Wuh oh oh. Uh oh oh. Oh oh. Oh. Uh oh oh. Repeat. Rotate your left hand in a back and forth motion by your face. Now rapidly move the inside of your hips while telling the outside of your hips to move the opposite direction. Slip on a sexy bionic glove and if you really like it, then you should put a ring on it.
Wuh oh oh. Uh oh oh. Oh oh. Oh. Uh oh oh. Repeat.
“Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” is perhaps the greatest music video of all time. I challenge you to think about it right now and not be instantly thrilled. The black and white blurs of hips, leotards and gentle perspiration permeate the mind like an acid trip. (I have no idea what an acid trip is like because I’ve never done acid, but writers frequently use it to signify an intense mind quest.)
It truly is taking every ounce of my will to not write the “Wuh oh” line again in its own paragraph because I just want to pour out the energy of this song somewhere. Perhaps a quick dance break?
[Dance break, didn’t know I could bend like that, I can’t, pulled a muscle.]
There is something electric about this video that makes everyone want to dance. Everyone. I don’t care who you are and what veil you live behind, but you will find a way to dance when the time comes. Sure, virgin viewers might be caught by surprise when a roomful of people start chopping their arms up and down like a robot with MS, but once they’ve seen it, they won’t be able to help themselves. The song is infectious like a good case of malaria.
And why wouldn’t it be? The video is so hot. And I don’t mean hot in the same way Jennifer Aniston was hot when she wore a tie and her midlife crisis on the cover of GQ. I mean classy, elegant, sexy, beautiful, steam heat hot. It is shocking to me that I didn’t turn off the video after noticing Beyoncé’s bionic arm (what the hell, Sasha Fierce). That is a testament to the video’s greatness; no one ponders the placement of Beyoncé’s Terminator arm when in reality it is the weirdest fucking thing to be in a music video since Sean Kingston.
Everyone just becomes so engrossed in the choreography and the music and the sexy white to gray transitions. Even the video’s few faults, the brief moments when the woman on the right doesn’t quite match the woman on the left, make the video that much more amazing because it proves it was done by mere humans who are capable of mistakes. The same species that brought us the Furby and Dane Cook is capable of producing art like “Single Ladies.” It is perfect, because we can see it isn’t.
Which makes the rest of us want to try it. And inevitably fail. But maybe this is why the song is so damn fun because there is no option but failure. Who the hell cares what we look like because let’s face it, we’ll never be able to look as hot as Beyoncé and her two identical nymphs of dance. What’s important is that it isn’t some cheesy video that tries to follow some retarded story about a man who misses a girl and then takes off his shirt and cries for three minutes. It is just someone having a good time. It’s three people dancing their asses off, end of story.
Thus, I always try to dance my ass off too and end up looking like an epileptic Stephen Hawking. I don’t care, though, and neither does anyone else. It’s the only YouTube video that inspires me to actually move. That’s probably why it rocks so much.
So kudos to you, Ms. Beyoncé. Although you aren’t a single lady, which makes your song a little bit hypocritical, you make me want to dance. You did the unthinkable and made a music video that dazzles, inspires and makes people want to be goofy instead of initiate a drive-by. So for that, I put my bionic hand next to my face, breathe heavily with intense concentration and smile.
Fade out.