I have never really bothered to listen to Blur’s last album ‘The Magic Whip’, but may be I should have so I am streaming it right now. However, it’s not this last video that is going to convince me about their greatness.
I know it’s not always necessary to spend a fortune on videos – look at this recent FIDLAR video, I bet they didn’t spend very much on that one – because they are highly disposable these days. However, this new one for Blur’s ‘Ong Ong’ is so cheap, you won’t even want to watch it twice. Or may be it is just me, but it looks like a video game of the 90’s, and it looks like an old cliché. During the whole game, the yellow smiley face goes on a quest to save his female counterpart (the pink smiley of course). It’s very bubble-gum and rainbows, a low-pixel-animation, made to look like a bad reject of Pac-Man or Super Mario Bros. I am sure there are many other video games and a lot of Asian culture references, but since I am not no expert, I got bored very fast.
The band appears briefly at the beginning and at the end, dressed up as the avatars of their fake video game, Damon Albarn as the ice cream cone, Mr. Cream, Grahan Coxon as the cockroach, Mr. Brown, Alex James as the blob, Mr. Red, and Dave Rowntree as the fly, Mr. Black… and it didn’t even make me smile a second… do they really find that remotely funny?
According to Radio.com, it stars ‘Mr. OK, who you might recognize as the smiley ball from Blur’s “Go Out” video’… sorry it had escaped me. And the song doesn’t even save the day, this child-like sing-along could not be more upbeat and optimistic and it will work very well at music festivals, but it’s not ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’.