Hey, look at that. Another post and it hasn’t been a decade since the last one. Aren’t you lucky?
I’ve been watching a lot more Music Videos lately. They’re a lot harder to access these days. Apple Music buries them inside their app and their playlists mostly play the same popular videos over and over. YouTube is impossible to use for Music Video discovery, but great for watching them once you’ve found them. Blogs are all but dead, but there are still a couple websites that cover new music videos, so between those and the playlists on Apple Music, I did notice one trend that was featured on a few different Music Videos I enjoyed. So without further ado, here are my favorite Music Videos that feature Celebrities lip-syncing the artists’ songs.
Mumford & Sons – Hopeless Wanderer
I first saw this video when it was released 11 years ago, when Sudeikis, Helms, Bateman, and Forte were at everything in peak Comedy TV. Put them together for a professionally produced, Celebrity Lip-Sync Session complete with elaborate sets, and prop instruments and you’re guaranteed a hit. As you’ll see with the rest of the videos in this post, it’s a pretty solid formula: Good Music + Charismatic Celebrity = Great Video.
Fun Bonus Fact: The singer of Mumford & Sons, Marcus Mumford is married to actress Carey Mulligan. Apparently they were childhood pen pals. Save that one for your next trivia night, and don’t ever tell me I didn’t teach you anything important on this website thing.
Clairo – Terrapin
After molding my young comedic tastes throughout my formative years, I finally saw Weird Al in concert last Friday. He hasn’t missed a beat since, and this music video released just a few months ago by an artist I had never heard of is proof. There’s something magical about pairing this loungy jam with the many faces of Weird Al Yankovic. Then the credits started rolling and I saw it was directed by Ayo Edebiri (from The Bear) and it all made sense.
Coldplay – The Karate Kid
You can’t make a video for a song called “The Karate Kid” without Daniel LaRusso himself, and Ralph Macchio does not disappoint. The only thing this video is missing is the real Karate Kid, Johnny Lawrence, AKA William Zabka… That Crane Kick was an illegal hit! Cobra Kai Never Dies!
SZA – Drive
I know, I know … there’s only supposed to be 3 videos in a Favorite Video Friday, but I didn’t want to make this a two-parter and I couldn’t find a 6th video to feature, so you get 2 bonus videos …
I’m convinced that if you point a camera at Ben Stiller and just leave him alone for 5 minutes, anything you record will be gold. Add a smooth jam from SZA and you have a winning music video. This one’s kind of a two-parter and things get a little weird and NSFW at about 3:13, so stop it there if you’re just hear for the Stiller, but stick around if you’re curious what a mostly nekkid, anthropomorphic-bug-SZA looks like writhing around in some tall grass on the side of a road that Ben Stiller just drove past.
Jack White – Archbishop Harold Holmes
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Jack White is almost single-handedly keeping Rock & Roll alive and well. I may or may not have ridden the elevator with him in a random San Francisco boutique hotel last fall, but that has nothing to do with this banger of a video featuring the great John C. Reilly as a revival-era preacher preaching his soul out. Why no one has thought to make him a preacher in anything before, I’ll never know. Solid Gold. I watched it twice while making this post.