Weapon of Choice

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British DJ Norman Cook , better known as Fatboy Slim , wrote and produced the song (photo from 2004).
Co-author Bootsy Collins sang the lyrics of the song (photo from 2009).

Weapon of Choice is a song that was written by Fatboy Slim together with Bootsy Collins and Ashley Slater and can be assigned to the Big Beat . In November 2000 it was released on Fatboy Slim's album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars and was released as a single in April 2001 . Weapon of Choice only reached the singles charts in Great Britain and Germany , but gained greater prominence through a music video produced by Spike Jonze with actor and dancer Christopher Walken . This won several awards at the MTV Video Music Awards 2001 and received a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video . The music broadcaster VH1 voted it the best music video of all time in 2002.

Production and publication

Music and lyrics for Weapon of Choice are from Fatboy Slim - real name Norman Cook -, Bootsy Collins and Ashley Slater. Cook was the producer, Collins sang the lead vocals.

The song first appeared in November 2000 on Fatboy Slim's third studio album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars on the record label Skint Records . The single was released on April 23, 2001 together with Star 69 , another song from that album, as a double A-side . In 2002 an instrumental version was released on the EP Camber Sands on the Astralwerks label. Also on the 2006 best-of -Werk The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder the song is included; in the United States, a cover was used for this album showing a still from the music video for Weapon of Choice . In 2010 DJ Lazy Rich released an Electro House remix as a downloadable single .

The album version, the version heard in the video and the version re-released by Fatboy Slim in 2006 differ primarily in terms of duration, but also musically. On the album, the song - just like on the single - has a length of 5:46 minutes and has tonal changes in Bootsy Collins' voice, while the music video is shortened to 3:46 minutes, structurally changed and partially underlaid with an additional bassline is. The remix of the best-of album is another shortened version of the album version and lasts 3:39 minutes.

style

For Weapon of Choice, Fatboy Slim used several song elements that had already been recorded by other musicians - so-called samples - which he put together to create a sound collage . The song begins and ends with gescratchten vocal samples, including one from the song Wordplay of The X-Ecutioners , the Fatboy Slim already for his former B-side Do not Forget Your Teeth had used. The piece All Strung Out Over You by the Chambers Brothers serves as the rhythmic basis ; Both the drumming - in the form of breakbeats - and the bass were slowed down and looped by Fatboy Slim . In addition to the bassline, the occasional melody fragments come from a brass instrument and a wah-wah guitar. The groove is mainly emphasized , which is interrupted several times by a saxophone break from Sly & the Family Stones Into My Own Thing .

The text of Weapon of Choice is performed by the funk musician Bootsy Collins in a mixture of spoken word and vocals , in the album version partly with a tonally deepened voice. With the repeatedly repeated two-line chorus “ You can blow with this, or you can blow with that ”, Collins interprets a text by the duo Black Sheep , who raps in The Choice Is Yours : “ You can get with this, or you can get with that ”. The text also contains references to Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune , in particular the sentence “ Walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm ” is almost literally taken from the film adaptation by David Lynch .

Music video

Spike Jonze directed the award-winning music video (photo from 2004).
Christopher Walken's solo dance dominates the clip (photo from 2008).

Although Star 69 was the first-mentioned track on the double-A-side single, the music video was produced for the second-mentioned Weapon of Choice . The record company made this decision because of the many curse words in Star 69 - the word “ fuck ” appears over forty times in the lyrics , and the title is sometimes supplemented with the addition of “ What the f ** k ” in brackets .

The video was directed by Spike Jonze, who had already built a reputation for himself in the genre through his video clips for the Beastie Boys , Weezer , REM , Björk , Daft Punk , the Chemical Brothers , Puff Daddy and The Notorious BIG and who worked as a director on the film Being John Malkovich received an Oscar nomination. He had also worked with Cook in 1999 on his video for the single Praise You . Producers were Deannie O'Neil and Vincent Landay. The Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles served as the backdrop, and the shoot lasted two days.

The only actor is the then 58-year-old Christopher Walken, who also helped to develop the choreography. Cook does not appear in the videos for his songs, but can be seen here in the form of a portrait hanging on the wall. At the beginning of his career, Walken completed musical dance training at the prestigious Actors Studio , can tap and is considered a gifted dancer; the fact that he always integrates at least one smaller dance scene into his film roles is now seen as a kind of trademark of Walken. Jonze had seen Walken tap on Saturday Night Live and wanted to cast him for the video. He later described the importance of Walken's person for the clip in an interview with the music magazine Spin as follows:

"It wasn't that Christopher Walken was the first choice — if he didn't want to do it, it wasn't really an idea."

"It wasn't that Christopher Walken was the first choice - if he hadn't wanted to, [the video idea] wouldn't have been the right idea."

- Spike Jonze : Interview in Spin , November 2003

At the beginning of the almost four-minute video, Walken is sitting in an inconspicuous business suit, tired and sunk into the back of an armchair in the dimly lit lobby of a hotel. The first notes of the song can be heard muffled from a small transistor radio on a laundry trolley. Walken initially moves his head discreetly in time and then rises heavily and swaying slightly. When the music gets louder, he suddenly begins to dance. He dances through the empty hotel, sometimes with reduced movements, sometimes with acrobatic interludes, occasionally jumping on a table and kicking brochures with a happy smile, then dives over a railing from the first floor into the entrance hall, flies from one side to the other and hovering in front of a large painting with sailing boats on the open sea. Then he slides back to the floor, the music ends, and Walken takes a seat in the armchair again. At the end of the video he is sitting there looking just as exhausted and resigned as at the beginning.

For the shooting of the flight scenes, walking was held by wire ropes. The steel support structure required for this was so complex that it would have been disproportionately laborious to retouch it from the photos. In the end, it was easier to cut out Walken from the pictures and incorporate them into recordings of the empty backdrop.

reception

Chart successes of the single

The double A-side Star 69 / Weapon of Choice entered the UK singles chart at number 10 on May 5, 2001 , where it stayed in the top 100 for seven weeks. From May 14, 2001, she was listed among the top one hundred singles in the German single charts for three weeks . At rank 81, the best placement remained in the lower area of ​​the charts. In Austria and Switzerland, Weapon of Choice did not appear in the charts. In the Billboard Hot 100 , the most important singles charts in the United States, Weapon of Choice also failed to rank. However, the song established itself for five weeks in the Billboard category charts for alternative songs with a top ranking at 33rd.

Critics of the song

Like the album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars , Weapon of Choice was received very differently by the critics. In his review of the album on laut.de, Stefan Friedrich wrote that the samples heard in the song are "incredibly good in the ears and in the legs". The PopMatters -Rezensent Michael Abernethy praised the fact that the beats used not claim the song too strong; Instead, take the listener only with Bootsy Collins' voice and the instrumentation interwoven " pulsing tempo " (German: "pulsating tempo") true. Already based on this single song that he knew from Fatboy Slim, the popularity of the DJ became understandable for the author. Maureen Turim, professor of film history and theory at the University of Florida , also uses the word “pulsating” in a book.

In contrast, in his album review for Allmusic , John Bush was amazed at how “ surprisingly bland ” (German: “surprisingly boring”) the piece with Bootsy Collins turned out to be. Larry Flick from the US music magazine Billboard rated the song as “ ornery ” (German: “stubborn”) and Smith Galtney called it “ kitschy ” (German: “kitschy”) in Out magazine . Simon Reynolds even criticized the song in the Village Voice as " ghastly " (German: "horrible"); the song, which is reminiscent of the Propellerheads , would certainly be used in a nightclub scene in the third part of Austin Powers .

Analysis of the video clip

The review in the PopMatters e-zine was also positive for the video. Michael Abernethy put the pleasant simplicity of the production in the foreground, which completely dispenses with bright backdrops and costumes or multiple storylines . In terms of content, he saw in the story “ the fulfillment of the fantasy to lose control when you really need to relieve some of the tension in your life. ”(German:“ the fulfillment of the dream of losing control when you really have to relax from the stresses of life. ”) Walken's movements would captivate the viewer by running contrary to the familiar and thus breaking all expectations; one example is the ease with which the almost 60-year-old Walken manages the complex choreography. Abernethy's analysis underscores the dream by interpreting the pose in which Walken floats in front of a picture as “ Christ-like ” (German: “ christushaft ”).

The interpretation on the Walken fan page walken works was similar . Here, too, Walken's tap dance performance was praised as virtuoso and energetic. The actor dance, especially for his age, extremely flexible, which gives the performance a wonderful peacefulness and naturalness. In contrast, there is the sinister atmosphere of the dimly lit hotel lobby. The video tells the story of a man who is trapped in his life. He fantasizes what it would be like if he were a little braver, but ultimately surrender to his fate.

When classifying the music video in Jonze's oeuvre, Claudia Lillge recognized that the filmmaker repeatedly packaged “contemporary music in media out of date arrangements” in his works from this genre. The use of media historical forms of expression, in particular narrative schemes and iconographies , occurs in order to tell stories through them. The clip for Weapon of Choice is no exception, Lillge explicitly named the “exalted dance film choreography” and Walken's image as a “tough guy”. 'Tough boy'] of the gangster film ”.

Awards for the music video

The music video is one of the big winners of the MTV Music Video Awards 2001. It was nominated in a total of nine categories and was therefore considered the favorite for the highest total number of awards in the run-up to the award on September 6, 2001. In fact, the video won six categories, earning the most awards that evening. Specifically, it received the awards for best direction (Best Direction In A Video) , best choreography (Best Choreography In A Video) , best artistic direction (Best Art Direction In A Video) , best editing (Best Editing In A video) and best cinematography (best Cinematography In A video) as well as "groundbreaking video" ( breakthrough video ) . In the main category Video of the Year , however, Lady Marmalade had to admit defeat; it also lost for best dance video and in the special effects category.

Also for the British Q Awards was Weapon of Choice 2001 as a Best Video nomination, but the had to Gorillaz -Hit Clint Eastwood beaten. In the same year, Billboard magazine presented it with three Billboard Music Video Awards, in the categories of pop , modern rock and dance .

On February 27, 2002 , the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honored the music video with a Grammy Award in the Best Short Form Music Video category .

In the same year, a jury of experts from the music broadcaster VH1 voted the clip the best music video of all time . Norman Cook accepted the award and dedicated it to Spike Jonze and Christopher Walken, on the grounds that he himself was not present at the video shoot. Second place in the all-time list also went to a work by Jonze, namely his video for the Beastie Boys song Sabotage .

Effects of the video

In addition to being successful with critics, the music video was popular with consumers. For example, it was the most downloaded video from the Apple music service iTunes in the first week after its launch . The video's success impacted both the song's success and the notoriety of Fatboy Slim and Christopher Walken. According to an analysis by Billboard magazine , the major US radio stations did not include the song in their programs until the video had already become a hit. At the same time, the fame of the DJ grew along with that of the actor and vice versa: Those who previously only knew one of the two were now also interested in the other.

Web links

literature

  • Henry Keazor , Thorsten Wübbena: Video thrills the Radio Star. Music videos: history, themes, analysis . 2nd Edition. Transcript, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-728-8 , chapter 7. "When you call on me": actors and celebrities in a video clip ; Section 4. Fatboy Slim: "Weapon of choice" (Spike Jonze / 2000) , p. 232 ff .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Weapon of Choice in the Austrian music charts. In: austriancharts.at. Retrieved July 14, 2010 .
  2. ↑ a b Fatboy Slim - Star 69 (What The F ** k) / Weapon Of Choice. In: Discogs . Retrieved July 16, 2010 .
  3. ↑ Star 69 / Weapon of Choice. In: Amazon . Retrieved July 16, 2010 .
  4. ^ Music. (No longer available online.) In: Internet presence of Fatboy Slim. Archived from the original on March 17, 2013 ; accessed on July 12, 2010 (English).
  5. ↑ The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder. In: Allmusic . Retrieved July 12, 2010 .
  6. ↑ a b Fatboy Slim's sample-based music. In: WhoSampled.com. Retrieved July 15, 2010 .
  7. ↑ a b Weapon Of Choice by Fatboy Slim. Retrieved July 14, 2010 .
  8. ^ Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena: Video thrills the Radio Star . 2007, p. 235 .
  9. ↑ a b c Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena: Video thrills the Radio Star . 2007, p. 233 .
  10. ^ A b Grammy Award Winners. National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences , accessed October 10, 2012 .
  11. ↑ a b Spike TV . In: Spin . November 2003, p. 58 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 16, 2010] interview with Spike Jonze ).
  12. ↑ a b c d Weapon of Choice. (No longer available online.) In: walken works. Archived from the original on September 24, 2010 ; accessed on July 16, 2010 (English).
  13. ↑ Glen Levy: The 30 All-TIME Best Music Videos. In: Online edition of Time . July 28, 2011, accessed July 28, 2011 .
  14. ^ Christopher Walken, the Song and Dance Man. In: Celebrating Christopher Walken. Retrieved July 14, 2010 .
  15. ↑ Chart Log UK. Retrieved July 17, 2010 .
  16. ↑ UK Singles - 1952-2010. In: polyhex.com. Retrieved July 17, 2010 .
  17. ↑ Fatboy Slim's singles in the German music charts. (No longer available online.) In: musicline.de. Archived from the original on September 6, 2005 ; Retrieved July 14, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / musicline.de
  18. ↑ Fatboy Slim in the Swiss music charts. In: hitparade.ch. Retrieved July 14, 2010 .
  19. ↑ Weapon of Choice in the various Billboard charts. Billboard , accessed July 14, 2010 .
  20. ↑ Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars reviews. Metacritic , accessed July 15, 2010 .
  21. ↑ Stefan Friedrich: Guitar samples, beats, basses: the “Funksoul Brother” is back. MTV , accessed July 15, 2010 .
  22. ^ A b Michael Abernethy: Civilization. PopMatters, accessed July 17, 2010 .
  23. ^ Department of English: Maureen Turim. In: University of Florida website . Retrieved July 19, 2010 (English).
  24. ↑ Maureen Turim: Art / Music / Video.com . In: Roger Beebe, Jason Middleton (eds.): Medium cool: music videos from soundies to cellphones . Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 98 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 19, 2010]).
  25. ^ John Bush: Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. In: Allmusic . Retrieved July 15, 2010 .
  26. ↑ Larry Flick: Electronica's Few Breakouts Proove The Exception So Far. Fatboy Slim Bridges The Gap . In: Billboard . November 4, 2000, p. 75 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 19, 2010]).
  27. ^ Smith Galtney: Fatboy Slim - Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars . In: Out . December 2000, p. 32 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 20, 2010]).
  28. ↑ Simon Reynolds: Raver on the Storm. The Village Voice website , November 14, 2000, accessed July 15, 2010 .
  29. ↑ Claudia Lillge: The Comedy of presence . Ed .: Jörn Glasenapp , Claudia Lillge. UTB, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-2979-5 , pp. 132 .
  30. ↑ Joe D'Angelo: Fatboy Slim, 'NSYNC,' Lady Marmalade 'Gather Most Moonmen. MTV , September 7, 2001, accessed July 14, 2010 .
  31. ↑ 2001 Video Music Awards Winners List. MTV , accessed July 14, 2010 .
  32. ↑ Stereophonics top Q awards nominees. In: Internet pages of the BBC . October 9, 2001, accessed July 14, 2010 .
  33. ^ Stereophonics lose Q award to Radiohead. In: Internet pages of the BBC. October 29, 2001, accessed July 14, 2010 .
  34. ↑ Carla Hay: The Eye. 2001 in review . In: Billboard . December 29, 2001, ISSN  0006-2510 , p. 65 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 16, 2010]).
  35. ↑ Jonze dominates video poll. In: Internet presence of the BBC . April 26, 2002, accessed July 14, 2010 .
  36. ↑ Fatboy Slim Releases His Greatest Hits. June 20, 2006, accessed August 16, 2010 .
  37. ↑ Carla Hay: Indie Labels Compete For Video Slots On National TV . In: Billboard . September 15, 2001, ISSN  0006-2510 , p. 7, 94 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed July 16, 2010]).
  38. ^ Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena: Video thrills the Radio Star . 2007, p. 236 f .