Pop is Crap: Music Videos

I don't know how it's possible, but by some weird quantum superpostion effect, all of the thousands of music videos circulating through the mass entertainment media are simultaneously eye-gougingly terrible and brain-numbingly boring. Here are some totally objective symptoms of their retch-inducing awfulness, examples included. (Note: if you really want to torture yourself, these videos are all available for viewing in the apple iTunes store. I was going to link to their multivarious places on the web, but I decided to spare you.)

• Simple-minded visual shtick that, while interesting at first glance, is repeated for the entire duration of the video, thus driving the viewer to boredom-induced suicide. One example is Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, where you think, "hey neat, the camera is repeatedly zooming in on the band, then the band within the band within a band, etc., oh I get it, when is this going to get better, hunh, how about that, it's the same thing over and over again, ohgodi'msobored, holy crap I just wasted 3 minutes of my life." Another example: that indie heartbreaker (or more accurately, poopstinker) by Bright Eyes. Easy / Lucky / Free. In it, Our Hero writes fragments of the lyrics on the glass comprising the "fourth wall." After 15 seconds, you're so bored you might as well be dead. Imagine how you feel after the duration of the entire video.
  

• Symptom number two: Our Artist is "jamming" soulfully on a musical instrument, contorting his/her face to the incredibly Deep and Expressive Emotions in the Lyrics... but that instrument is nowhere to be heard in the audio track! A great example of this is that dog-nodule of a song, "Be the Girl," by Aslyn. In the video, she's leaning over a piano, pounding the keys, and wrinkling her face to the lyrics. There's no piano in the song; all you hear is urine-slick electronic studio meddling.

When I think of all the talent and man-hours and effort that was spent in conceiving/making/distrubuting these things, I cry.

And cry and cry.