2016 may have been the Year of Our International Political Dumpster Fire (incidentally, can we be that far from subsidized time at this point?), but it was also the year of badass ladies making mesmerizing long-form music videos.
I finally caught up on Tove Lo’s Fairy Dust this weekend (I’ve worn Lady Wood out so I have no idea why it took me this long to find the accompanying film). I was totally taken by the bizarre choreographic vocabulary that develops throughout — spastic flailing, odd repeated hand gestures, a fixation with stretching out dancers’ mouths — which all made sense when the credits rolled and Denna Thomsen was listed as choreographer (she worked on Sia’s “Elastic Heart” video, also a spastic, mouthy, handsy delight).
[Lyrics frequently NSFW; end of video very NSFW/pornographic; melodramatic in the best possible way]
Ok, technically FKA twigs’s M3LL155X came out in 2015, but it was late in 2015, and 2016 needs to borrow some good things. This film is so stunning. Granted, I would pretty much watch twigs sit in a chair because she is just that mesmerizing, but still. She is also by all accounts an incredible and gracious collaborator, and no I don’t know why she’s with Robert Pattinson either.
And of course, the Queen of 2016 and of all time and of America (why didn’t she run for president??), Beyoncé. Lemonade can’t be praised enough. True story: I was at a friend’s wedding the night this came out. Twitter alerted me to its existence just as the wedding dancing was wrapping up, so I rushed home and watched it and died. The next morning I made my roommates watch it with me again. The day after that we had ANOTHER group viewing because we were all so excited about it, and then I taught it the following week. I’ll still drop everything I’m doing to watch it again if asked.
This year we lost what feels like a million icons, not to mention democracy and basic human decency and all kinds of other illusions, but at least there’s still good art. That’s something.