‘Welcome to the New Age …’ Such a magnificent music anthem!

There are a few versions of Radioactive floating around YouTube, but my favourite is definitely Imagine Dragons Live at the Joint. It’s a song that swells under the power of a live gig, complete with big drum sound and crowd energy: one of the best early ‘drops’ in a song, that I can remember.

The official video clip is interesting. Featuring a simple story of empowerment acted by a bunch of puppets, it’s probably the most improbable scenario you could come with for a video clip to accompany this kind of song.

The band are rescued from prison by a pink teddy bear, who defeats an evil puppet and puppetmaster (Lou Diamond Phillips) to save them. Alexandra Daddario plays the mysterious accomplice of the pink teddy bear. I can see the attraction to the concept but, given a choice, ‘Live at the Joint’ would be my preferred version.

Have a look and see what you think.

The song’s also been popular as a promotion tool for film and games. Wiki says: “Radioactive” was used heavily in promotion for the video game Assassin’s Creed III and the 2013 film The Host, and is included in the soundtrack for the video game MLB 13: The Show and NBA 2K14.

Official Clip

Live at the Joint

Live on SNL

and just because I think this song has rocking lyrics … Demons

I have to admit to being a bit enamoured with Lily Allen at the moment. I’ve already blogged about her video for Hard Out Here, and today I’m sharing her new song, Air Balloon.

The clip was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa and features zebras and a cheetah, and I love it to bits. Honestly, its not my kind of music but everything that Lily does at the moment is SO much fun.

I love the lighting of this video, her clothes, the fact that she’s surrounded by four average looking blokes not a bunch of male models, and because…butterflies!

Then of course there’s Jesus nailed to the cross floating past at the very end. Well that’s enough to get everyone talking! Most people seem to believe that the song is about getting high (bright red toadstools growing behind her and a psychedelic feel sure point to that), but I believe Lily’s been quoted as saying it’s just a song about going to her happy place.

Music Feeds has this opinion: While the track is ostensibly a nursery-rhyme singalong pop tune about rising above the daily grind, it’s hard to definitively surmise whether Ms Allen is advocating day dreaming, or describing a Hunter Thompson-style vaporising high. Perhaps both. With lyrics like “we’re so high it can’t rain”, “”somebody remind me where I am, Miami or Timbuktu?” and the “trippin’, tri-tri-trippin’ now” refrain, we’ll let you make up your own mind …

Either way, it’s poppy and cheeky and so very Lily!

Director — That Go (Noel Paul and Stefan Moore) Producer — Sonya Sier 

A fairly out of the box video when it was released that always reminds me of the Chronicles of Riddick – something about the colour and nature of the sets, I think. What I love about this video clip, is its committment to an artistic vision that stepped well outside the normal dance and club scene footage.

Kudos to Linkin Park for alluding to other worlds and for getting wet for the sake of their art, and because … the flying whale.

On that subject wiki has this to say: A strange-looking whale can be seen flying around the large statue during most of the video, specifically at the end of the video. The whale in the video was Joe Hahn’s idea. He has been quoted as saying, “It’s not like I pulled it out of my ass; it made sense to me.” The reasoning behind its inclusion is still unknown. The whale could be identified as a “space whale” which takes the concept that life (or time) is too short for one to absorb all its mass surroundings. The whale also makes a brief appearance in the music video for “Shadow of the Day” ~wikipeida

Great song, great band, iconic clip!