Annoying visual cliches in music videos that must be stamped out NOW

Is when they go to show the guitarist "playing" they show the right hand action, down by the pickups. This tells you NOTHING about what the person is playing, it's just picking. If you're going to show an "ooh, look how talented and technical this person is playing" then show their LEFT HAND which is the one doing the interesting stuff in most guitarists. (Reverse those if the guitarist in question is left handed.) It's annoying and stupid and clearly those filming people know NOTHING about how the guitar is playing. And you can't see the FACE of the person and you can't actually SEE WHAT THEY ARE DOING, so I ask you WHAT IS THE POINT?!?!?

That's what I'd like to see banned.

Excessive use of sports jerseys in rap videos, if only because it sees them switching allegiances about three times a minute.

Oh, and cars with excessively loose suspension going 'bouncy bounce'. Fun, but you try reselling it. Now who laughs?

Dr Dre sitting in a chair trying to look smug nodding his head and sipping on a stupidly large glass of Cognac at the same time...

assorted girls in swimwear and burly b-boys standing in cramped style at the back trying to dance but not getting much space because Dr Dre and his entourage are taking up all the seats

bare-chested rappers - if you can afford a SUV you can afford a shirt dawg, but please no more baseball jackets and caps (even Dubya wears one for fucks sake) or sportswear in general

everything else already pastiched in the 'What They Do' video by The Roots

oh and those bits in the middle of the video for artists like J Lo where they change the beat just so she can show off some more of her latest dance moves, just get on with it you rumpy old bint

actually i have no problem with lowriders but they seem to have died out in videos anyway now

Also - Good Charlotte. Just generally.

Wasn't it New Order's "The Perfect Kiss" video that somehow managed to seem to take the piss out of this without actually doing anything unusual?

Handmoves synchronized with the beat. Destiny's Child, I'm looking at you! I DON'T THINK YOU DO!

The band being on a truck or whatever, riding through town while playing.

Oh yeah, which reminds me of another one: Having people in cars singing along!?
You know, shots of random people (sometimes band members) driving or sitting in cars, mouthing along to the lyrics.

For some reason it's started annoying me when the vocalist stares into the camera, but holds his/her head slanted to one side.

And the song is pure softrock idiocy.

Not quite that, but one that comes to mind is that awful Aerosmith video from a while ago, where the guy runs like mad to get to see their surprise live performance somewhere. Wah!
(I hate whoever is about to reply to say "Uh, that wasn't Aerosmith")

See also the new Jewel vid.

"Look, I'm drinking alcohol. I am a rebel". I'm talking specifically to Cam'ron here. In one of his videos, he's drinking Lambrini. I'm not joking here.

Band playing on top of a mountain! ...Except when its Metallica.

The 'hey I'm mixing with real people video' as major rock star hops onto the tube and ''treats'' the morning rush-hour crowd to inane outbursts of singing, smiling and hands-round-shoulders.

I like that one...

...only for the camera to pull away and the viewers to see that indeed, the guitar isn't plugged in. and it's not on a wireless, either.

i mean, we know you're not really performing live. but sheesh, you want us to suspend our disbelief for the four minutes of your crappy video, you might want to work a little harder. ;P

Reaction shots in general. I hate them. They should be banned from use in TV and film and edited out of old footage.

(this could be replaced with)

however...
Having Boy George in your Video is a go!

Until this post, however, it has not achieved its true potential because no one has remarked that for several years, basically 98-2001, every hip hop and R&B video needed to take place inside a NEON LUXURY SPACESHIP. There are so many rooms in the NEON SPACESHIP. Some of them are green. Some are pink (Nikka Costa). Some are black and white (the Michael/Janet video). But I think the NEON SPACESHIP has fallen on hard times, I can't remember the last time it was used!! It is drifting unmanned in an asynchronous orbit, its biosystems shut down, always "3-6 months away" from being recommissioned in a tech-bubble bling revival. I almost miss it.

I think that videos that imply scenes from the movies they are soundtracking should be done away with. See: every single song from Matrix 2, because they all feature videos with the singer's face made out from green scrolling Matrix text.

or else form a band in tribute to it, perhaps called Neon Spaceship Theory. or Neon Spaceship Onus, if you want angry clueless parents writing you angry clueless letters. ;)

1. "You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Easily the finest homage to the "Mad Max" series to be seen.

2. "This Corrosion" by the Sisters of Mercy. A very wet post-apocalypse, as if the bomb had hit nearby aquarium.

3. "California Love" by Tupac & Dr.Dre. Finest "Thunderdome" homage to be found....which is odd, given how crap "..Beyond Thunderdome" was.

4. "Looks That Kill" by Motley Crue. Where men wearing lots of make-up and stacked heels coral women with torches and barbed wire and make sheild-weilding amazons dissapear in clouds of smoke via raising their fists.

5. "Like it Up" by Kiss. Where men wearing not quite so much make-up but still the stacked-heels swan into a battle-torn South Bronx to make pigs of themselves with a gaggle of scantily clad models with silly hair. Oh, and play in front of burning ruins, of course.

6. "Last in Line" by Dio. Where taste, judgement and dignity are all jettisoned in favour of an abject lack of self-awareness.

Actually, I get that one.

Mase? Is he on Tooth & Nail?

In rap videos: OMG LOOK AT THE REALLY LONG LINE TO GET INTO THE CLUB! And look at the poor bastard trying to get in who keeps getting thrown about by the bouncer!

hahaha! so OTM

* Wow, we've been following this guitar lead for the whole song and guess where it gets us? To an amp!

* Here's the band playing, and here's a chick getting down! Now, back to the band! And back to the chick again!

* The singer's at a press conference!

* It's a fond recapitulation of the Beatles on the roof!

I disagree.

However, nu-metal videos including the lead singer sitting in a chair or edge of a bed pulling at their own hair BECAUSE OH MY GOD IT HURTS NOW MORE OUT OF FOCUS GRAY SHOTS FOR EDGE!

I'd like to second the "band in the studio" thing, a cliche which probably started with Live Aid, later parodied by Pulp in the video for Bad Cover Version. Bonus points if the singer is shown with headphones on, face screwed up in concentration, clenching their hands emphatically to indicate seriousness/authenticity.

I'd like to second the "band in the studio" thing, a cliche which probably started with Live Aid

Hehehe... The outkast video no good, hey?

Something for kate had a really good video which was band in the studio. I think it was for the song "Say Something"

Any part of the video where the particular song is not playing, i.e. Weezer's set-up with Big Al in "Buddy Holly" (what, we weren't going to be able to figure out that the band had somehow superimposed themselves into "Happy Days" without that?) Also see Michael Jackson busting out windshields, cameos in general.

Cameo roles for famous people are stupid in videos since you see the damn things 25 times a day. It may have been something to see Jon Bon Jovi at the end of that Cinderella video the first time, but the next 300 times it wasn't so entertaining, especially since the music had already ended.

(Cameo's "Word Up" video is still okay in my book, though.)

I haven't seen MTV on a regular basis in a long time, but I kinda liked tuning into the middle of the Papa Roach video where they were all destroying the furniture in the house and discovering at the end that the name of the song was "Broken Home". Ha! You slay me, Papa Roach.

I'm always annoyed by the videos featuring a major pop singer trying to achieve artistic respectability by appearing with an entire classical orchestra. Shania Twain's sticks in my mind, though there are many others. It's a little like slathering caviar and truffles on Spam; the base product is still banal and boring. The orchestra members themselves always look either sheepish or irritated: "I'm using my million-dollar violin to play THIS?"

dam!

"I wonder what record it is? What a coincidence, it's the record of the song for THIS VIDEO!"

Even worse, shots of the indicators on the stereo while the song is playing, shots of a person turning up the volume, listening to the song on headphones, dancing around their apartment listening to it, etc.

HOW FUCKING UNIMAGINATIVE CAN YOU BE???

The DP Edition:

Racking ultra-shallow focus in a close-up: oh wow, now the singer's ear is in focus and his nose is a blur! (Mark Romanek, though usually great, is plenty guilty).

Hip-hop video? Exterior shot? Gimme orange filter! The sky must look like a bottle of Grand Marnier!

It's sort of the music video equivalent of starting a paper "In this paper, I am going to talk about"

Also, sad to say, the split-screen "will the lovers meet?" video has to go. It was cool when Cibo Matto did it with "Sugar Water," but after Semisonic got in on the action wth "Closing Time," it was over. Blink 182 had a semi-amusing variation on it (the screen was split in three stacked strips, so the main character was a jerky composite of all three band members) but it still felt tired.

(Friend 1): "What is this?"
(Girl): "It's the new ----- album"
(Friend 1): "Oh really? I heard this was pretty good."
(Friend 2): "I like it ok, but it feels kind of like a rehash of their last one"
etc.