Vid Kids 2014 (HM): BERU "Beasts from the Sea" / Juce "Call You Out"

Much like our last go 'round with a "best videos of the year" thing, our favorite video directors were almost nowhere to be found. But that's not entirely true. AG Rojas had some stuff this year.

Also, we just found out that 2014 marked the end of Michel Gondry's 3-year hiatus from trippy weirdo vids after he agreed to shoot a quicky for Metronomy.

Mark Romanek fucked up big time. Had he stuck to music video retirement following 2003/2004, he would have gone out on top after capturing Johnny Cash physically entering the gates of hell ("Hurt") and one of the greatest portraits of Brooklyn ever committed to film ("99 Problems" - coincidentally a double-case of "shoulda stayed retired.")

But no, of course Romanek just couldn't say no to a request from Taylor "God" Swift asking him to purposely make her look as awkward and embarrassing as possible in the "Shake It Off" video. It was an intriguing idea that ultimately encouraged enough wincing and discomfort that they basically sacrificed its rewatchability, somewhat missing the point of trying to create something that still looks dope the 100th time.

And Jonathan Glazer's a big-time film director now. Under The Skin was as close to Kubrick as 2014 got. Hopefully he'll stick to more stuff like this in the future.

It's harder to keep up on videos these days. But we tried. And here are our honorable mentions...

The BERU video stars all of the organisms that exist on the green earth and everything else in the universe that is circular and colorful. This ensemble cast landed a coveted role playing themselves remaining unaware how close they have come to certain grim death, or at least that's what the music seems to be suggesting.


In the Juce video, she's all paranoid and bummin' because the girl who looks like Charli XCX is all up in this dude's shit, and Juce is too reserved to go all Jerry Springer on her ass and be like "yo punk get the fuck away from my man" or whatever.