This was an amazing week for videos, but not a great week for videos with anything in common with each other. Here’s the only narrative I thread I can pull from the five videos below: Two of them are inspirational sports stories, though that’s really all they have in common. So: Olympics? We’ll go with that. Watch the videos below.
Original Website: Stereogum
“Winner,” the new single from acid-tongued British synthpop lifers the Pet Shop Boys, is probably the first song that group has ever written that sounds like it was intended for some kind of sporting montage. But luckily, the video finds a truly fascinating context for the track. The video is an inspirational sports montage of sorts, but the inspiration doesn’t come from any athletic feats; it comes from the whole community-building side effect. It’s about a transgender woman and her initiation into roller derby, and it’s done with total affectionate sincerity. Watch it below.
Original Website: Stereogum
The Pet Shop Boys have been making prettily scathing synthpop since before many of us were born, and they’re still soldiering on with it. The duo’s new album Elysium arrives in a couple of months, and we’ve already heard first single “Invisible.” Now they’ve shared another album track, the strobing ballad “Winner,” in the form of a lyric video. Check it out below.
Original Website: Stereogum
The pioneering British sardonic-synthpop duo Pet Shop Boys will drop a new album called Elysium in a few months, and the first song is “Invisible,” a weary, hushed, pretty song about aging out of party-scene relevance. The band doesn’t show up in the video; instead it’s a still conceptual thing about living, ever-changing wall art. Brian Bress directs. Watch it below.
Original Website: Stereogum
