"crystal necklace"

badass video from late-2010...

"I'm A Body"

This will receive the "new music" tag even though the video is from 10 months ago... Kinda bummed this missed the deadline for "Sick Vids Brah 2011," as we would have much rather included this than that stupid Rihanna video that was essentially just her starring in an episode of the MTV show Skins with "We found love in a hopeless place" playing over it...

This video is way better. It has puppies!!

NU SENSAE - I'M A BODY from codyfennell on Vimeo.

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #01: Beastie Boys featuring Santigold “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win”

So we made a mistake once again... This is not the best video of 2011, although it kicks serious ass. Similarly, "Make Some Noise" (a.k.a. "Fight For Your Right Revisited") is not the worst of 2011, but this post wouldn't be complete if we didn't mention the tedium we experienced watching the 30-minute version earlier this year.

With this in mind, we were initially going to start this post by stating "It's not often the same group premieres both the best video of the year and the worst video of the year, but somehow that's what happened." Except neither statement is true.

So here's the truth: "Make Some Noise" is essentially one of those SNL sketches that people who still watch SNL masturbate to. Celeb cameos makes their giney tickle, so whenever there's a shit-ton of celeb cameos, it's like preparing for the orgasm of a lifetime.

"Make Some Noise" had the adverse effect on us. It made us sick, while "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win" is like the antithesis of "Make Some Noise," exuding endless creativity and expert film-making aspects that we should expect from Spike Jonze, who started hinting at this return to music videos last year with his video for The Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs." We're seriously hoping this happens. We would love nothing more than for Spike to return to music videos. The world needs this kind of excitement right now...

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #02: Nunslaughter "God"

There seems to be some mistake. Somehow our #2 has been listed as a blackmetal video that may or may not have been thrown together by Tommy Wiseau himself. In fact, most of the people in this video resemble characters from The Room. "God" is probably not the 2nd best video of 2011, although it's definitely in our "most recommended" list... We would rather people watch "God" than most other promo videos from this year.

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #03: Underground Railroad To Candyland "We Aren't The World"

Performance aspect, check. Puppets, check. Puppies, check. And even better, it looks like it was thrown together by people who actually know how to make videos correctly... Super huge check bonus. P.S. Why isn't Season 1 of Sifl & Olly on DVD yet?

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #04: Lil Wanye featuring Rick Ross "John"

Here's one of our associate's description of "John" from over the summer:

"One of the girls in the new Lil Wayne video has a spatula."

"He talks about pissing in his own ass."

"Rick Ross sits in a wheelchair in front of buckets of toxic waste."

"Things are just falling off the roof and shit."

"And then Lil Wayne says You fuckin with a nigga who dont give a fuck."

This got us interested, and we were amazed at the amount of tires that were included in the set design. So all of this should be an adequate reason to include this at #4.

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #05: The Living Sisters "How Are You Doing?"

Now that he's a super in-demand feature director working in big bad Hollywood on stuff like The Green Hornet and Dave Chappelle documentaries, we assumed our favorite video director ever would never return to the world of music vids. However, he threw together a couple nice clips this year, after being relatively absent for the past 5 years... One for Bjork (also posted below) and one for a new group called The Living Sisters (featuring members of The Decemberists and The Bird and the Bee) for a slightly upgraded version of Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water", minus the awesome palindromic visual aspect, but including more of the crazy-life-perspective that's become a staple of his videography, which is helpful for The Living Sisters since this is a song we normally wouldn't care to hear under normal circumstances. But with Gondry in control of the visuals, we're down for pretty much anything...

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #06: Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats "Ritual Knife"

We normally stray from praising videos without any element of artist performance, even if it's only a few seconds of lipsynching or guitar strumming. We're especially prejudiced against videos that simply recycle easily searchable stock clips from Youtube. However, Uncle Acid is shrouded in mystery, so they can't show their faces. It's debatable whether they've played a live show, so they wouldn't have been able to perform anyway. But most importantly, "Ritual Knife" kicks so much ass, and the clips were so obviously chosen with care by someone who was painfully searching for a very specific atmosphere. So basically, they got away with murder.

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #07: Rammstein "Mein Land"

Jonas Akerlund and Rammstein is pretty much always a winning combination. It's hard to recall the last time Jonas didn't have a video in our annual top 10... Similarly, Rammstein continues to prove themselves as worthy among the all time greatest video artists. We thought they had peaked with "Pussy" back in 2009. We were wrong...

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #08: Tyler the Creator featuring Frank Ocean "She"

A quick one before passing out drunk... If any of this doesn't make sense, it's because I drank beer.

We think this one may have been a bit underrated... People accordingly went nuts over "Yonkers" a few months earlier, but "She" was our favorite summer '11 video, a neatly executed clip met with almost no fanfare, other than its relentless spins on MTV-U, which we've learned don't count for shit...

In "She," fantasy elements encourage an extension of beliefs on behalf of the viewer. Frank Ocean pulls out an uzi which just happens to be allowed on the bed of a suburban chick who lives with her dad. Cops arrest Tyler for no apparent reason and then get distracted enough for him to sneak out of their car. And yet it's not necessarily a flawed narrative... Every image, especially the strongest ones, fit the song and project creativity as vividly and sinister as Tyler projects throughout Goblin, and it's nothing like any other rap video we've seen before or since.

The only uncool part is showing the chick as Tyler calls out the c-word... That made us uncomfortable. But it was censored on TV, so no big deal.

Sick Vids Brah 2011 (HM): Kool Keith, Azealia Banks, The Weeknd & Tyler

Here's the rest of our Honorable Mentions... All but one of them have already been posted throughout the past year...

Kool Keith's "Bushman" represented his long-awaited return to WTF-level awesomeness...


If there was a single video from the past year when we fell in love at first sight, here's the one...


The Weeknd's reign of raunch...


And of course, "Yonkers"...

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #09: The Horrors "Still Life"

We're about half-way settling by including "Still Life," a video that we claimed we would only place if there was nothing else to fill the Top 10. Although, we're watching it again right now, and it looks pretty awesome, juxtaposing the band's 80's-goth chic with the type of psychedelic images that might have been ripped from The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour or "Strawberry Fields" video, or possibly from Pink Floyd Live At Pompei. Big ups to drugs.

Sick Vids Brah 2011 #10: Rihanna "We Found Love"

We're at an unfortunate spot here, because we're "settling." Under different circumstances, "We Found Love" would not have made our list, but we haven't found a whole lot of 2011 videos that caught our attention. (And we've been relentlessly searching, so it's not our fault...)

We're actually upset about this video because of the song itself. Calvin Harris' production is decently exciting enough to match the intensity of the images, but the vocal melody is just too bland. Once upon a time, there was a video by Prodigy called "Smack My Bitch Up" which is essentially the same video as "We Found Love" done 1000x better.

Honestly, this video is noteworthy for only one reason... Around 4:02, there's a quick shot of her vomiting some type of neon glow-in-the-dark substance, giving the impression she ate about 50 of those lime green Laffy Taffy's and another 50 blue raspberry Laffy Taffy's, and then chased it with a pint of Jameson and a fifth of Dewer's. And if this was the case, then we admire her dedication.

(Everyone probably wants us to say we chose this video because Rihanna looks sexy as fuck, which we'd be happy to state as noteworthy had there not been about 900 other videos we saw this year with nice-lookin ladies. As Jay-Z once said about Rihanna, "She walked in. Played me the tape. She look good. Signed her that day." So yeah, she look good. But that's not why we chose the video.)

Sick Vids Brah 2011 (HM): Rebecca Black "Friday"

We we we so excited to kick off our year-end festivities by crowning Taste My Kids' official "Thing Of The Year Award" to the "Friday" video - truly a piece of internet history - and the gleeful path of mess and disorder left in the wake of Hurricane Rebecca... And we still love her, even though her two follow-up singles were predictably unable to replicate the magic that somehow congealed itself to "Friday." Regardless, nothing can take her moment of glory away from her (or from us, more importantly)....

Friday March 11/Saturday March 12: Late Friday going into the morning hours of Saturday, 4chan discovers a new hero for their meme trove.

Sunday March 13: This is when we first viewed "Friday" about 12 times. People seemed to have a hard time disassociating the song with the video, and so numerous reviews were immediately posted claiming the song is about "riding in a convertible sports car on the way to school," even though the lyrics clearly mention choosing a seat on a school bus.

Monday March 14: By this point, the song is completely brain-lodged, and has somehow magically succeeded in temporarily transforming our miserable lives into a world of joy. We quickly realized that "Friday" is probably the catchiest pop song of 2011, while also wondering if the kids at Rebecca Black's school teased her in math class by singing "Pi Day, Pi Day" since March 14th is 3.14-Day.

Tuesday March 15: More parodies were posted, such as the "Bob Dylan" version, which sounds more like Lou Reed to our ears, but nobody notices or cares... (Our favorite is "Gang Fight", uploaded about a week later.) Much of the mystery surrounding Ark Music and "Friday" had been fully exposed by this point, due to curious, bewildered humans demanding to know how something like this could have ever happened.

Wednesday March 16: As we waited around for Friday, we realized we were stuck in "the longest week of 2011." In fact, there probably hadn't been a week as enormous since we were Rebecca Black's age. We decided the youthful "long week" feeling is a positive thing, which made us love Rebecca even more. Most of the world continued to hate, however. She had been a trending topic on twitter non-stop for several days with most people saying "she's pretty but sings bad" and other angrier an0ns saying they want to rape and/or stab her. As a result, she decided to become a spokesperson for "bullying," one of the most annoyingly overexposed PSA's of the year.

Thursday March 17: Rebecca is championed by Tyler The Creator on Twitter, who says "This Little Bitch Is Tight! Friday Friday" The timing of the song worked nicely as well... Everyone was pretty much ready to be finished with "the worst winter ever." It was just starting to get warmer, a nice time to have such a happy song playing in our heads upon waking up every morning for a week straight. We also realized that Patrice Wilson's "rap" section is the true key to this song, and one of the decade's most outstanding artistic accomplishments.

Friday March 18: This was the payoff day for all of us... We finally made it to Friday, Friday. Victory was ours. Thank you Rebecca.

SICK VIDS BRAH 2011

Quickly running out of time... The year has less than 3 weeks remaining, and so it's probably a good idea to get started on "Sick Vids Brah 2011," even though we haven't yet found 10 promo videos that strongly presented an attachment between its song and pictures... (We noticed a surplus of videos with strong images associated with shitty songs, or lackluster images associated with amazing songs.)

Ten years ago, MTV2 was the cable-source for 24-hour videos. Today, MTV-U is the equivalent. Unsurprisingly, when it came time for Mike Judge to pick videos for Beavis and Butthead to watch, many of them were in high rotation on this channel. Judge mentioned in a few interviews he enjoyed the past few years of videos better than during the 90's. While we would would love to agree with this (because it's always cooler to claim the best stuff as happening "right now"), the best period for videos was definitely 1997-2002, the span that followed B&B's 90's run, when Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham started kicking serious ass. It would have been interesting to hear their reactions to this era of videos, but it wasn't meant to be.

Some light emerged in 2010, including the one-two punch of "Bombay" and "Earl," two videos which were never shown on MTV that we discovered on Youtube within a few weeks of each other, seeming to suggest that videos actually were getting better. (At least two individual videos we saw during 2011 directly stole concepts from both of these.)

So let's have at it.... These probably won't be in the correct order, because we're going to be locating videos as we post them. Hopefully we'll have this finished within a few days, and then we can get started on "2011's Greatest Hits."