics in the video makes it look like they don't have any idea how pretty they are. Both guys and girls can't resist that sort of thing.

But "Do You Love Me" is overtly sexy to a different degree. All those tight clothes and booty-shaking show that the girls really enjoy showing themselves off. I hate to complain about watching cute girls dance, but sometimes the mystery is better than the reveal, you know? One can be tantalized by people who aren't necessarily being forwardly tantalizing. I have to give them credit for the outfits though -- straight out of 80's TV staples like "Solid Gold" and "The 20 Minute Workout" -- which are deliciously silly and are probably the best things about the video.

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