From The Rolling Stones, The Clash, Oasis, and Blur, to the indie bands of today, the UK has been right up there with the States in pioneering music and pop culture. However, while the former balanced it off by still maintaining a rather dignified image in the minds of many, the US has continued down a spiral that has many thinking that they are, in Sarah Silverman’s words, the ‘assholes of the universe.’ Maybe the consensus isn’t just a case of perceiving people from the UK as a rather conservative bunch, but the result of a well-conceived strategy to keep the rest of the world in awe of the kickass music, films, and cultural trends that emerge from the country.
Leave Before the Lights Come On - Arctic Monkeys (2006)
Rating: 3/5
English humor isn’t for everyone. There’s a lot to be said for the Monty Python guys, Rowan Atkinson, pre-House Hugh Laurie, and more recently, Ricky Gervais, but not everyone gets it. It’s very dry and not as dirty as how American humor has defined what’s funny and what’s not. In the video for the Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Leave Before the Lights Come On,’ there’s a taste of what British humor really is: a lengthy set-up and a punchline that’s worth the wait - it’s all about the right timing.
Roll Up Your Sleeves - We Were Promised Jetpacks (2009)
Rating: 3/5
The band We Were Promised Jetpacks seems to know how to capitalize on timing. It’s been two decades since the 80’s, yet members of Generation X are finding reasons to like the bands they stopped listening to in the 90s in today’s post-punk revival. New Wave (sans the clothes) is cool again! Enter We Were Promised Jetpacks. In the video for ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves,’ the band utilizes very basic animated graphics as a background to color-graded, randomly-shaped cutouts of the band’s members. Think Minority Report meets one of those random videos from Sesame Street - inspired by the 80s, powered by the 21st century.
Never Miss a Beat - Kaiser Chiefs (2008)
Rating: 3.5/5
Today, almost 10 years after the so-called Millennium Bug threatened to wreak havoc on all of humankind, hardly anything surprises us. Still, it isn’t often that you see teenagers running around and jumping fences in animal masks, then joining other similarly-garbed teenagers in a strange synchronized dance routine as a reporter looks on incredulously. That is, however, exactly the scene in the video for the Kaiser Chiefs’ ‘Never Miss a Beat.’
