Beck - Girl

What this video is

Released in July 2005 as the second single from Beck's Guero — his major commercial comeback after the introspective Sea Change (2002) — 'Girl' arrived at a pivotal transitional moment when MTV's TRL era was waning and YouTube (founded April 2005) was just launching. The video's concept-driven MAD Magazine fold-in aesthetic represented a distinctly literary, print-media-literate visual language at odds with the…

Why it matters

A landmark in concept music video history, 'Girl' exemplifies the high-concept, director-as-auteur model that Motion Theory pioneered in mid-2000s music video production. Its adaptation of a print-media visual format (the MAD fold-in) into moving image form was formally inventive and widely cited…

The director

Mathew Cullen is an American music video, commercial, and film director, co-founder of Los Angeles production company Motion Theory and Mirada Studios (co-founded with Guillermo del Toro). He won back-to-back Grammy Awards for Best Short Form Music Video and…