The 58th annual Grammy Award ceremony is tonight. Music, from the start of time, has been used to express the spirit of adventure, liberty, passion, and love, and videos heighten these strong emotions even more. <\/span><\/p>\n So powerful are visual images threaded together to create a story that quite often we forget the lyrics to a song, but we remember the music video vividly. So the Grammy Awards are as much as celebration of video, as they are of music.<\/span><\/p>\n I recently became curious about the role of cars in music videos; some of my favorite songs have used cars as cornerstones in\u00a0their videos. So it\u2019s no surprise that three of the five nominees for \u201cSong of the Year\u201d this year feature cars in their videos. <\/span><\/p>\n In <\/span>\u201cAlright\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/i>, Kendrick Lamar features a \u201869 Chevrolet Camaro (and several police cars), Taylor Swift\u2019s <\/a><\/span>\u201cBlank Space\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/a> video starts and ends with a rare Shelby AC Cobra, and Wiz Khalifa\u2019s <\/a><\/span>\u201cSee you again\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/a> has scenes from the <\/span>\u201cFast and Furious\u201d<\/span><\/i> movies and features more beautiful cars than I could count. <\/span><\/p>\n Clearly, cars still form an integral part of the American music and pop culture experience.<\/span><\/p>\n Cars play many roles in their music video cameos. Sometimes they\u2019re passive objects of magnificence that subtly demand one\u2019s attention. For example, in Whitesnake\u2019s 1982 video <\/span>\u201cHere I Go Again\u201d<\/span><\/i>, the Jaguars complement the attractive Tawly Kitaen, as well as the lyrics:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHere I go again on my own, g<\/span>oin\u2019 down the only road I\u2019ve ever known\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In other videos, cars are active collaborators with the protagonists, helping them escape or reconnect with a loved one. Take for example, Audioslave\u2019s 2002 <\/span>\u201cShow Me How to Live\u201d <\/span><\/i>which feature a Dodge Challenger<\/span>,<\/span><\/i> or Kavinsky\u2019s songs that were used in the 2011 movie <\/span>\u201cDrive\u201d<\/span><\/i> and features a Chevelle. In both, the protagonist’s escape is quite stylish!<\/span><\/p>\n Then there are the rare \u2014 but noteworthy \u2014 where the cars are the heart and soul of the video. I consider M.I.A\u2019s 2013 video for <\/span>\u201cBad Girls\u201d<\/span><\/i> an example. Here BMWs, Toyotas, and other cars are drifting in a desert. The video is so powerful that it has become an anthem for women demanding the right\u00a0to drive in countries like Saudi Arabia.<\/span><\/p>\n One thing is clear, cars and what they represent evoke strong emotions in us, quite like the music we listen to. And they\u2019re going to play a large part in music videos for the foreseeable future.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The magical duet: It’s (not) all about the music The 58th annual Grammy Award ceremony is tonight. Music, from the start of time, has been used to express the spirit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gearheads","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\tCool rides in the 2016 Grammys<\/h3>\n
The\u00a0duet’s long history<\/h3>\n