In reading Francesca Coppa’s piece on Musical Literacy in Vidding, she mentions that Bonnie Ratt’s “There’s Something to Talk About” has been remixed more than any other song. Being that we just saw the On A Boat vid of all its remixes, I said to myself, “Hey, that would make a creative blog post! Why don’t you remix all of those videos into one awesome remix video!” But then I remembered that I probably should not be spending 10 to 20 hours on a single blog post.
Even so, I made the effort to go and watch parts of a half a dozen of them. What I noticed is that there are certain remix trends. There was a Yugioh remix video, there was a House slash vid exploring latent homosexuality, there were other vids that turned non-lovers into couples, i.e., a lot of what we’ve seen in other vids. If these vids are not necessarily innovative in their content, what makes thm work? I a lot has to do with the rhythm matching of the music and to the visuals on screen. For this song, in particular, I think the lyrics are essential because they easily permit visuals to be contextualized into a story. Their speak of distance, standing close or being far apart (I’m forgetting the exact lyrics) are ideal to explore character relationships, building and breaking apart. I’ll link some of the vids so you can check them out and come to your own conclusions.

Slash Vids

Yugioh

Fictionalizing heterosexual relationships