My unfortunate habit of switching between CNN and VH1 in the morning has left me with the distinct impression that in the creative realm there's recently been a lot more emphasis put on visual than substance. It's not been uncommon over the past decade to hear that something looked awesome, but lacked plot. Plot and character development seem to be lacking overall in a lot of movies. However, here I'm referring to music video. It's funny to me when a music video is orders of magnitude better than the song for which it was created. Of course, this makes sense because a good video gives a context to a song that'll help make it infectious and can either make it more or less obnoxious.

This has clearly been true of any number of videos. Recently, I'd say anything by Gwen Stefani, or Justin Timberlake would fall into this category, with some Christina Aguillera and Fergie thrown in for good measure. Of course, my opinions there could have more to do with the fact that none of these are artists whose songs I'd listen to were it not for the merger of VH1 and Cheerios. The specific song that brings this up though comes to us from a rock band that sounds pretty generic, and very much like every other pseudo rock band that's been popular over the past several years. The rebirth of the 80s is bringing us back to pre-grunge guitar ballads, which could be fantastic or tragic. The band is Stone Sour and their song is Through Glass. In itself, nothing special, radio filler. But for some reason I love the video. True, the band members look like they belong in the basement of some rented house out near Pole Line, and it plays up some of the unfair stereotypes I dislike about LA, but visually, it's just kind of cool. So now, where I would otherwise turn away from it as I do for the Pussy Cat Dolls, I find myself drawn to it.

The real kicker here is that I know I'll take a look at this next week, see the video again, and wonder why I thought it looked so cool. In the meantime, I'm just sick of seeing good visuals trying to compensate for bad music.