With the Grammys going on for 3½ hours Sunday night, I'd like to review some of nominees for Best music video. Capital Cities, an Electro-Rock duo from Los Angeles comprising Ryan Merchant and Sebu Simonian, had a big 2013, vaulting to the top of the Alternative Songs chart and Billboard's Hot 100 top 10 with their infectious debut hit "Safe and Sound." The genre-bending single shot into the public conscious in large part due to its music video, which earned the duo a nomination for best music video at the 56th GRAMMY Awards, and the video has racked up over 66 million views on YouTube, as Capital Cities knew right off the bat it potentially had something intriguing on its hands.
The song was actually created back in 2011, before Merchant and Simonian were known as Capital Cities, when the Los Angeles pair were earning their corn composing music for advertising campaigns. "It started as a little idea we came up with - it wasn't a fully fleshed-out song, per se," Merchant told Billboard magazine. "We noticed that, when we showed it to people, there was this unanimous feeling that there was something special about this music, and we started to develop it."
"It took 10 different versions before we finally came to what you hear on the radio now, where we decided to add a trumpet for the main bridge part, which I think was one of our best decisions on the song. And we brought out this vintage keyboard that provides the foundation for the song. So the song really took a long time to get right, because we knew it was such an important song for us." Regarding the track's meaning, Merchant noted to Billboard magazine: "The song is an anti-doomsday song in some ways - expressing the idea that every generation thinks that the end of the world is right around the corner, but it never comes to pass."
The Grady Hall-directed clip is a rapid tour of the history of dance through the decades. There are more than 40 dance sequences, each representing a different style or era. "When we started working on and developing ideas for the music video, we felt like we were onto something special," Simonian told Billboard magazine. "The day of the shoot was at the Los Angeles Theatre, which was this historic, beautiful theater in L.A., and we brought 60-70 dancers that we discovered on Craigslist [which is] how we met. So all these dancers came in, and some semi-professional, some were amateurs, some were pro and it was this really cool cultural clash happening during the video shoot, so we felt like there was something there."
The song was actually created back in 2011, before Merchant and Simonian were known as Capital Cities, when the Los Angeles pair were earning their corn composing music for advertising campaigns. "It started as a little idea we came up with - it wasn't a fully fleshed-out song, per se," Merchant told Billboard magazine. "We noticed that, when we showed it to people, there was this unanimous feeling that there was something special about this music, and we started to develop it."
"It took 10 different versions before we finally came to what you hear on the radio now, where we decided to add a trumpet for the main bridge part, which I think was one of our best decisions on the song. And we brought out this vintage keyboard that provides the foundation for the song. So the song really took a long time to get right, because we knew it was such an important song for us." Regarding the track's meaning, Merchant noted to Billboard magazine: "The song is an anti-doomsday song in some ways - expressing the idea that every generation thinks that the end of the world is right around the corner, but it never comes to pass."
The Grady Hall-directed clip is a rapid tour of the history of dance through the decades. There are more than 40 dance sequences, each representing a different style or era. "When we started working on and developing ideas for the music video, we felt like we were onto something special," Simonian told Billboard magazine. "The day of the shoot was at the Los Angeles Theatre, which was this historic, beautiful theater in L.A., and we brought 60-70 dancers that we discovered on Craigslist [which is] how we met. So all these dancers came in, and some semi-professional, some were amateurs, some were pro and it was this really cool cultural clash happening during the video shoot, so we felt like there was something there."
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