When I was writing my post about The Ataris "Boys of Summer" cover (jeeze, mention it again why don't you!), I mentioned three music videos and how I would sort of like to write a post on just those three.
THIS IS THAT POST.
The three music videos are by three of the biggest pop-punk bands and made during pop-punk's biggest boom. "All the Small Things" by blink-182, "Makes No Difference" by Sum 41 and "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World. At this time, a song succeeded more or less solely on the performance of its video, which was not the case at all 20 years prior and not really the case now, 15 years later. If you wanted to be a successful pop musician, you had to have a video that performed well on TRL or Muchondemand or whatever. Your video had to reflect the tone of the song, reflect the image of your band/artist, and also reflect popular ideas in society at the time. Now that stations playing exclusively music videos have gone by the wayside, that logic doesn't apply anymore. It's a system of music production that was short-lived in the grand scheme of things, but while it was the system it was the ONLY SYSTEM.
All three of these songs had a huge impact on me and also occupy a different place within the world of early 2000's pop-punk. It was a time in my life when I hadn't yet carved out a niche for myself musically, so these three songs really represent me starting to like my "own" music that wasn't stuff that my brother listened to or what my parents played in the car. The stuff that I listened to in 5th/6th grade then greatly informed what I got into after that, so in many ways these three songs were the catalyst in me becoming who I am right now. This is why I like punk. This why punk is "my thing".
Let's get to it.
I don't think I need to mention that blink-182 is one of my all-time favourite bands. This sounds like a pretty cliché thing to say, given how popular the whole "defend pop-punk" thing is right now, but it's absolutely true. They were one of the first bands I listened to and have stayed in pretty constant rotation since then. This was the first blink song that I heard. I know that "What's My Age Again?" was the first single, but this is the first one that I remember. Given that I was an 11 year-old boy when this single was released, the video appealed to me for obvious reasons.
Like I said in the introduction, I hadn't yet discovered the music that I liked yet. My parents dissuaded me in watched MuchMusic, which meant that I was a little sheltered musically, though I was only 11, so I wouldn't say I was sheltered. But around this age I started to notice that girls looked nice and I wanted them to think that I looked nice. I also noticed that they were into music, so maybe I should be into music too. Other big singles from this time were "What a Girl Wants" by Christina Aguilera and "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child, neither of which appealed to me at all at the time. In hindsight, "Say My Name" is a pretty big jam.
But when I saw three guys spoofing all the other videos around at the time? That I could get behind. I'm not really sure why, but back then I knew that all of the boy bands and teen starlets were lame, but I didn't know why. They didn't play guitars? There was too much sex appeal in the videos for my pre-pubescent brain to deal with? I won't know for sure, but I know for sure that that was how I felt.
Before getting into the video, I want to talk about the song. I think this jam is pretty high on my list of "Best blink-182 Jams" and boy is that ever a long list. This song is good because the instrumentation is simple and the melodies are huge. That's it!
Think about the verse and chorus vocal melodies.
See! Both of them can be called up on demand and are instantly burned into your mind because they are so catchy. That is how you write a successful pop song.
Now think about the lyrics. How fucking stupid are they? So fucking stupid! I would say that never before has a song so expertly crafted musically ('cause brother, let me tell you, writing a song this catchy ain't easy) had such dumb lyrics, but that would be a gross exaggeration and is definitely not the case. If you are a blink aficionado such as myself, then you would agree that this song has Tom DeLonge all over it. Tom (using the more formal "DeLonge" would seem way too weird) always tended to be the weaker songwriter in blink and while Mark Hoppus injected a fair amount juvenile stuff in his songs, it always seemed like it was coy as opposed to the "wow-he-might-actually-be-that-stupid-hahaha-oh-well-look-at-me-laughing-at-it-anyways" nature of Tom's songs. Think about the singles that Tom wrote/sings. This song, "First Date", "Dick Lips", "Anthem pt.II", "I Miss You", "Always". All of those songs have dumb lyrics. They're all good songs (save for "I Miss You", which is hot garbage), but they all have super dumb lyrics.
The video is clearly a Tom creation too. The earlier singles "Dammit", "Josie", and "What's My Age" are all super goofy videos, but are more self-effacing in their humour, with the protagonist Mark poking fun at himself, as opposed to the straight-up "ripping on you" nature of "All the Small Things". When you watch the video, it mostly focuses on Tom, though Mark's belly gyrations will get burned into your mind as soon as you see them, and Travis clearly does not give a fuck about doing anything at all. This video is also weird because blink is really the same thing as all of the artists they're making fun of. Sure they play guitars and "write their own songs", but they're given the same budgets and the same sheen on their production as the others. They might be marketed as edgier or different but when it comes down to it, they're really just New Coke.
But man, the whole "fuck these pop stars" attitude really spoke to me as an 11 year-old and became a rallying battle cry for Paul, Damien, Pat and I in 5th grade.
Let's now move on to the next video, "Makes No Difference" by Sum 41.
blink was pretty easy to come across because they had their feet firmly planted in the mainstream. They were all over the radio and all over MuchMusic, so they were naturally the first band I discovered. The second one was Sum 41. Man, did I ever fucking love Sum 41. Sum 41 was my whole fucking world. They were my first "favourite band".
A big part of that was because they were Canadian. Thanks to Can-Con laws, they received even more airplay in Canada than blink, which meant that I was exposed to them just that much more. When I was a child I also had a much larger sense of national pride as well, so the band's passports definitely played a huge role in my love for them. I knew that Canadians played better hockey, I knew that Canadians were smarter and I knew that we made better pop-punk bands (in hindsight, the last point is debatable).
The first CD I went out and bought with my own money was All Killer, No Filler, but I remember this video before then. My brother told me it was cool because DMX rides an ATV in it.
The thing I find interesting about this video is that it introduces a trope that is hugely popular in both pop-punk videos from this time and the teen movies they were the soundtrack for: The house party. The teen comedy movie could not exist without the house party. American Pie begins and ends with one. So does American Pie II. Superbad? Can't Hardly Wait? This isn't unique to the early aughts, Dazed and Confused is centered on teens trying to find a spot for their party after the original locale falls through. You cannot have a teen-centric comedy without a house party and if it's going on while someone's parents are out of town, all the better.
It wasn't uncommon at all for pop-punk videos to have them. Hell, the next video I'm going to talk about is at a house party too. The video for "Make No Difference" could easily stand in as the last scene of any of the movies I mentioned in the last paragraph and no one would be the wiser. This is not a mistake, by having "Makes No Difference" take place at a wild house party, the record executives at Island Records were saying "You do this on your own time. You see this in the movies. Buy this because it is the accompaniment to this." and that worked amazingly. Though we weren't drinking yet, when my friends and I had parties, we would play Sum 41 and blink-182. I was on the lower end of their target demographic, but I just assumed that being a teenager basically entailed doing the things in Sum 41 videos. And I wasn't entirely wrong.
The characters that the band are are interesting to me too because that's who the record label was selling to me. As much as I liked the band's music, I would be lying if I said that the goofy cool-guy personas the band presented wasn't the main reason I was drawn to them. In "Makes No Difference" the band are pranksters, but they're also the coolest guys at the party. This evidenced by the video cutting from them being wild and crazy pranksters climbing around the house with watermelons, but then cutting right back to them playing music and the entire crowd watching them with interest. That is who I wanted to be. I wanted to be funny and dumb enough to do something crazy, but cool enough to hopefully makeout with a girl afterwards. Hell, that's still who I want to be.
Paul, Damien and I, having decided to form a band in elementary school, used to think out loud about which member of Sum 41 each of us would correspond to in our band. Those label execs sure did their job.
Last one, "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World:
This one is interesting because it is a great foil to "Makes No Difference". Both videos take place is the exact same place, but have a way different tone and message to them.
I mentioned in the last section that Sum 41 were my first "favourite band" (quickly replaced by NoFX), but "The Middle" was my first favourite song. The first time I heard the song was in the trailer for the, again, teen comedy The New Guy. Upon further inspection, the song doesn't appear in the film or on its official soundtrack, but I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, that it was in this trailer. When I heard the chorus of the song, it was the first time I had ever heard a song and thought "Yes. That is what I like." I knew that I liked that song and I knew I wanted to listen to more songs that sounded like it and that is exactly what I did. The song occupies a really special place in my life and still whenever I hear the intro I get wistful and get a little ping in my chest. Have I told you about how this song has the best guitar solo of all-time? I have probably told you about how this song has the best guitar solo of all-time.
Jimmy Eat World is a much different band than blink and Sum 41 though. Both of those bands were still fairly new. Dude Ranch was a big breakthrough for blink, but Enema of the State was certainly their first "big album" and Half Hour of Power, where "Makes No Difference" comes from, was Sum 41's first album (Or EP? I think if it's 10 songs or longer and more than 30 minutes it doesn't count as an EP guys). Jimmy Eat World had a significant amount of underground support and cred before hitting it huge with "The Middle". Clarity, the album that preceded Bleed American, was a landmark in 90's emo music and, while we're being subjective here, is a fucking masterpiece. Bleed American was the band's fourth album. While blink and Sum 41 were both trying to be pop-punk bands, Jimmy Eat World were instead a band who just happened to write a pop-punk song.
It's obvious when watching the video that the band isn't trying to be jokey like blink or Sum. They're still at a house party, but the band aren't the focus at all. Instead, we get a teenaged male protagonist who wanders around the party feeling out of place. The band is just in the background playing and don't interact with the partygoers at all. Since it's Jimmy Eat World, frontman Jim Adkins is covered in sweat. I read this as Jimmy Eat World trying to show that they are a "serious band". This is what we do. We play music. I'm sure that the label/director tried to get them to play in their underwear or something, but the band refused. That would be cool. Or hell, maybe the label is just trying to market them as a serious band. I will never know.
In "All the Small Things", nudity is used to comedic effect, with Tom and Mark trying to show as much skin as possible to get as many laughs as possible. Here, the nudity seems normal to me. Even though a party where everyone stripped down to their underwear would probably be fun, it would be pretty awkward. In the video for "The Middle" I find that the nudity draws me into the world of the video. It sets up the premise of the video and the short journey that our protagonist is about to go. Surprise, surprise, a Jimmy Eat World video is most tasteful than a blink-182 video.*
One can easily imagine how this video would have gone if it was made by blink. Jimmy Eat World separates themselves by including a love story in this one. In "Makes No Difference", Sum 41 are out of control pranksters who cause a ton of chaos at the party and when the protagonists of that video interacts with them, he drives a car through the front of his house. God that was a stupid sentence to type out. The protagonist of "The Middle" is instead more of a loner, which we know because he feels awkward about taking off his clothes at this party. Once, Jimmy Eat World is done playing their song, he discovers a girl going through the same predicament as him and they leave the party holding hands, feeling comfortable in themselves. It's almost like Jimmy Eat World was saying "Hey, we know we made a pop-punk song, but we're still emo. We Promise!" Also, the band is clothed, so that must mean they sympathize with him, right? I mean, "The Middle" has to have been a request for a pop-punk song by their label right? A sort of "Sure, we'll put out your emo record, but you gotta do us this solid" type of deal?
Because the more I think and write about this video, the more that I think it was supposed to be a "Makes No Difference" type of video for the label to profit off of, but Jimmy Eat World being a "serious band" threw a wrench in that plan.
Anyways, this is also one of my favourite music videos. Everything in it just seems to complement everything else so well. Granted, a bunch of that is tied up in my huge feelings of nostalgia for it, but still it just rules.
*Fun fact: Tom Delonge loves Jimmy Eat World and got them to play at his wedding.
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