POP MUSIC : Don’t Rub Your Eyes, the Video Picture Is Confusing

If you subject yourself to much music video programming, you may have found yourself lately with a confusing case of double vision.

Ingested beyond the recommended dose, MTV has been known to produce bizarre hallucinatory effects, but this time your mind isn’t going. In several recent instances, two--or even three--completely different videos have been made to promote one hit song.

This can result in “Rashomon”-like arguments among viewers impugning each other’s recountings of the previous week’s Top 10 Countdown.

After a recent Sound & Vision column reviewed Amy Grant’s “Good for Me” video, reader Gretchen A. Harris of Redondo Beach wrote in, saying it was “unfortunate that you would review Grant’s video apparently without having seen it. . . . You state that the object of Grant’s affections is ‘a buff male model’ and complain that she hasn’t ‘found someone to fool around with besides the hunk of the month.’ (But) the entire piece, a relief for her gospel fans, cleverly revolves around the premise of Grant singing to her best childhood girlfriend .”

Harris, however, saw the first video for the song, which aired briefly before being pulled by A&M; Records (it can still be seen, though, on Grant’s home-video collection). Apparently the buxom childhood girlfriend in question looked a little too wild for the demure Grant to be seen comparing lingerie with--and was an offense, not a relief, to those gospel fans--so A&M; commissioned a second version that ditched the gal pal and brought back the romantic male lead from the earlier “Baby Baby” video.

Similarly, even without gospel fans to worry about, Sophie B. Hawkins had one very sexy video out for her hit debut single, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” before her record company decided to film another one: an earthier, less risque performance clip that seems to go over better with MTV viewers. In this case, the first one is still available to those outlets that want to air it.

It’s not always a question of one version superseding another because of a change of heart, though. Belying the song’s title, U2 has three distinct videos out for “One”--and planned it that way.

The multiple Hawkins and U2 clips are among those rated in this month’s edition of Sound & Vision, with videos scored on a 0-100 scale.

David Byrne’s “She’s Mad.” Good luck finding it on MTV (it’s not even listed in the channel’s rotation charts right now), but this may be the most visually arresting rock video since Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.” The special-effects process of “morphing” is best known from key moments of “Terminator 2” and Michael Jackson’s “Black or White,” but Byrne’s clip is a virtual nonstop demonstration reel for the shape-shifting process, and it’s a delight for repeat viewings.

A description of domestic disturbances, “She’s Mad” is at its funniest when Byrne describes being hit by slaps or thrown objects--and his face caves in from the invisible force. Eyes hang out of sockets, guitars go floppy and limp, limbs expand, bodies spiral; you can also pretty much guess how the lines “I’m mild as a bunny / I’m meek as a lamb” will be visualized, given the astonishing visual resources at hand. A hoot. 90

Sophie B. Hawkins’ “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover.” The first video for this song had a glamorously made-up Hawkins alternately swooning and gyrating while clad in sheets that looked a little like adult diapers. It also had some fleetingly glimpsed erotica, with Hawkins cavorting with a man in some shots, and two men amorously engaged elsewhere. While provocative, this overheated sensual fantasia didn’t exactly complement the terrific song in question; “Damn” is all about basic longing, not the varieties of consummation, and Hawkins looked too much like a sensationalist Madonna wanna-be.

The second version now on view is far more appealing--a simple black-and-white performance clip with the singer dressed down in work shirt and jeans. This looks a lot more like the Hawkins who claims so seductively in the lyrics that “if I was your girl, believe me, I’d turn on the Rolling Stones, we could groove along and feel much better”; more like the earthy eccentric who promises untold delights but uses shucks as an expletive. The one image both clips share is a climactic one of Hawkins, true to the desperate obsession of the title, crawling. Version 1: 42; Version 2: 80

Arrested Development’s “Tennessee.” It must be a sign that rap is maturing or otherwise expanding its scope when two of the top rap clips on the air are set amid forests . Like the Beastie Boys’ latest, Arrested Development’s debut video has a rural locale, but it doesn’t share the Beasties’ fun-loving spirit. “Tennessee” is actually a remarkable rap evocation of spiritual ennui, a downcast, heartfelt prayer to God from a particular state of mind that’s South in more ways than one. As brought to visual life, there’s a hopeful sense of community in the gathering of African-Americans around a shack. But as a female voice takes over and rises to the heavens at song’s end, the visuals actually become more ominous, ending on a sketch of a lynching--full of symbolic as well as literal portent. 80

U2’s “One.” The first video for this phenomenal ballad has aired infrequently on MTV but was more commonly seen projected as a backdrop on the band’s latest tour: slow-motion buffalo alone and in tandem, ending with a still photo reproducing the single sleeve’s unsettling image of the creatures hurtling over a cliff. (And no U2 in sight.) The screen prints out a literal command to “smell” the flowers that occasionally show up on screen, appropriate given the band’s public appropriation of the imagery as AIDS metaphor.

The second video mixes performance footage with an awfully blue-looking Bono sitting at a bar, ignoring the affections of a woman and smoking a cigarette. The third “One,” with Bono once again looking terribly glum on a drawing-room couch, actually puts all four band members in drag at various points, but it’s no “Some Like It Hot,” with the sexual politics implied more grave than farcical. Interestingly, all three videos heighten the bittersweet anthem’s pessimistic side. Version 1: 75; Version 2: 65; Version 3: 70

Kris Kross’ “Jump.” Ah, the vagaries of teen (or in this case, preteen) hip-hop fashion. First it was Guy and dozens of others wearing overalls unlatched on one side. Now it’s wearing one’s whole ensemble backward. Whatever purposes this reverse wear may serve, the fashion statement does effectively eliminate what advantage is enjoyed by the male half of the species in bathroom speediness.

But ours is not to judge the convenience of costume design. The well-edited video is as cute and, yes, jumpy as the single itself, and certainly helped propel it to No. 1 so quickly. The only qualms come with how incongruously tough the little tykes are determinedly trying to look amid all the fun--as if they’d taken scowling lessons from Ice Cube on the playground, as if there’s no joy at all left in youth. 65

Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby’s Got Back.” As funny as it wants to be, this is the racy rap anthem Luther Campbell wishes he were smart enough to write. It’s a breakneck ode to “Back” as in backside--as in, well, ample female behinds. This has the potential to be massively offensive, naturally, and as well-illustrated as it is, certainly skirts (no pun intended) sexism. Yet Sir Mix-a-lot is a clever enough con artist, if nothing else, to have us believing that this isn’t just another dirty ditty but a celebration of the kind of anatomy that’s usually culturally denigrated--and of African-American racial pride, to boot!

Liberation, or lasciviousness? Both, maybe? It’s improbable that a music video will help stem the tide of anorexia, but Sir M. makes such a convincing case for his bottom-heavy physical ideal that a few women may actually start believing that not all guys prefer stick figures. 63

Michael Jackson’s “In the Closet.” Where director John Singleton failed (with “Remember the Time”), the lesser talent Herb Ritts finally succeeds--in making Jackson look like a willfully hypersexual creature, as opposed to sexy with a gun at his back. On MTV, it may be just another five minutes of foreplay, but at least Jackson looks as if he wants it this time. Part of this is just by virtue of proximity with his co-star, supermodel Naomi Campbell, who--despite the ample cleavage and leg action on display--is made to appear so perfectly android-like in her close-ups that Jackson looks positively flesh-and-blood by comparison.

Now, if you want a video to accomplish more than merely making its star look warmblooded, there ain’t much here; fashion photographer Ritts is strictly a one-note fellow, and this clip is virtually a riff-for-riff clone of his previous videos for Chris Isaak and Janet Jackson, sticking the star out in the sepia-toned desert with an opposite-sex fleshpot. Though “In the Closet” isn’t ostensibly advertising anything, if you’re as conditioned as the rest of us you’ll want to go out and buy perfume afterward anyway. 50

Ozzy Osbourne’s “Road to Nowhere.” A press release announces that this video “shows a rare, deeply felt vulnerability for a major rock superstar.” Oh? The premise: Ozzy sulkily watches old film clips of himself on TV, looks bitter and wasted and shoots out the screen intermittently. Actually, what Osbourne is being vulnerable about here is his shamelessness in borrowing rather blatantly from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” (Side 3, to be specific) and in invoking old-hat Elvis mythology. But we have reason to believe the Oz won’t be received in Graceland. 20