Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda reboots his Fort Minor project with this 360-degree virtual reality (VR) music video: Watch it in the Google Chrome browser, or the YouTube mobile app and you'll be able to look all around this art and music experience in Venice Beach.
Rihanna's "American Oxygen" is probably a bit more political than you might expect, utilizing a mix of news footage that runs the gamut from tragedy to transcendence.
PS: It has nearly 2 million views in less than 24 hours of being on VEVO and YouTube. Wonder how many it got behind the Tidal paywall...
Love stories and music videos collide in this ambitious short film for Jason Mraz. Essentially three music videos interconnected by a mix of fate, chance and cosmic interference.
And after a clever engagement campaign, Justin Timberlake unveils the "Take Back The Night" video. It's a celebratory clip that takes the pop star through the NYC night — a deserved victory lap for anyone who can can pack Yankee Stadium twice — leading from Uptown Baby to the electric streets of Chinatown. The overall vibe is somewhere between the opening montage for SNL, the Copacabana tracking shot from Goodfellas (that every director seems to want to recreate) and the mid-period Michael Jackson video of your choice.
There's been a cat and mouse game to every step of Justin Timberlake's 20/20 Experience, with elements either coming completely unannounced, or teased through various clues hidden throughout his web world. This new video for "Take Back The Night" is still just out-of-grasp, but you can check out an interactive map of NYC at takebacktn.justintimberlake.com, which brings you from J-Tim's [ed: Has J-Tim also lost the hyphen like his man Jay Z?] massive Yanee Stadium gigs and into behind-the-scenes of the video, with pop-up styled tidbits about shoot locations and more.
Wanna see the video? Tweet as directed and sit tight.
It's a smart roll-out, both on a micro level — the twitter gambit virtually guarantees worldwide trending — but if you zoom out you see that Timberlake and his visual/marketing partners at The Uprising Creative — who handled the website(s), the promo clips and even the videos for "Tunnel Vision" and now "Take Back The Night" — have found a way to maintain mystery and heighten expectation in the know everything right now culture of the web.
Ther are bodies in motion here. One is JT, but the others are naked women, writhing as they emerge from the haze and then as they serve as human projection screens.
Enjoy it on YouTube while it lasts. After that, I think VEVO has another hit to put in their exclusive collection.
When is a lyric video not just a lyric video? When it has the production values of most ordinary videos, stars the artist himself, and that artist is Justin Timberlake on his first record in seven years. Spoiler Alert: He wears a suit and tie. Also, Jay-Z doesn't make an appearance, but I would think it's a guarantee we'll see him rocking his shit tied best when the real video rolls out.