I made Blake Lewis's new video in my spare time

OK, not really, but I might as well have. You know how I was complaining that Linda Kiraly's music video was the cheapest I'd ever seen for an artist releasing in the U.S. that supposedly had major label backing? Well, can I correct that? The video for "Break Anotha" has taken that title.

Let's back up a bit first--sitting as a draft in Blogger was a post from me about an ad for Blake's album. Here it is, copy and pasted:

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I don't use the expression often, but this really deserves it: LOL.



What was the budget, $5? It's like a fanmade video--"well, here's some still pictures, and what if I made the cover float around in OUTER SPACE? But outer space was PURPLE?!!!"--collided with a a video of some random fan miming along to "Break Anotha"--but the random fan is BLAKE. What else do I love (i.e., find hilarious in a better laugh or you'll cry way) about this commercial:

• Announcer voice: "Blake Lewis, the American Idol favorite of millions" It's the "of millions" that gets me there--like someone was thinking, "well, we can't technically say he was the favorite since Jordin won, but maybe if we add this in no one will catch on."
• "Featuring the smash single 'Break Anotha'" Well, that's optimistic.
• No music video to feature scenes from?* No problem! Film your artist from some odd angles, zoom in and out a lot, make him bounce around the screen like a Pong ball, toss in some floating speakers, and voila! Commercial is set!

I tease because I love.

*Unless these actually ARE scenes from the music video, in which case we are all in trouble.

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Then, last night, I saw a clip of the music video in Blake's interview on The Sauce (who knew Jared Cotter was a TV host now?) and got really worried--as I mentioned over at The Zapping, it did not look good. Realllly cheap. And guess what it bore more than a little resemblance to? Yup, that ad. Different background, but same everything else.

Now, the full video is out. And seriously, I'm not sure whether to laugh or be really mad. There is no excuse for this. Not only do the green screen parts with the colors in the background look incredibly cheap, the scenes with the actors basically look like they were filmed on a cameraphone on a night out. By someone about two feet tall. Whose ability to film in color kept shorting out.



I mean, really? Who approved this? Who budgeted this? Given the single's failure to take off at radio, if you wanted Blake's album to stand a chance of going at all beyond the immediate preexisting fanbase, I would've thought you need a good video that'll get played a lot.

Its only redeeming feature in anyway is the bit during the music breakdown, where the band shows up and Blake and it go into that weird outline effect. And I'm not even sure it's that good--just compared to the rest of the video.

In better news, my Lorie album arrived today. Which I guess sadly means I do have to take a short break from playing the Blake album nonstop. After literally spending ten minutes trying to figure out how to open it (you have to pull on both sides of the internal part, FYI), I'm starting to listen to it. "Play" is KILLER and I'm in the middle of "L'amour autrement," which is great so far.

Back on the subject of Blake, my review (i.e., me saying "I LOVE this song! And this song! And this song!" in various ways over and over again) of the album may be up today. Please don't let the video turn you off of the album if you're at all thinking about getting it.