Weekend videos of note

Britney, when you sing "knew he must have been about seventeen" in your cover of I Love Rock and Roll, why would that be of note? When Joan Jett sang the line, the implication was "he's younger than me, probably a virgin, I'm going to take him, teach him, and possibly break him." When you sing it, Britney, it implies nothing so much as "he was in my year at school, then." Still, the video is as an impressive piece of attempted market repositioining as I've seen in an age - especially the frantic rubbing yourself clean of any residual spittle from Justin Timberlake (although in future you might find a kleenex more effective than a motorcycle.)
I'm sure a lot of men, and the author of the ever-excellent glitter-splashed britney-loving lesbo, will be suddenly realising that they now do, actually, have to make good whatever their half of the deal with god, satan or their own personal jesus was.

Talking of repositioning - I'm supposing the low-key Joy Division at rest styling of the new Fischerspooner video is supposed to be a riposte to critics who accuse them of being all wig, no tunes. "Here we are. This is us. Judge us on our music alone." Okay, then - we will: You sound like the Fixx.

At the other end of the market, there's the new Coral video. You would have thought that faced with a bunch of lads who - let's be honest - aren't ever going to be asked to pose for Calvin Klein - it would have been kinder not to get them to do close-up singing into a fish eye lens; indeed, since they'd gone to the expense of hiring a bear suit, you wonder if maybe they all should have dressed up. I wonder if the whole thing was meant to be a homage to Hotel New Hampshire; whatever, it winds up looking a bit like an animated version of the Be Here Now sleeve.