And so it begins; the obligatory list season. As usual, I’ll kick it all of with my 10 favourite video clips of the year. Whether or not these songs are released in 2008 or 2009 doesn’t matter; the clip surfaced in 2008 (excluding #7, which surfaced after I’d compiled my list last year), and that’s all that matters to me.

01.  GIRLS ALOUD – The Loving Kind

Finally! They’ve given us something worth watching. After years of still-quite-good but cheap-looking video clips, Girls Aloud have blown me completely out of the water with this, the latest for their upcoming single “The Loving Kind.” This is proper, pop star territory, and the clip alone is solid enough to launch them properly in other countries, don’t you think?

02. LILY ALLEN – The Fear

Everything feels right in the world now that Lily’s making music again, doesn’t it? And this clip is a million levels of adorable. Naturally, it all comes complete with that infamous Allen bite you either love or hate. No matter what she does, or who she slags off, I just cannot hate her. There’s something very special about Lily…

03.  JUSTICE – Stress

This caused a bit of a ruckus when released earlier this year, so much so I had emails from people condemning me and the website for hailing it as a piece of brilliance. Whatever. The clip is still gold, and you can read whatever it was I crapped on about in regards to it by clicking here.

04.  MIAMI HORROR – Don’t Be On With Her

Miami Horror wanted to make an authentic 80’s looking video clip for his televisual debut, and I think it’s safe to say he’s hit a bloody home run with this. An absolute corker and a rock-solid throwback to an era when video clips were important, and not relegated to a tiny screen on YouTube.

05.  VAN SHE – Changes

There’s something quite charming about this clip, which is essentially a bunch of photographs put together as a film from one of the boys many tours of Japan this year. It’s just really, really cute, and looks rather mindblowing on a HI-DEF big screen TV.

06.  THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS – The Age Of The Understatement

Epic.

07.  ASHLEE SIMPSON – Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)

Simpson does Salvador Dali, whilst still retaining all of her pop credentials. Jessica Who?

08.  ROISIN MURPHY – You Know Me Better

Subtle brilliance. And how’s about those divine costumes?

09.  ROISIN MURPHY – Movie Star

Anyone that pays homage to John Waters and Divine deserves a pat on the back in my books. But when that someone is Roisin Murphy, well, a pat turns into a gigantic hug. Something I got from the woman herself earlier this year.

10.  MUSCLES – The Lake

Even if he doesn’t appear in the clip (boo!), this is still a stunningly pieced bit of music video. That sequence at the end with the disgruntled old man clasping onto the woman’s foot reminds me, strangely, of Kristin Davis’ death scene on Melrose Place. Bravo!

What a fucking disaster last night’s Lily Allen gig at St Jerome’s was.

It was a disaster because it ended with me not even getting to see her. Myself and a good friend lined up at 5:30pm. Not surprisingly, there was a line already beginning to rear its ugly head through Caledonian Lane. I’m well aware that St Jermoe’s is the size of a fucking toilet but I still figured that we’d be right, after all, queuing up at 5:30pm – for something that opened at 9pm – surely we would be fine, right?

NO.

Let me explain just how shithouse the evening was. Lining up in weather which has prompted a severe case of hypofuckingthermia whilst needing to urinate so badly you actually feel like your entire body is about to explode… it’s not exactly my idea of a very fun experience. Neither is hearing your stomach churn, begging for some food, all whilst standing in an alley way that smells like the last ever turd to come from the anus of Marlon Brando prior to his death.

This went on until about 8:30, when we were finally alerted that there were only 100 tickets for sale, and we were at least the 200th people in line.

What a fucking joke.

On the bright side of things, I did end up having a lovely time at a Chinese Restaurant with my darling friend Sarah. I had Satay Beef with Rice and she had Sweet & Sour Pork. We also shared a Banana Fritter, and drank Coca-Cola and Lemonade respectively. The staff at the food-ery were a bit shithouse though, they kept watching us eat, hanging around the table and what not. I’ll be writing them a strongly worded letter about this some time next week.

Hilariously, after we had finished the meal, a piece of rice fell out of Sarah’s breast.

But back to being angry. If there had been more details made available about the gig, I mean, if I had known there were only going to be 100 tickets, I either would have gotten there earlier, or not gone at all. Instead, I drove up all the way from Geelong, taking TIME OFF WORK, to spend an evening of absolute misery in a stinky inner city alleyway. With two absolute fuckwits standing behind us, chattering about absolute dogs-wallop, mind you.

I have no idea why I was so surprised. Lily is absolutely everywhere at the moment. Not only was the gig mentioned several times in the Herald Sun over the past week, but it also had a couple of mentions on evil “youth” radio station Triple J (I’ll explain to you all why those sons of bitches at the ABC are evil in tomorrows post, which has something to do with Rage scrapping the Aria Top 50 on Saturday Mornings because of JTV – which is just shitty alternative television for ‘dark’ uni students, emo kids and people who listen to tripe like Placebo.) – even I mentioned it on this website, and the amount of google searches directed to this site yesterday for “Lily Allen St Jerome’s” was absolutely astounding. A good 200 people visited the site yesterday afternoon trying to obtain details.

The thing that upsets me a great deal though is that most of the people who were lucky enough to go inside last night, they would have probably only heard of Lily about a week ago. Do you think any of them know she has a brilliant song titled “Cheryl Tweedy”? OF COURSE NOT. MOST OF THESE PEOPLE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO CHERYL TWEEDY IS!!!! Blasphemy, I know.

Dannii Minogue would not have put up with any of this type of shit, would she? Even she refuses to play in public toilets. Whatever the fee!

Oh well. Time to take “Alright, Still” out of the CD player and put “The Hits & Beyond” back in.