Mastodon's Brann Dailor says he is surprised the band's new music video has come under fire for alleged sexism.
The raunchy clip for The Motherload was released this week and features twerking dancers. It attracted the ire of the Guardian who describe it as “extremely confusing, particularly for those of us who regard ourselves as politically enlightened.”
But Dailor disagrees. He tells Pitchfork: “The last thing that I wanted to do was come on and be defensive, because I don’t feel like I should have to defend it. It’s a music video and it’s really not supposed to be something that gets people this upset because this was really a fun thing that doesn’t really mean too much. It’s not to be taken so seriously.
“I just don’t see the sexism in it. I know there’s half-naked women that are shaking their butts. For some people it’s titillating, but for me it just looked amazing. I thought the girls were awesome and talented, and I thought it was amazing to watch.
“I knew there was going to be some negativity. But we do that; we’re that kind of band. We weren’t trying to make fun of hip-hop videos. It was a fine line, because I didn’t want it to come off being sexist, so I thought that maybe the females took centre stage and looked powerful and had this dance battle.”
He continues: “I don’t feel like what we were trying to do was jump on any twerking bandwagon. We just wanted to put something into our music video that people would probably think, ‘That shouldn’t be there,’ or, ‘Those two things don’t go together, they shouldn’t be together.’ I wanted to just put them together because we can.”
The Motherload is taken from Mastodon’s latest album Once More ‘Round The Sun.
