B.o.B.'s 'Magic': The Anti-Party Anthem

Earlier in the summer, I expressed some reservations about B.o.B.'s music video trajectory. It's always so nice when artists do precisely what I wish they would do, especially when the result is the video for "Magic," a clip that among its other virtues, manages to make Weezer's Rivers Cuomo relevant again:

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But the video, for all its joyful house-party vibe on the chorus, is a lot darker on the verses. It's not actually that great to have a gang of girls invade your house in hard-core party mode, particularly when you're worrying that you might be dead and failing to rouse your own corpse.

It's the second video this summer that's inverted the idea that partying is a lot of fun. Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" turned a club into a subtle nightmare, made being the wallflower hiding in the closet seem like a safer, more fun place to be. Party videos will never die. But sometimes, you just want a quiet morning in bed, and to be left entirely alone.