AlunaGeorge Keep the "Pop in the Crazy House" Tradition Alive with “Best Be Believing”

The cheeky video for AlunaGeorge's "Best Be Believing," riffs on Milos Forman's 1975 man against the system mental institution flick One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in order to celebrate the restorative, undeniable powers of dance music. Pushed into a "dance rehab clinic" against her will, AlunaGeorge vocalist Aluna Francis is in the Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) role (meanwhile the group's producer, George Reid, plays a doctor), her presence reawakening the energies of the other afflicted, restricted patients.

And for no good reason other than world-building, "Best Be Believing" attempts to present the inner-workings of a "dance rehab clinic," whatever that even means. The video probably could've just crammed in some dance moves into its Cuckoo's Nest setting without explaining why they're there and viewers would've bought into it. Instead, it tries to imagine what it would be like if such a thing were to actually exist. Director Patrick Killingbeck effectively sells it by holding onto the concept and never letting go. So, Dr. George Reid operates a weird machine and sticks electrode pads onto Aluna Francis' head to monitor something or other, and all of the patients stand around a giant light structure as a Nurse Ratched facsimile glowers and takes notes? What's happening isn't clear, but it gives some lived-in reality to the silly idea.

"Best Be Believing" also continues the very strange tradition of music videos employing insane asylum atmospherics: Hype Williams' padded room bug-out for Busta Rhymes and ODB's "Woo-Ha"; Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady," which between Bill Clinton blowjob jokes and other sub-MADtv zingers, stuffs the rapper in a straitjacket; Drowning Pool's "Bodies," where those military rawk rubes go hard in an institution; Limp Bizkit's video for their cloddish cover (and sort of nu-metal apologia) of the Who's ["Behind Blue Eyes,"](http:// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-kO1jKE3DM) finds Fred Durst institutionalized; there's also the 50 Cent video for "In Da Club," which was not set in 'da club but in some underground laboratory where 50 Cent is being monitored by Dr. Dre (its pseudo-science setting recalls AlunaGeorge's "dance rehab clinic").

So, pop videos in the crazy house was something of a mini-trend during the end of the MTV Total Request Live era, and "Best Be Believing" keeps it alive and that's pretty cool. Also, quite fitting for AlunaGeorge's hybrid '90s music style – New Jack sophisto-soul swinging into flighty trip-hop pouncing on Britney pop. Of course, G.O.A.T big budget mental institution video has got to be N Sync's "Thinking Of You (I Drive Myself Crazy)." It makes literal the N Sync hook by sticking all of the members in padded rooms and showing them contorting and shuffling around like they're in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It's truly bizarre. That anyone thought it was a good idea to literalize the "crazy" of the song is pretty shocking, even if boy band '90s music was, thanks to the Bergman-turnt-Tigerbeat Europeans writing and producing these songs, fairly existential. The 2012 video for B.o.B and Nicki Minaj's "Outta My Mind" pretty much makes all the same WTF mistakes as "Thinking Of You," by the way.

Melissa Etheridge's "Come To My Window" (directed by Samuel Bayer) places actress Juliette Lewis in a mental institution, only to reveal in the final moments, that a bandage on her arm hides a wound that does not actually exist. Given Etheridge's status as an out of the closet musician, the video is a poignant and effective expression of what it feels like to be gay in a homophobic milieu that will convince you there's something hopelessly wrong with you. Another one is the Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready To Make Nice" (directed by Sophie Muller), which ends with Natalie Maines in a hospital – a commentary on the backlash she received after daring to say President George W. Bush was kind of a dolt. The video speaks to the Twilight Zone inverted political climate of mid-2000s where having a sane attitude towards American's disastrous foreign policy, especially if you're operating in the jingoistic genre of country, could only be seen as the act of a crazy woman.

In particular, the Melissa Etheridge and Dixie Chicks videos seems like successful, mindful precedents for "Best Be Believing." And tellingly, those are not exactly "cool" precedents, but the AlunaGeorge video isn't that cool either. That's what makes it so charming. None of these are lunkheadedly literal like that N Sync clip, rather, they use the concept of going nuts, even in a cute video clip sense, towards some pop-profound end. "Best Be Believing" is a visualization of music as soul-freeing expression: The reintroduction of the physicality of dance by Aluna Francis pulls these oppressed patients outside of themselves, and temporarily rattles the status quo. That's a fairly accurate assessment of what all great pop music, when you buy into it, can do to the culture at-large.

Brandon Soderberg is a resident of Baltimore and enjoys films and music and his dog. He's on Twitter - @notrivia