My Favourite Videos of 2008

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the bands I would love to see. One of those bands was The Killers. Ten days ago, I commented on my frustration at not being able to get tickets to see them play at Massey Hall in November. As an update to that, I found out this week that they will be coming back in January to play the Air Canada Centre. Massey Hall would have been a great venue, but I am now in possession of general admission floor tickets to Air Canada Centre!! So I am pretty excited. I have never been on the floor for a general admission show at ACC (I have for seated concerts). Looking forward to it.

In the weeks to come, I will be starting to look at the songs I loved in 2008. In the past, I have given a CD to friends of my top 20 songs. Since I have been blogging about the songs I have been loving (and have a list on the right), it seems a bit redundant. So I have decided to look at different categories, like best single, best album, best lyrics, best live act, etc.

I will start by sharing some of my favourite videos. I don't watch many videos, so feel free to add your favourite to my list of candidates. Official nominees will be announced in a few weeks.

The first one is by a band called Skint & Demoralised. I have been loving them for a few months now, but their music is not officially released on this side of the Atlantic yet. Here's the video released this week for their upcoming first single (being released in the UK in November).



He came up with the idea and it's his friend's first professional production. I love the angles, the lighting and the mystery of the paper. Part of me would love to know what was written on it, but I know that it's so much better for it to remain a mystery. Only a couple of the meetings were staged, but the best reactions were genuine. Love it. Since I first heard this song, I had such a vivid image in my mind of the song. It's interesting to see a different perspective (it's interesting to see a video of a song you have loved for a while as opposed to hearing a song the first time with the video).

Here's a video that is beautiful, breathtaking and heartbreaking (the album was released in 2007, but the video in 2008). James Blunt's Carry You Home. Again, this gives a completely different meaning to the song for me:



Here's the video for possibly my favourite song of 2008...Viva La Vida by Coldplay. Love the lighting, the colours and the fact that it's just the band and the song. I think this song is complete enough without a lot of stuff to distract from it.



Just to show that I'm not only showing artists I love, here's Madonna's 4 minutes...great dancing, great effects, great video:



A beautiful video for Adele's Chasing Pavement. Great song...Beautiful scene...love the shadows.



The Kooks' Always Where I Need to Be...fun and as a Canadian loves scenes of bands playing when they're cold...great jacket!!



Oasis - The Shock of the Lightning...very artistic...very busy...takes lots of viewings to catch everything...Beatles-like if I imagined the Beatles making a modern video.



Proof that I'm getting old. I have been reading about the Ting Tings for months and haven't been able to appreciate the music. Click here for the video (viewed over 6 million times - they have disabled embedding so I can't embed it into my blog)...cool video, but I can't get into the music.


I Will Possess Your Heart by Death Cab For Cutie
I confess, I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I will - it's over 8 minutes long but the cinematography is gorgeous.




I will end with The Killers' new video, Human. Most of The Killers' videos for Human were disabled. This one has a Maroon 5 video tagged at the end, it's a great video but not sure if it's from 2008 or 2007. I'll look into it before I announce my nominees.





What's your favourite video of 2008?