J.None - Before 2 minutes I was going to say this sounds nice, but has a bland video and just doesn't stand out to me. After 2 minutes it gets a lot better though! But... probably not better enough to change the overall evaluation from "sounds nice, but."
liltommyj - Yeah, this is quite well made! Not flawless, the middle sections struggle a bit and the whole production is very game remix, but still, solid A- at worst, a fun romp, and memorable just due to its nature. Toss in the personal significance and we have a very nice package, could totally pick this.
Falconshield - Hmmm, well this provides a nice contrast to liltommyj, if an unfavorable one? Even though the production is better on this, the video and narrative are much less memorable. The lyrics aren't going to make any sense to people who aren't familiar with all the gaming references, and honestly still seem weak to me even though I understand them all. It's just one reference after another, with not much actually holding them together, and then the song just abruptly ends and leaves me wondering what the point was. Even with all this, it's certainly far from terrible, but to me it was most memorable for establishing what liltommyj did right. Even though I haven't personally played a minute of RDR, I easily grasped what that song was about and was entertained, whereas this I can't praise much beyond "reasonable rapping skills."
Forever Still - At 0:26 and some later points in the song there's some harsh static burst, maybe that's just me? Aside from that, solid genre song, gets in, does its thing, gets out. Not particularly exciting, but catchy enough that I gave it a couple loops.
Cross Gene - Huuuh. Well. This is the exact opposite of the "pleasant but bland" selections; I found it very memorable, and interesting, but didn't enjoy it! There are several different components all going on in sequence: a rap part, a pop part, an instrumental interlude, several rather graphic "black" video sections and then a "white" section with a bunch of kpop boys in heaven...? The characters are all the band members, I guess? I didn't feel like any of these sections worked together particularly well, though. There were occasional individual moments that worked for me, but as a whole nothing seemed to come together. Left me kind of sad, since normally this sort of striking imagery would very much be my thing, but in this case I left feeling like it didn't do enough to offset or justify the squick factor.
M.I.A. - So I figured out the issue with some of these videos causing youtube to lock up and not display the video - apparently it's some adblocker interference code google's trying to run. It you have Adblock Plus for Firefox enabled and go to certain "trending" videos with forced ads in front, it breaks and displays a black screen, both there and on any further videos you click from that page. So... kind of a point against featuring something that might break for people, although it has nothing to do with the song itself. Unfortunate. ANYWAY! Once I got it working, it was... okay. Didn't like it quite as much as other M.I.A. pieces (Borders in particular). Part of that might be a growing general aversion to politics in fun song time. Part of it is the minimalism - this is too minimal for me, I wanted a bit more music. She is the Saddam though and that's cool.
Interesting week, strengths and weaknesses all around and I can see totally different hit/miss takes on these. Overall I'm on liltommyj here, it's good and fun, does a lot of things right and not much very wrong, and has the personal relevance factor going for it.
liltommyj > Forever Still > Cross Gene > J.None > Falconshield > MIA
