Ready to see Taylor Swift’s wub-a-dub-dub hit “I Knew You Were Trouble” set to a visual? Then you’ll have to wait a couple of minutes!
T-Swizzle’s latest single from Red, currently the country’s No. 1 album, has just been given a brand new Reeve Carney-starring, Anthony Mandler-directed clip. And, yes, it takes notes from Lana Del Rey’s “Ride” video (also directed by Mandler) in that you have to sit through a multi-minute monologue before getting to the desolate-desert drama you didn’t know you came for.
It’s time to play everybody’s favorite game: Guess Who Said It! This week’s quote is a tricky one: “Like so many people that have gone to art school before us, we started a band for fun.” Is the answer A) James Franco, B) James Franco, C) James Franco, or D) All of the Above?
“Can’t Say Goodbye” is the nostalgic Motown-y single from Franco’s Daddy EP, which was the result of the actor’s collaboration with artist Timothy O’Keefe. (As Franco tells it, the duo’s goal is to “push beyond the sonic space of music into the surrounding ecology. Daddy investigates the territories of film/video, installation, and performance while simultaneously exploring the connections that form between them.”)
And while the clip has neither the Lindsay nor the Lohan of the R.E.M. video Franco recently directed, it is full of fuzzy home video clips from the actor’s childhood.
Watch Franco get nostalgic in his “Can’t Say Goodbye” video below:
If you were anywhere near a screen that had the potential to play music videos over the summer, chances are you cast your gaze at Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” more than once. The clip, which helped catapult Jepsen from Canadian Idol also-ran to chart-topping international superstar and Grammy nominee, starred Jepsen, the hunky model who stood in as the object of her affection, and one of the great classic twists in the history of music videos. Below, video director Ben Knechtel spins the story of the making of the video for the official song of summer 2012. For more stories behind this year’s top TV, movie, and music moments, click here for EW.com’s Best of 2012 (Behind the Scenes) coverage.
As told by: Ben Knechtel
Me and Carly go back a few years now. I work at 604 Records, which is Carly’s Canadian record label. I’ve known her since 2008, and this has been the same team all along. It’s cool to see everyone still together and working on such a large scale now. I’ve actually directed her last four videos. I did the first video with her on a shoestring budget, and that got me in the door with her management and label and with her, and ever since then we established a great working relationship. She trusts me.
I heard the song for the first time [in August 2011], which is pretty crazy. The song wasn’t out yet, and they asked me if I wanted to write a treatment. So I got to listen to it really early, and I remember saying to my wife, “This song is going to be huge.” But I was thinking it’d be big in Canada. You can’t really gauge or anticipate it being such a giant song worldwide. But I remember saying to my wife that it was going to be a huge song, and it’s been incredible to see her go on this journey to pop superstar.
I wrote the treatment [for "Call Me Maybe"]. When I was in college, I made this little video for a school project where I was washing a car like Jessica Simpson in TheDukes of Hazzard. I was in these Daisy Duke shorts, and I had borrowed a bikini top from a girl in one of my classes. It was just a ridiculous over-the-top parody of the classic car wash scene. It’s super embarrassing, but I think you can still find it online somewhere. I always thought that was funny, and people got a kick out of it back then, and I always wanted to find an outlet to do that sort of thing again. “Call Me Maybe” ended up being that outlet.
The dude’s name is Holden Nowell, I think everybody just calls him “Hot Dude.” He’s a model and actor, and a rapper as well. We put up a casting call, and I think we saw 10 guys. Carly was at the casting call with me, and one by one, a guy would come in, and we’d meet him, and he would take his shirt off. And then Holden came out and took his shirt off and Carly was just like, “Uh, yeah. That one.” He’s just naturally ripped. It’s crazy.
It was a relatively small video shoot. We shot it in 12 hours in Langley, British Columbia, which is about 40 minutes outside of Vancouver. It was the day before Halloween, because I remember we had to take down some Halloween decorations because we wanted it to be a summer video. It definitely was not summer — it was freezing cold. I think it was raining four days beforehand, and it stopped raining one day and that’s when we shot the video. Then it rained for the rest of the week. That’s Vancouver for you. I was wearing a winter jacket, some of the crew were in parkas, and poor Holden couldn’t wear a shirt.
I’ll probably never experience anything like this. I remember calling my mom when it hit a million views, and I called home and got really excited about one million views. And now it’s over 300 million and everything is just kind of gravy now. But I was impressed when it hit a million views!
For better or for worse, Toddlers & Tiaras and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo have planted child pageantry firmly in the zeitgeist. It was inevitable, then, that the phenomenon would find alternative modes of expression. In this case, that mode is a rap video (naturally). The lyrics of Australian-born rapper Iggy Azalea’s “Murda Bizness” are all clubs, drinks, and swag, but the video takes a more topical turn and depicts the strange, sequined world of child pageants. Director Alex 2Tone opened up about the video’s timely theme and what it’s like breaking a cardinal rule of filmmaking: never work with kids.
Don’t blame me for the very 2007 intro. Britney herself once again gives us her “Gimme More” greeting identifier/ declaration in the video for “Scream & Shout,” a new will.i.am song featuring Ms. Spears.
Britney is rocking some very “Stronger”-esque outfits (and hair!) in the vid for this club thumper, but alas, Spears’ dancing is subbed out for some angry stomping.
Will.i.am, for his part, does his best to get it started with a KING crown and plenty of technological devises, before performing some futuristic slow-mo running and watching approvingly as the back-up dancers party on.
Check it ouw-eh-oh-eh-oh-eh-owt below! (Warning: Mature): READ FULL STORY »
As we noted in our Christmas in October roundup, the Muppets helped Cee Lo Green’s intergalactically groovy Magic Moment album earn an impressive rating of 3 1/2 trees. Now their collaboration, titled “All I Need Is Love,” has a fancy music video with fun guests of its own.
In the festive new clip, Cee Lo rings his ol’ play’s Kermit’s doorbell after his Rolls Royce convertible breaks down during his drive to Hotlanta. (Bear with us.) Kerm invites him in, where they and the rest of the gang enjoy an evening full singing, mistletoe kissing, and gift opening. And lo, who should show up but Santa himself, played here by The Office‘s Craig Robinson. This leads Walter, the new Muppet from the movie, to say, “So Santa’s my homie!”
Watch the action yourself in the video below, and be sure to stick around to the end for one of Statler and Waldorf’s classic quips:
Is “Doom and Gloom” Mick Jagger’s own riff on “American Idiot”? Thanks to lyrics about costly overseas wars, class conflict, and “fracking deep for oil,” the Stones’ latest single sounds like it was co-written by an Occupy Wall Street protester, despite its British pedigree.
The song’s new music video — featuring a gloomy Noomi Rapace, at one point literally “sitting in the dirt” and “feeling kind of hurt” — reinforces that idea, though it augments war footage and an ironic American Flag with whimsical images that bring the song’s lyrics to life. If you’ve ever wanted to watch Lisbeth Salander fight off a horde of Cajun zombies or face some serious side effects after downing too much fast food, this is the video for you.
Whatever foods you plan on gorging on this week, it’s got nothing on what Lady Gaga’s been getting into.
Mother Monster has released yet another teaser clip for her upcoming, Terry Richardson-shot “Cake” video, and this one’s even wilder than the last. Stripped down to her skivvies, Gaga hits the floor and wallows in a large mess of cake, suggestively licking and grinding into the innocent frosting. And like the previous teaser, it features a quick shot of the star getting jiggy with it in a hot tub.
Take a look at the vaguely NSFW (or not safe for your parent’s house, if that’s the case) teaser in the video below:
Yes, you read that right. Two of Hollywood’s strangest individuals, LiLo and JFray (I just made that up), have teamed up for an incredibly bizarre R.E.M. video.
Directed by James Franco in true James Franco fashion (meaning it’s basically a total blur), “Blue” stars Lindsay Lohan as a sultry muse for Terry Richardson. Lohan bites her lip and musses her hair while shots of Los Angeles fade in and out with dizzying persistence. All I can say is: don’t watch this if you get carsick.
The new clip shows Gaga in a state of undress pretty common among Richardson subjects — underwear-clad, in heels, and momentarily in a bathtub. The singer, whose album ARTPOP is expected to hit streets sometime next year, shows off some of her new dance moves and rap skills for the clip, which her YouTube pages says was shot in São Paolo, Brazil.
For better or for worse, Toddlers & Tiaras and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo have planted child pageantry firmly in the zeitgeist. It was inevitable, then, that the phenomenon would find alternative modes of expression. In this case, that mode is a rap video (naturally). The lyrics of Australian-born rapper Iggy Azalea’s “Murda Bizness” are all clubs, drinks, and swag, but the video takes a more topical turn and depicts the strange, sequined world of child pageants. Director Alex 2Tone opened up about the video’s timely theme and what it’s like breaking a cardinal rule of filmmaking: never work with kids.
