Cantillate

The Essentials by the Association

Over the weekend I downloaded The Association's 1966 number one hit Cherish from Xbox Live for use with Microsoft's karaoke game, Lips. Unlike its rival Sony, Microsoft is not a consumer electronics and entertainment conglomerate. Hence many of the songs and music videos used in Sony's SingStar games are by artists from Sony Music, which means there are no licensing issues. It also means that SingStar has a larger selection of downloadable songs than Lips.

Screen shot from the clip for Cherish on Lips for Xbox 360

As I scrolled through the list of downloadable songs on the Lips music store, I noticed that many of them did not have music videos; only lyrics and audio. A music video was never made for Cherish, so Microsoft have used generic video footage and animation to accompany the song, presumably because it was available cheaply. That would not be a problem if that footage was appropriate. Whose idea was it to use fluffy white puppets, one of whom cries tears that magically turn into rubies? It's all very abstract, and fantastical, and very distracting when you're trying to concentrate on singing the song, and would be even more so if you were a man who had a fair maiden to sing it to as a declaration of lurve, and wanted her to take you seriously.