Viral Knife Dancing Videos Were Actually Teasers For Underwhelming Music Video

So remember those crazy knife-dancing videos? The ones with the grandma and the dog and the dancers with tucked-in-monochrome-shirts? Remember the mystery and the intrigue? The wonder and the possibility? The potential? Well, it turns out that those clips were actually teaser videos for a real music video for the song “Original Don” by Major Lazer. While that’s a little bit boring of a conclusion, what’s worse –what really sticks in my craw– is that the final product has turned out to be much, much less than the sum of its parts. It kind of sucks, guys. It kind of sucks.

Yes, this is so important to me that I’m about to explain why.

The first two videos really succeeded in both their brevity and their complete and utter lack of context. At least the lack of context is still there, which is good. Then again, you’d be hard pressed to try and contextualize something that is bizzare anyways. The brevity is not, there however. In this video we see grandma walking all over the house, there’s an attempt at a progression of scenes beyond the tried and true “dance with knife, drink beer,” and for half the song no one is actually dancing. No no no. I want none of it.

The real kicker is that the song in this one is just awful. I know, I know, typically a matter of taste, but just bear with me while I desperately try to explain how it’s not. In the first two videos, we had some truely fantastic little ditties with complex rythms and like, instrumentation. I’m not talking about 13/4 time or anything, but more than a straight 4/4 bass drum. What do we have here? Mostly a straight 4/4 bass drum. It’s less like watching people dance with knives to music and more like watching them hold knives and occasionally move to the beat of someone hitting a trashcan with a golf-club 2 blocks over. Even if you like this song (really?), you have to admit that the first two videos had songs that were , if not better (which they totally were) at least misleading. Seriously, how’d we go from that to this?

Yeah, the wonderfully unexplained Napolean Dynamite aestethic is still there, as is the beer, and the knives, and the 70s decor, but song just throws the whole thing off. I guess I’ll just stick to the classics. Hopefully these guys can put out a redemptive sophomore outing. I want to love them so badly. So, so badly.

(Vid via The Daily What)

Relevant to your interests

• The initial video
• The second (and best) video
• And I’m just gonna link to the second one again, because it is SO GOOD. And that song, just, ugh. So good.