joshua chamberlain

My last semester of college, I took a class on MTV.

Sounds crazy, but it was one of the capstone credits for my major in American Studies, a discipline I always tell people was like majoring in sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

In all honesty, American Studies was more like a hodge-podge of history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and a whole bunch of other -ologies, all rolled into an examination of how Americans develop culture. This meant studying everything from the 1970’s American Film Renaissance (The Godfather, Easy Rider, Star Wars, Jaws, etc.) to the 1920s New York Bowery scene.

The class on MTV was a study of how music videos changed the music business and how their aesthetics embody (or mismatch) the message conveyed by the songs they accompany. From examining the homoeroticism of Russell Mulcahy (Billy Joel’s “Allentown” being a prime example) to comparing Madonna’s iconic 1984 performance of “Like a Virgin” to Miley Cyrus’s cringe-worthy twerking in 2013, the class proved one thing: music videos are important.

Even at a young age, some part of my knew this. I have vivid memories of streaming music videos online when I was in middle school. And credit is certainly due to the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards for introducing me to a slew of bands that would become all-stars in my stable of most played artists: Weezer, The Killers, Foo Fighters, and My Chemical Romance. (Say what you will, but I stand by the statement the early 2000s really were a special time for rock music.)

As previously discussed, music videos became very important to me. I’d already adopted the John Cusack level of obsession with regard to how I used music to capture my life (and if we’re honest, self-mythologize), but music videos became my escape, the fodder to fill my afternoon when taking breaks from writing Metroid fan fiction.

With this sentiment in mind, I thought I’d share a few videos that have become important to me. These are the videos I come back to, the ones that shaped how the music I listen to transforms into the pictures I see in my head…

Simple Plan – “Welcome to My Life”

This is the first video I remember playing on repeat, sitting in the swivel chair at the family computer and streaming via Windows Media Player. Simple Plan was the first band that was mine and the release of their second album, Still Not Getting Any…, was a tidal wave in my life. Suddenly, there was music that captured what it felt like to be sad, to be misunderstood. I felt seen in a way I could never have comprehended. And so I spun that swivel chair in circles, pressed repeat on this video again and again, and sang along.

My Chemical Romance – “Welcome to the Black Parade”

I so vividly remember My Chemical Romance appearing on Fuse TV in the lead up to their legendary record, The Black Parade. The band who’d been on TV a few years prior sporting eyeliner and Billie Joe Armstrong’s red neck tie was back with a whole new look–that of a damned marching band from the other side of the veil. Needless to say, I was hooked. Here was a band doing something I’d never seen before, even though they were simply channeling the ambition of their classic rock predecessors (The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd) with the goth, horror, and punk flair of the 80’s and 90’s (The Cure, The Misfits).

The video for “Welcome to the Black Parade” conceptualized the core concept of the record: a terminal cancer patient experiences death as his strongest memory–a parade he attended as a child. For a teen already ruminating on death, this video embodied everything I found both cool and terrifying and ensared all my daydreams.

System of a Down – “Question!”

Speaking of cool and terrifying, System of a Down’s “Question!” was a video that buried itself deep in my psyche. In the throes of early adolescent romance, I’d have recurring dreams that matched the aesthetics of this video, from the dancing yellow and purple light to the violent quick cuts.

When said romance ended, “Question!” was the video I turned to for solace. Something about Serj Tankian’s wailing and the counter-balance between the acoustic guitar and the churning bass captured all the chaos that was boiling inside me. The video also proved the thesis that sometimes, screaming is the only thing you can do with the all the feelings you carry.

New Found Glory – “I Don’t Wanna Know”

There are times I’m convinced we fall in love with a song, only then to fall in love with a person, almost as if the music cracks us open. The melodies stuck in our heads prime us for all the butterflies that accompany blossoming romance. This is what happened for me with New Found Flory’s “I Don’t Wanna Know.”

A ballad from 2004’s Catalyst that paved the way for the genre-departing tenderness of 2006’s Coming Home, “I Don’t Wanna Know” opened parts of me I didn’t know existed. The song and its video suggested that love runs on its own clock, built from a collection of moments gathered over seasons. But at sixteen, I was too young and too dumb to understand this. All I knew was this song made me ache for the kind of romance I couldn’t yet comprehend.

Flyleaf – “All Around Me”

Flyleaf’s “All Around Me” proved a breath of fresh air for a kid coming from a religious background. Suddenly, expressions of faith didn’t have to be the stuffy pageantry and organ music that came with Sunday morning, but could instead be a violent burst of color, scored with thudding bass and a roaring electric guitar. Amen.

The Airborne Toxic Event – “Sometime Around Midnight”

In an interview with lead singer Mikel Jollet, Finneas O’Connell described hearing The Airborne Toxic Event’s “Sometime Around Midnight” for the first time as intimidating. “You listen to a song and you’re like, “Whoa, I don’t know if my family should know I’m listening to this,” O’Connell says. I couldn’t agree more.

The Airborne Toxic Event embodied an unvarnished honesty I’d never before encountered, and have rarely come into contact with since. “Sometime Around Midnight” described the kind of heartbreak I was slowly becoming acquainted with, almost a warning of the inevitable. The video captured the song perfectly, all the way down to the way the world sinks into monochrome the moment you discover a former lover is in love with someone else.

John Mayer – “Who Says”

I’ve had a fascination with John Mayer for years and this video started it all. Said fascination gradually grew into a college thesis about Mayer’s appropriate of the blues and subsequent attempt to walk back this appropriate by becoming a folk artist. But this video, where Mayer, shuffles the streets of New York and moans about being a prisoner to a good time, stoked that first morbid curiosity that prompted me to lift the rock and poke around in the dirt.

Arctic Monkeys – “Do I Wanna Know?”

It takes a serious act of imagination to avoid the two biggest music video cliches: performance concept or story concept. The Arctic Monkey’s “Do I Wanna Know?” managed to skirt both, instead painting full pictures of sound with a single white line. As the song opens all the way up, so does the imagery, exploding from a single line into several lines, one per musical voice, then exploding again, this time into animated pictures with loose affiliations to what’s occurring lyrically. This video proved the perfect pseudo-psychedelic experience to accompany the first round of exes reappearing in my life High Fidelity-style. (And for those of your wondering, I promise, I’m not this guy anymore…)

The Menzingers – “After The Party”

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve no doubt noticed my penchant for linking the music I listen to to my romantic relationships. The Menzingers’ “After The Party” arrived at a time in my life after which I’d sown my wild oats. No longer was I looking to recreate the kinds of images I saw, but instead saw what I’d lived reflected back to me. Here was a video that so perfectly captured the wild highs and abysmal lows I’d come to associate with being in a relationship. It proved yet another music video that made me feel seen in all the most wonderful and awful ways.

Jimmy Eat World – “Work”

While I missed the video when it was released in 2004, Jimmy Eat World’s “Work” has become one of the standout tracks from their album, Futures, a record that looms large in my memory and imagination.

A documentary-style video chronicling the lives of teenagers in Madison, Wisconsin, “Work” captures everything I sought to escape during my adolescence. All too often, I describe my upbringing in the suburban Midwest was like being raised in the Matrix. “Work” serves as a reminder that I wasn’t alone in the despair I felt, looking to the horizon and wondering if was in fact possible to “get out.”

Even all these years later, in a one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the country, I still wonder about this. Pressing play on the video makes me think the answer might still be “yes.”