Weird and Controversial Music Videos - Negative

Below are some famous music videos that gain attention all for the wrong reasons! But as they famously say in the media business: "There is no such thing as bad press!"

Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball (2013)

 

This was a huge single in 2013 bringing so much attention, complaints and abuse all aimed at Miley Cyrus. It was originally written by MoZella, Stephan Moccio, Sacha Skarbek, Lukasz Gottwald, and Henry Russell Walter for the singer Beyoncé. But it was realised while making the song that it would not suit her singing style and was instead offered to Cyrus.

Wrecking Ball was Miley's second single from her album 'Bangerz' (2013). Her first being the equally controversial "We Can't Stop" (2013)

In both videos Cyrus was praised for her originality and Wrecking Ball's lyrics were pleasantly received as emotional and moving. However the increasingly provocative image that Miley was portraying in her video's, moving from good girl country singer with Disney's Hannah Montana, to bad girl pop queen was worrying many people and creating allot of controversy and attention for Cyrus. Something that she was most likely aiming for, as bad attention can make a career much more successful and therefor better than good attention.

What most likely made the videos so famous were her very provocative live performance at the VMA's in 2013. She dressed in two very revealing outfits (both of which have become costumes which you can buy due to the huge amount of reach and attention it got). And her doing sexual dances.

This was Miley's view on the video:

I think the video is much more, if people get past the point that I'm naked and you actually look at me you can tell that I actually look more broken than even the song sounds. The song is a pop ballad. It's one of these songs that everyone is going to relate to, everyone has felt that feeling at one point. If people can take their minds out of the obvious and go into their imagination a little bit and see kind of what the video really means and the way it's so vulnerable and actually if you look in my eyes I look more sad than my voice sounds on the record it was a lot harder to do the video than it was to record the songs. It was much more of an emotional experience.

Rebecca Black - Friday (2011)

Annoying, repetitive, disturbing and awful. All words used to describe Rebecca Black's "Friday". The song has received all negative response from critics since its release on March, 2014. The response is mainly due to the unimaginative, pointless lyrics as well as Black's singing skill.

However all that the negative response did was create a huge hype over the song and has since been viewed on YouTube a total of 239 million times! The original video that was posted up by Rebecca's record label ARK Music, took it down after legal disputes with Black. However it was later re-posted a few months after.



Media theorists suggest that the huge amount of social media attention and humour of a terrible singer and video but done professionally is what caused such a large hype surrounding it and what ultimately brought the views up. Is it a successful video? Yes completely! Despite the cliché's, cheesy uninspired lyrics and awful singing this video has seen more views and generated more sales than many artists could only dream of. So is this the way forward for artists to keep pushing the boundaries and making more and more provocative and untalented performances? Quite possibly yes, otherwise how will the audience's attention be caught, many believe that traditional marketing methods are out of the window and this generation is a new age of increasingly controversial 'art'.

Other examples of weird and controversial music videos in the wrong light are:

Avril Lavigne - Hello Kitty (2013)

The song by Lavigne was first critisized of having immature lyrics and emabarrasingly weird. When the music video came out however the focus fell on Lavigne's racist portrayal of Japanese Culture (e.g. Kawaii culture) and the use of Japanese women in her video like toys. However Lavigne had this to say about her 'misunderstood' video:

"I love Japanese culture and I spend half of my time in Japan. I flew to Tokyo to shoot this video...specifically for my Japanese fans, WITH my Japanese label, Japanese choreographers AND a Japanese director IN Japan."

M.I.A. - Born Free (2010)

This song by M.I.A. was relatively unknown and passed off as just another pop song by the artist. However when the music video for the song was released (without prior notice to M.I.A.'s record label) it shot up the charts and the video was viewed millions of times. This was all a result of the backlash and critics response to the highly controversial music video. Its main storyline was that of a mass genocide of red haired (ginger) people. M.I.A. was inspired for the video by the news and mobile phone footage of the Sri Lankan Army killing Tamil males in an inhumane and disgusting manor. I for one actually like the video, since I believe the message of the song and video is to try and show what actual genocide is like to previously unaware public. Even though it features over the top violence and footage of people being shot in the head and blown up etc. It still enlightens people into what has actually happened before and inspire them to help. However the majority of other critics disagree saying that it is a disgusting display of demoralizing red haired people and almost making fun of genocide and using the shock of it to make money.