You can do whatever you want with your life, but one day you’ll know what love truly is. It’s the sour and the sweet, Vanilla Sky
Just like the style in this video is.
There was this show on VH1, in the late nineties, early 2000s, called Pop Up Video, where “pop-up” bubbles, officially known as “info nuggets”, containing trivia and witticisms, popped up in specific videos that glued me to the tv. I didn’t even mind that VH1 kept on repeating the same videos on and on again, it was yet another chance for me to get to know them better. By heart, eventually.
The stuff kids do. Or like to learn.
It weren’t things you could find on the internet back then or even now. It were particular and, sometimes, peculiar things about the videos that made me love the videos and the songs even more.
Like:
The pop-up bubble I best remember about Favourite Game (1998) is the one about Nina’s fake tattoo on the upper arm, draining on the red upholstery of the ultra chic gone hardcore convertible.
I’ve always loved these spontaneous imperfections let to, intentionally, be imperfect. It’s funny to observe, throughout life, why. It’s also funny to observe when and how we are reminded of what we, actually, like. Or don’t. The sweet is never as sweet without the sour.
It all comes with freedom and it’s freedom that (surpise!) sprinkles all sorts of things in the air for us to define what it is we, really, want. There’s a specific kind of love that only comes from freedom. Love is only mentioned now because without it, there would be no Favourite Game, in the first place. No Carmageddon. Nowadays’ Rayman is far safer than the late nineties’ Carmageddon. Life changes. Love doesn’t. Not that kind.
Even the dj on the radio, in the beginning of the video, is warning us about the heat. In a different bubble, they were saying how hot it really was on the day of the shoot. So hot that there was another bubble on the strong cat-eye make-up that needed to be done over and over again.
Each time I hear the dj talking on the radio whenever the video starts on VH1 Classic or wherever the song starts, I’m totally going aww somewhere inside, I turn my head towards the tv or the ears on and, even if there isn’t any bubble anymore, I throw a little party on my own for the bubbles, secretly, popping up in my brain.
Oh, yeah, Nina Persson is just as fabulous as her – drumroll – style – drumroll – is.
Sweet and sour.
Tan-tanaaaw-tan-tanaaaw-tan-tanaaaw-tan-tan.