There’s been some pretty amazing music videos from international waters this year, including spinning CDs from Japan, getting a British band drunk, an amazing Dutch interactive video, and possibly the year’s most NSFW clip comes from London.
But what about the year’s best Australian music videos?
Triple J has certainly got some ideas as the national youth broadcaster reveals another round of J Awards 2013 nominations.
Following on from announcing the final list of nominations for its coveted Album of the Year award and acknowledging emerging artists in the the annual Unearthed J Award nominees, Triple J has named the nominees for its annual Music Video Of The Year category.
First off the rank is Mebourne indie-folk quintet The Paper Kites for their clip ‘Young’, which gathers 4,000 portraits of more than 350 people to create a unique stop-motion effect that gives the impression of the multiple faces singing the atmospheric track’s lyrics; which was enough for the clip to go viral internationally.
The video was directed by Darcy Prendergast, whose previous credits includes the clip for Gotye’s ‘Easy Way Out’, and the music video auteur is up with two chances at the Music Video of the Year J Award for his work on Clubfeet’s ‘Everything You Wanted’.
The one-shot video for the Melbourne-via-South Africa electropop group had such a deceptively great concept that it was ripped off by international bands not once, but twice.
The first culprit was Japanese indie five-piece Champagne, mimicking their own version of the idea for their tune, ‘Forever Young’, which producer Prendergast said “blatantly ripped off” the original, calling for a boycott of the clip and the band for being “uncreative vampires sucking at the necks of those who truly strive to create innovative work to wow the world.”
The Clubfeet video was then similarly used as a source of suspicious inspiration by Turkish RnB singer Soner Sarıkabadayı for the clip to his ‘Kutsal Toprak’ single, with the band mentioning they felt a “recurring sense of deja vu.”
From copycat to fitting tribute, Kingswood’s ‘Ohio’ is also up for Triple J’s Music Video gong.
Actually a blood-soaked mini-movie tribute to B cinema and Tarantino flicks entitled Some Motherfucker’s Gotta Pay, the Kingswood video was shot in and around Sydney and rural New South Wales by young film crew Wonderworld Films, and stars the Melbourne four-piece along with a host of cameos from Seth Sentry, Thelma Plum, Kira Puru, and even cult surf legend Reg Mombassa.
A similarly Aussie celeb-starring clip is also up for J Award honours, in the form of Bluejuice’s ‘S.O.S.’, in fact Triple J Breakfast hosts Tom & Alex star in the video, alongside other media personalities like comedian Merrick Watts and Australian Idol host Osher Günsberg, as the fun-time rockers run around in Ghostbusters gear, instead busting douchebags rather than ghouls.
Rounding out the music video nominations list is the glossy, big budget clip of magic tricks and great escapes that is Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’, and the greasy diner adventures of Thundamentals in the Aussie hip hop group’s ‘Smiles Don’t Lie.’
The six Triple J anointed videos join the full list of J Awards 2013 nominees, such as the 11 artists up for the Album of the Year award – including Big Scary, The Drones, Flume, and Karnivool – and seven artists in the running for the J Unearthed Award – including Jeremy Neale, Tigertown, and Remi.
The winners of the 2013 J Awards will be announced on the 22nd November. Previously victorious Music Video of the Year winners include Kirin J Callinan’s ‘Way II War’ last year, Hermitude’s ‘Speak Of The Devil’, Washington’s ‘Sunday Best’, Art Vs Science’s ‘Parlez Vous Francais’, and the inaugural winner, The Herd’s ’20/20′.
The Paper Kites – ‘Young’
Clubfeet – ‘Everything You Wanted’
Kingswood – ‘Some Motherfucker’s Gotta Pay’
Bluejuice – ‘S.O.S.’
Vance Joy – ‘Riptide’
Thundamentals – ‘Smiles Don’t Lie’
