#music video connections

[chickawah23]

The recurring use of Koi Fish in the Midnights Music Videos + Speak Now

We all know the Speak Now Tour Guitar had the koi fish on it. So Taylor’s relentless references to speak now in these 3 music videos makes it clear this chick wants the concept of Speak Now (regaining her voice and her truth) to be the recurring theme of this whole roll out and I am loving it.

Taylor told us that Lavender Haze was the first video she wrote out of the 3 music videos released so far which helped conceptualize Midnights.

In LH Taylor used the koi fish at two key parts, pulling back the weather forecast curtain on the tv screen. Where she goes from being bored to seeing the koi fish as a way out. The next scene is her putting on a PDA show at a party with her man. Then the koi fish returned at the end of the video when she knocked down the fake room she held the party in and then went to sleep in that cloud surrounded by the koi fish. It’s almost like she used the man to get into this space where she could get to the fish.

So when she ends the video going into the cloud surround by the fish it almost looks like she’s inside the Speak Now guitar. Like she put herself in the best place to get back to her truth.

In the Anti-Hero mv, her outward persona and her inward self both have the Speak Now tour guitar with Koi Fish on it. The public facing wild Taylor destroys the guitar while the inward Taylor watches while laughing and playing hers. If we take the idea of Taylor being inside the guitar and apply it here then it looks like outward facing Taylor is doing everything she can to “free” inward Taylor by destroying her truth. Thematically after this scene we are first introduced to giant Taylor who is too big to just hang out and then we see outward Taylor teaching inward Taylor to change everything about herself or dislike herself to make living a lie more tolerable. Moreover, we are first introduced to outward public facing Taylor when inward Taylor is about to run out of the house she is trapped in. But outward Taylor keeps her inside and gives her different coping mechanisms. Almost like outward Taylor is pretending to help but is actually trying to keep inward Taylor trapped.

In the Bejeweled mv. Once Taylor wins the castle she goes to the balcony as Long Live plays and the Koi fish are in the top half of the stain glass window. The way that the stained glass is curved looks almost like she’s stepping out from inside the guitar. She also has the Speak Now barrettes in her hair. She started the music video in exile similar to the Inward version of herself who is trapped in the house in AntiHero mv. And she goes on this journey to reclaim her jewels and the castle that was once hers just to burn it down in the end.

As has been discussed at length by others koi fish represent perseverance and overcoming obstacles. Taylor’s biggest obstacle has been this journey to reclaim her past. She can’t speak until she has her truth. So the use of the koi fish and recurring speak now era themes is just an awesome way to lay out this journey.

The power of this koi fish Speak Now through-line is great. I love it. I can’t wait to see what else she puts out.

P.S. I am still patiently waiting for speak now tv lol

[stillgotscars]

taylor’s red boots are not a rep tv easter egg. just let the woman look hot in peace for once.

[clockworkreapers]

so you know all those frames i was making? It became a video~ this is for my characters Sburb game!

[vaggieslefteye]

MORE THAN ANYTHING - REPRISE ↳ from Hazbin Hotel Season One (2024): 1x08 - "The Show Must Go On"

[cleolinda]

When I was a child in the '80s, I absorbed some kind of cultural truism that disco was ridiculous, embarrassing, cheesy, a cultural relic to be mocked at every turn. Remember, I'm under ten years old at this time, and I still manage to get this impression. There was another, milder sea change when grunge overtook the hair metal of the late '80s, so I never questioned the idea that disco should be dead and buried. We like silly things, I thought in my 13-year-old wisdom, and then we get over it.

Then I saw The Last Days of Disco (1998) while I was in college, and suddenly I realized that disco was fun, and it was like—it was in the roots of—music I already loved. And the end of that movie also—hints? tells you? I can't remember how explicitly—that disco didn't just fade like most trends; it was killed off.

I watched a lot of VH1 in those days, the late '90s, with a little TV sitting on my tall university-issue dresser, its corner overlooking my computer desk while I struggled with piles of assignments. This was the heyday of Behind the Music, so it was great background TV. And then one day (1999) they ran a Donna Summer—the "Queen of Disco"—concert special. The video up there is the song that immediately became my favorite of hers. It’s just instant serotonin to me, any version of it. I bought the whole VH1 album on CD, and "This Time I Know It's For Real" may genuinely be one of my all-time favorite songs, now, still, more than 20 years later. You can hear the original version (1989) here (the backing instrumental that I just found today is lovely), but the live version ten years later, the video up there, has a really special comeback—joyous, gracious survival—energy to it.

Watching the whole concert, I got it. Why the fuck did I ever think disco wasn't amazing? It was always the kind of thing I loved; we had all just been pretending that it was embarrassing glitter trash.

And then I found out why we were pretending. From densely-footnoted Wikipedia:

Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Many had come to see the explosion rather than the games and rushed onto the field after the detonation. The playing field was so damaged by the explosion and by the rioters that the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game to the Tigers. [...] The popularity of disco declined significantly in late 1979 and 1980. Many disco artists carried on, but record companies began labeling their recordings as dance music. [...] Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh described Disco Demolition Night as "your most paranoid fantasy about where the ethnic cleansing of the rock radio could ultimately lead". Marsh was one who, at the time, deemed the event an expression of bigotry, writing in a year-end 1979 feature that "white males, eighteen to thirty-four are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks, and Latins, and therefore they're the most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist, but broadcasting has never been an especially civil-libertarian medium." Nile Rodgers, producer and guitarist for the disco-era band Chic,

(who survived the disco era to make half the music I loved in the '80s)

likened the event to Nazi book burning. Gloria Gaynor, who had a huge disco hit with "I Will Survive," stated, "I've always believed it was an economic decision—an idea created by someone whose economic bottom line was being adversely affected by the popularity of disco music. So they got a mob mentality going."

The DJ who ran the whole thing, Steve Dahl, complains that it was VH1 itself—you know, those Behind the Music specials I was watching—circa 1996 that labeled the whole debacle as bigotry when it so totally was not, you guys, and he is so tired of defending himself. But I'm gonna tell you, Steve, I don't really care. Maybe Disco Demolition Night was your fault; maybe you were just a part of something so much bigger and uglier that you couldn't see the whole size of it. Can you draw a direct line from the weird bigoted vitriol directed at those dance records to Ronald Reagan, elected the very next year, not giving a single fuck about the AIDS crisis? You probably don't want to, but I will.

And I don't care because I can look around the U.S. right now and tell you, nearly 45 years later, people are trying to demolish a lot more than disco. The Club Q shooter was sentenced to life in prison just a few hours ago. It's Pride Month, and we're all sitting here holding our breaths. That's a terrible way to end a post about a beautiful happy song I love, I guess, unless you turn it around and say, that should have been the whole point of this post in the first place. Listen to this song and think, people wanted to destroy this music, this sound, this joy for some reason. They want to stop people from just living their lives, from dancing. And yet, disco is still here. It was there in 1979, and it was there when Donna Summer released this song in 1989, and it was there when she returned in 1999. The Queen of Disco passed away in 2012, and it's still here. I feel a lot of joy when I listen to this song, but I don't think I'd ever thought about it being the joy of grooving with something just because it’s beautiful, the joy of just being here, still.

[northern-spark-of-creativity]

The best love story is when you fall in love with the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time.

Video Source: Pinterest

Accidentally In Love - Counting Crows

[shigarakisdangerbeans]

what if…. The cataclysmic event was the ritual done in Thread the Needle? Like the mere event of Vessel summoning Sleep into his life caused this catastrophic event that shaped the world

[softiecharlie]

charles and arthur leclerc sharing the same braincell (affectionate)

via wtf1official and prema

[astrangetorpedo]

feelings on phoebe bridgers?

world’s foremost jucy enjoyer phoebe bridgers ?? i think she’s great

[staticwaffles]

"I remember when I used to hear the soundtrack of films it mattered to me to have the CDs and play them in order because I could shut my eyes and see the film through the music."

DIEGO LUNA on Soundtracking with Edith Bowman

[chickawah23]

Same energy

[fckedupnerd]

Mathew Baynton in the Dodges and Feints music video for DM Stith

Video here:

[hussyknee]

cant put my finger on it, but Taylor Swift feels like walking racial microaggression

[idon-twannabeperceived]

Btw seeing gringos trying to dance tango or salsa is so 🫥🫥

Like I don't mind at all bro go off but like put some flavor in there I AM BEGGING i swear u won't die WHERE IS YOUR SOUL DO YOU NOT HAVE A HEART