French Filmmaker Michel Gondry Creates a Steamy New Music Video for The White Stripes

Talk about pro­lif­ic. French film­mak­er Michel Gondry has just released his 85th music video–this one for The White Stripes’ new song “City Lights.” 

Last year, Ted Mills took a look at Gondry’s music videos for Björk, Radio­head and The Chem­i­cal Broth­ers, show­ing us why Gondry, who first began exper­i­ment­ing with the for­mat in 1988, was “one of the last great music video directors”–someone who cre­at­ed “mini-epics just before the music indus­try col­lapsed, and bud­gets dis­ap­peared.” 

Most know Gondry for his 2004 fea­ture film, Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind. Or per­haps you saw his ani­mat­ed 2013 doc­u­men­tary on Noam Chom­sky, Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py? If you did, you’ll rec­og­nize the aes­thet­ic used in the new White Stripes video above. As Rolling Stone describes it, the video is just “a sin­gle shot of the exte­ri­or of a show­er, with [a] bather visu­al­ly draw­ing out the song’s lyrics in the steam and con­den­sa­tion on the show­er door. With each line, the steam slow­ly eras­es the pre­vi­ous draw­ing, and a new image is sketched on the door.” You can try it at home.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Talks About How Kids Acquire Lan­guage & Ideas in an Ani­mat­ed Video by Michel Gondry

Watch Michel Gondry Ani­mate Philoso­pher, Lin­guist & Activist Noam Chom­sky

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods