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AC/DC "Play Ball" (David Mallet, dir.)

The NFL might not come calling for AC/DC as a Super Bowl halftime show (they should), but this video makes a good case for these legends as the perfect choice for the Lingerie Bowl. "Play Ball" is what you should have expected from AC/DC — no frills, lots of big ball and other sexual inneundo, in a treatment that probably called for the band to just run through the song a couple times on a green screen, followed by a game or two of pool. 

Lyrical

The Controversial Nicki Minaj "Only" Lyric Video

Noted music video critic and head of the Anti Defamation League Abraham Foxman is not happy with the lyric video for Nicki Minaj:

Nicki Minaj’s new video disturbingly evokes Third Reich propaganda and constitutes a new low for pop culture’s exploitation of Nazi symbolism. The irony should be lost on no one that this video debuted on the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” pogrom that signaled the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust.

It is troubling that no one among Minaj’s group of producers, publicists and managers raised a red flag about the use of such imagery before ushering the video into public release.

This video is insensitive to Holocaust survivors and a trivialization of the history of that era. The abuse of Nazi imagery is deeply disturbing and offensive to Jews and all those who can recall the sacrifices Americans and many others had to make as a result of Hitler’s Nazi juggernaut.

No comment, however, on lyrics like:

Yo, I never fucked Wayne, I never fucked Drake On my life, man, fuck's sake If I did I menage with 'em and let 'em eat my ass like a cupcake

The "Only" lyric video is styled like an old comic book or cartoon — the intro should remind you of Looney Tunes — and is generally a jumble of references to power: Fascism, totalitarianism, religion, militarism and other 'isms. Being offended by the Young Money logo styled as red armbands, but not being offended by Drake as a priest who boasts of getting great oral from thick women, or Nicki's invitation to eat her ass like a cupcake seems odd. But both the ADL and Nicki Minaj have reasons to stay in the media, so you don't need to be a total cynic to chalk this up as an example of the symbiotic online churn. The attention here works well on all levels: Nicki's lyric video gets millions of views and press attention, and the ADL gets to focus attention their noble cause.

PS: Nicki responded to the criticism on Twitter, with a sensible "I'm very sorry & take full responsibility if it has offended anyone. I'd never condone Nazism in my art" (although most crisis PR experts would have advised she left out the "I didn't come up with the idea" and "my best friend is Jewish" parts):

PPS: Not available for comment: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

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Bobby Shmurda "Bobby Bitch" (Clifton Bell, dir.)

When your debut single hits the top 10, gets you a fat major label record deal and the video inspires a dance that shows up everywhere from bedrooms to a stadium stages, you get to indulge any fantasies for your follow-up video. "Bobby Bitch" is maybe best described as Shmurda's Angels, as a trio of gun-toting vixens shake their asses and protect their man. 

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Lorde "Yellow Flicker Beat" (Emily Kai Bock, dir.)

You bought a pack of smokes for your 18th birthday. Ella "Lorde" Yelich-O’Connor celebrated her's by releasing a hugely anticipated video for this new song off The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1. (And hey, maybe she also bought cigarettes, although I doubt it).

The video skips the usual movie clipjob in favor of a series of unexplained, yet surely not unrelated vignettes that bear several filmic influences, especially Kubrick.

Emily Kai Bock, director: "Ella emailed me during the summer while she was on tour with Majical Cloudz, who I made a video for a couple years ago. I was amazed that she would reach out to me directly. Usually with such a big-name artist, there is a team of people you have to go through, but she kept a close connection to me from start to finish - from feedback on the treatment to editing notes, we were in constant touch. 

Ella is a true collaborator. She had sent me a reference video of Mae West being interviewed by Dick Cavett. In the clip, Dick Cavett walks across a massive airplane hanger to this tiny lit set, where Mae West is reclining in this chair - it's a really surreal interview setting. I wrote her a treatment with a bunch of these kind of set ideas, of things that could live within a dark void of a large vacant space, under a singular light - a motel room, a confessional, a chandelier, a streetlamp, and so on - and she loved it.  I was really excited about the idea of using black as a way to transition between the worlds, losing the context of what is exterior and what is interior.”