01.13.15: The Last VJ’s Top 5 Music Videos of the Week
Welcome to The Last VJ, music fans! I have some real treats for you goodie bags this week. Just for fun I present the absolute best music video 2025 has yet to produce, and also the worst video probably ever made for you to point and laugh at. Everything else is terrifying. Sorry about that. Put on the phones and lets roll!
Mount Eerie, “This”
It’s cold, it’s wet, and it’s depressing as hell outside even for a cave troll like myself. If you could take all the genetic memory of the dread of winter and shove it into a three-minute music video “This” would be it.
Directed by Peter J. Brant it’s largely a collage of cold, unsettling images. There are gourds shattered on rocky hills and samurai swords being cleaned in icy-looking streams. Underneath that is the sinister and unnerving music of Mount Eerie. I was looking forward to picking up their new album, Sauna, but I’m not sure I can take an hour of scarab beetles clawing out my soul like this video does. Beautiful, brilliant stuff, but it’s not comfortable art.
Rebekka Karijord, “Use My Body While It’s Still Young”
There’s a Rodin statue called She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker’s Beautiful Wife (Celle qui fut la belle heaulmière) that is a nude of a very old woman. It’s breathtakingly beautiful because it shows us that no matter how battered and bruised and broken our bodies get in life somewhere inside is youth and perfection and a frightful fire. If that statue could be sung into life then Rebekka Karijord’s new video would be that existence.
“Use My Body While It’s Still Young” features an aged dancer played by Siv Ander. Though wrinkled, she’s still strong and graceful, losing herself to a primal dance as Karijord furiously plays her organ behind her. Karijord, who also directed the video, has a tremendous eye for shooting human flesh, lingering on shots of the iron muscles of Ander’s exposed back and the soft, unmarked skin of Karijord’s own. The result is a maenad frenzy that feels like you’ve just had a stiff drink. It’s early to say, but “Use My Body While It’s Still Young” is already my favorite music video of 2025.
