Saturday, July 2, 2016

Video Of The Week: Richard Ashcroft

Ok, I'll be honest, I don't know what to think about this video.

I was a fan of Richard Ashcroft's band The Verve, and I was really into his first two solo albums, Alone With Everybody (2000) and Human Condition (2002), although the latter left me a tad unfulfilled, as if he was phoning it in, particularly lyrically.

Which brings me to his latest single, Hold On, a standard modern pop/dance fare with semi-smart lyrics about the current political state of affairs that is riddled with autotune:


The video, directed by Ashcroft himself, sees him (and him alone) doing what I guess he calls dancing, at times a fist in the air as if he was in the 1968 Olympics or a Rage Against The Machine concert - all in front of a black background.

It's as simplistic as the song. And to think Oasis' Gallagher brothers once thought of this man as the greatest British songwriter of their generation;  guess that's what happens when one befriends Coldplay's Chris Martin, the suck spreads; if you only suffered through the greatest part of their friendship (Coldplay and Ashcroft singing Bittersweet Symphony at Live 8) and didn't attend their joint tour where Ashcroft was the fucking opener (meaning he played for 30 minutes before Coldplay came to test your patience and resistance to ear torture for an hour and a half before regaling you with their one good song, The Scientist), trust me, you have never heard rock bottom.

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