In Praise Of The Long Form Music Video

Long form music videos are a truly hit or miss kind of deal. These kinds of videos are basically longer music videos that can double as short films for songs. There are a few classic examples such as Michael Jackson's nearly fourteen minute long "Thriller" video and his video for "Bad" directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese and co-starring an at the time rather popular Wesley Snipes.

            These days long form videos are not as rare as they used to be, though they are still a rather unique thing. They are mostly relegated to the more "out there" artists, such as MIA, Lady Gaga, and Kanye West. For these artists it makes sense for them to put out long form videos. MIA is notoriously political and her video for "Born Free" off of her last album, directed by Romain Gavras, featured redheads being rounded up and slaughtered by what seemed to be a U.S. military force and raised a large amount of controversy over its content.

            For Lady Gaga though, as opposed to giving a message, long form music videos seem to exist only to match the excess of her music. Her long form videos are pure style and insanity and seem only to match her songs verboseness. While Michael Jackson's videos and MIA's seem to actually have a plot or statement respectively behind them Lady Gaga seems to only seek to create videos that match her style and themes, which is not necessarily a bad thing if you are into her music.

            Kanye West, however, one upped both Gaga and MIA with his self-directed, nearly album encompassing short film Runaway. At over a half hour long it features a good number of songs from West's acclaimed My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a strange but barely present plot, and a non-stop barrage of beautiful images. West also used Runaway excerpts to serve as the short form music video for the single that gave the film its title, "Runaway".

            While longer music videos seem to be more in the wheelhouse of these popular, big name artists it seems that others are interested in the medium as well. A few weeks ago relatively unknown French indie pop artists The Shoes released the nearly nine minute long video of their single "Time To Dance" which was directed by Daniel Wolfe.

The video is incredibly well done and tells the story of a Patrick Bateman like serial killer of hipsters. The clash between the happy nature of the song and the brutality of the video gives off a strangely haunting quality. Even stranger, the serial killer in the video is played by famous actor Jake Gyllenhaal in a brilliant casting choice. Gyllenhaal always seems to play the good guy, and watching him go absolutely ballistic adds to the insanity of the video.

While no doubt popular artists will continue to dominate the field of longer music videos it will be interesting to see how things change after an indie band like The Shoes released "Time To Dance". The appearance of a star in Gyllenhaal, the catchiness of their song, and that the video is very well done will no doubt boost their popularity. No doubt other lesser known artists will try to follow in their footsteps in order to increase their fanbase. Whether or not that is a good thing remains to be seen, as hopefully they can manage to have the creativity present to create something worthwhile as the artists before them have done.