This will be a personal weekly Top Ten list of what I consider to be the best videos currently available on TV. I don’t, as a rule, go searching for old music videos, so that’s why it will focus mostly on current or recent videos. For this category, I am also going to include any live performances on talk or variety shows that I see during the week.
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It’s the battle of the century: Banjos vs. Pontoons. Well, not exactly. But two versions of each video show up on this week’s list knocking poor Carly Rae Jepsen from the top spot. But I’m sure she’s getting a lot of phone calls now……………………
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Top 10 Videos and Performances for the week of June 10, 2012
1. Pontoon—Little Big Town on CMT Awards Show
2. Banjo—Rascal Flatts on CMT Awards Show
3. Banjo—Rascal Flatts
4. Pontoon—Little Big Town
5. Call Me Maybe—Carly Rae Jepsen
6. Lights—Ellie Goulding
7. Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck—Kip Moore
8. Angel Eyes—Love and Theft
9. Good Girl—Carrie Underwood
10. The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live on PBS
1) “Pontoon”—Wow! This was a difficult decision to make. I thought both performances by Little Big Town and Rascal Flatts at the CMT Awards Show were exceptional, but I chose “Pontoon” because of the impressive stage setting creating a vibe where you actually felt like you were on a pontoon with the band!
2) “Banjo”—Ashley Campbell, Glen Campbell’s daughter, traded her lacy white dress in for a hot red one and proved to everybody that doubted her banjo ability that she actually could play. This call was so close but I downgraded the performance because Rascal Flatts dumped Ashley in mid-song and finished the show doing “Don’t Stop Believin’” with Journey and its mini Steven Perry clone. Bad choice….
3) “Banjo”—I have even more renewed apreciation for the banjo after the CMT Awards show!
4) “Pontoon”—I didn’t think that Little Big Town could come out with a video that could make me forget “Little White Church” so fast. Happily, I was wrong!
5) “Call Me Maybe”—As I predicted, I think this video is going to fall pretty fast when the novelty wears off. But for now Carly Rae is in pretty good shape.
6) “Lights”—It falls a little more this week, but I still like watching it!
7) “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck”—Now that Easton Corbin’s video has disappared, Kip Moore’s song gets to corner the market on videos where a silly but beautiful woman dances around while the country singer does his song.
8) “Angel Eyes”—Just hooked into this one. It’s definitely a good song and the video seems…interesting!
9) “Good Girl”—Eventually, even a good Carrie Underwood video will have to fall off the list……….
10)“The Goat Rodeos Sessions Live on PBS”—I accidentally stumbled upon this show on Sunday afternoon. This basically was a live performance of one of the best “classical” albums from last year. The band consists of Stuart Duncan, Chris Thile (The Punch Brothers), Edgar Meyer, and Yo-Yo Ma. It’s an interesting mixture of classical and bluegrass as well as structured versus improvised song interpretation. Yo-Yo Ma, for example has to have his material written out and does not “jam.” The performance was filmed before a very enthusiastic crowd who “got it.” One of my favorites, “Here and Heaven,” features Aoife O’Donovan on vocals performing a haunting Appalachian song that The Civil Wars could learn from on how to do them right.
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That’s really thikning out of the box. Thanks!