Matthew Sweet - The Ugly Truth

What this video is

Released in 1993 as the lead single from Altered Beast, Sweet's fourth studio album on Zoo Entertainment, 'The Ugly Truth' arrived during the peak of MTV's alternative rock rotation era when post-Nirvana major label investment was expanding the visual language of non-grunge rock videos. Sweet's decision to self-direct — a rarity at the time given the $70,000 budget — and explicitly model the video on the 1971 cult…

Why it matters

A key artifact of early-90s power pop's brief MTV visibility window, the video demonstrates how the post-Girlfriend Matthew Sweet attempted to reconcile melodic pop craft with heavier, noir-inflected visual and sonic territory. As a self-directed work, it is a rare documented example of a mid-tier…

The director

Sidney Matthew Sweet (born October 6, 1964, Lincoln, Nebraska) is an American alternative rock and power pop singer-songwriter. He rose to prominence via the Athens, Georgia music scene in the 1980s and achieved commercial success with the 1991 album…