I was flicking channels the other day (as you do) and the video for Will.I.Am ‘The Hardest Ever’ came on. It was one of those situations where I couldn’t pull my eyes away from what was before me. I was simultaneously mortified, outraged and curious as to where this video was going to take me…
What initially intrigued me was the close relation it had to the ‘Impossible Dream’ ad by Honda (made in 2006 in which a hirsute fellow upgrades his transport in the 2 minute story – to end driving his speed boat off a waterfall only to appear in a hot air balloon) and the Levis ‘Freedom to Move’ advert by Jonathan Glazer made in 2002 where a couple literally run through walls accompanied by Handel’s ‘Sarabande’ both award winning adverts and both brilliant executed.
The Will.I.Am (what a ridiculous bloody name) video takes both these concepts and literally turns it up to ELEVEN. It is a classic example of too much money and ego and quite frankly it’s rubbish. It doesn’t help that the lyrical content involves lines like: ‘Tell a jealous chicken I don’t know what the beef is – I’m just making money for my grankids’ nieces’ and ‘I’m way out like NASA, I’m way over here I done past ya, I get stacks of cash, you get cashews, I go hard, statues.’
I beg your pardon Mr I. Am, you are making no sense whatsover.
But what of the video? Well Mr I. Am begins on foot runs through a wall with ‘Hardest’ written on it, smashes through the other side on a bicycle and then proceeds to smash through walls upgrading his ‘rides’. At one point he is sitting on top of a ‘super train’ and just when he has gone through all the terrestrial forms of transport he’s up in to space where he then rips off the 2001 A Space Odessey light show (but with J-Lo instead) and finally it ends with bloody Mick Jagger singing ‘Hard like Geometry, and Trigonometry, this is crazy’!
Yes Mr Jagger crazy indeed.
1/10