Jonny Numb

I blame it on my gym membership.

But I wish to speak to something that is altogether unrelated to the act of making oneself a model of physical fitness: music videos.

Yes: despite MTV’s hatred toward the medium they popularized, music videos are still a thing. And not just the DIY, scraping-together-pennies mentality of indie artists looking to expand their reach.

Major labels are still using the format as a method of promoting their best (or perhaps just youngest) and brightest, and from my vantage point on my stationary bike, I am afforded a front-row seat to a weird satellite channel that offers repetitive, generic health advice; the occasional weather report (it’s always thunderstorming wherever said channel is based out of, so certainly nowhere around central PA); and shakes things up with music videos.

I used to take my old iPod Nano along for my workouts, but my tendency to sweat buckets and feel generally disgusting over the course of a 30-minute bike ride (35 with cool-down) made me weigh (heh) my options with the wall-mounted flatscreen TVs.

(That, and my Nano – an artifact from 2009 – barely holds a charge anymore.)

So don’t fret, dear reader – I am still 110% devoted to the obscure, abrasive, and/or otherwise gloomy shit that has piqued my cynical, melodramatic interests since high school. But I’ve reached a point of wisdom (ewww, gross!) in my old age (grosser still!) that has allowed me to figuratively open the door to new experiences, new sensibilities, and – to borrow a line from INXS – new sensations.

As an aside, it’s good to know the music-video industry still hinges largely on making artists look impossibly sexy – or, in some cases, blase towards their sexiness – as a method of “moving units” or “increasing streams” or whatever the fuck the industry lingo for “numbers” and “money” is these days.

On that note, here’s a sampling of artists that have been on my radar for a little while (#1 & 2), along with a handful who have entered my orbit since March – the beginning of our gym adventure (#3 – 7).

1. Billie Eilish – while I find her shtick kind of annoying, I keep returning to it…not sure what that says about me. And this is admittedly one of my favorite 007 ballads.

2. Norah Jones – a discovery during our 2023 New Year’s Eve Target visit, when I picked up her excellent new album, Visions.

3. Olivia Rodrigo – I like the Paramore-esque energy combined with snarky-to-sincere lyrics. (Surprisingly, most of the songs off her Sour and Guts albums are more ballad-like.)

4. Alice Merton – I always chuckle at the funky distorted synth near the end of this song.

5. Dua Lipa – damned sexy people acting all sexy all the time! Gets my old-man heart fluttering and my old-man toes a-tapping! Get off my sexually repressed lawn, sexy people!

6. Halflives – love the mainstream-Goth-bandwagon playfulness of this video, though their albums proper veer more toward radio-friendly rock.

7. Chappell Roan – I only picked up The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess recently, but it was because of this insanely catchy/vapid song.