Uncanny Valley/Music

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Examples of Uncanny Valley/Music include:


  • A whole type of music falls squarely in the Uncanny Valley by virtue of how dissonant and creepy it can be: the Ominous Music Box Tune.
  • The music video for Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy by Big & Rich features a creepy-looking Asian "mannequin" that ISN'T a mannequin. Just...the eyes...
    • The "mannequin" is actually singer Sarah Darling. (She also isn't Asian.)
  • News of the World by Queen, based on the cover of Astounding Science Fiction (October 1953), features a disturbing childlike giant robot holding bloodied, dead members of the band in his hand, while reaching out for terrified rock fans.
  • Almost every video by Daft Punk takes the Uncanny Valley. The major exception is the videos from Discovery, which are clips from Interstella 5555, animated with love by Leiji Matsumoto.
  • Cradle of Filth takes this up to 11 with their video for "From Cradle to Enslave." Danger, NSFW.
  • RoboLou Reed in "No Money Down". Pulling off the flesh almost reduces the effect.
  • The music video for Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At" stars a bunch of adorable monkeys... with the band member's faces. The faces just look wrong.
  • Audio example: Adriano Celentano's Prisencolinensinainciusol, a standard 70s funk song written by an Italian artist to sound like English. The thing is, to a native English speaker, it can be pretty disturbing, because it keeps almost sounding like English and then failing.
  • The music video for Serj Tankian's "Empty Walls" features the lead singer parading around a Circus of Fear with a bizarre, sociopathic look on his face, while various small children play happily... or, as some people have interpreted it, re-enact the War on Terror.
  • Intentionally used in the music video for "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden, which features an eerie "off" suburb populated by clearly insane grinning people. It's actually a relief when they all get sucked into the sky. One magazine actually called it the best horror movie of the year!
  • The puppets in the music video for Wyona's Big Brown Beaver by Primus.
    • Those aren't puppets. Those are actually the band members wearing huge, intentionally fake-looking cowboy costumes. They were so cumbersome that they had to mime the song at half its original speed to get the performance down correctly.
  • This Puffy AmiYumi music video. We get close ups of lips and backs of heads, but The Reveal comes in at 1:10 and scares you half to death.
    • Even before then, you can just tell there's something...wrong with how the backs of their heads look.
    • The video no longer exists. It would be great if there was a name of the song or a new link.
    • It's "Hataraku Otoko", the theme song of Hataraki Man. You can go here to see some pictures from the video.
  • Just about any Vocaloid song that doesn't have to do with happiness and ice cream involves a mix of this trope with Mind Screw (see Wide Knowledge of Late, Madness; Alice Human Sacrifice; and Dark Woods Circus for more details).
    • As if that wasn't enough, they made Hatsune Miku, the most popular Vocaloid, into a real-life realistic robot that doesn't even look like her (it's on the web somewhere). This is just overkill.
    • Vocaloid songs in general, regardless of the content, are just robotic and twangy enough to fall into the Uncanny Valley. For some songs, the voice sounds perfectly human (or close enough to be out of the valley), but then there is just that one note where the creator didn't quite tune the voice right...
    • A special mention should be given to Circle You, Circle You/Kagome Kagome (the Miku & Luka version). The images in the video are disturbing in and of themselves, but certain ways Miku and Luka's voice match up falls right into this trope.
    • Miku herself (despite being real now) is also featured in this video, Machine Muzik. Watch and know the truth about Vocaloid...
    • Also, the trailer for Hatsune Miku: Project Diva 2. Realistically-moving characters with anime faces, rubber skin, and plastic hair are extremely unsettling.
    • KAITO's box art [dead link] might be the closest to Uncanny Valley if compared to the others', most noticeably his eyes and torso.
  • The faces and almost anything on Aphex Twin's music videos. Just watch for yourself.
  • The masks in this Sound Horizon video. At least the witch is supposed to be scary; Lafrenze (the girl) is supposed to be beautiful, though, not incredibly fucking creepy.
  • Face Dances part 2, by Pete Townshend. Good song, weird video. Almost as weird as the singer's nose.
  • And who could forget Kraftwerk? They were defined by this trope!
  • In the video for "Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear, the band members' facial features and movements are digitally altered just enough to give them the deliberate appearance of singing automatons. Their unnaturally shiny skin, large eyes, and un-synchronized blinking are unnerving enough, but eventually light starts pouring out of their mouths and sparks fly out of the backs of their heads.
  • The video for the latest Flo Rida/Nelly Furtado cash in on that film G-Force. Even though the computer generated Furtado has obviously been animated using motion-capture, you can't help be creeped out by her movements. Plus the real-life Flo Rida himself has some kind of visual effect on him that makes his skin look plasticy and strange.
  • Any music video made by Tool would qualify as Uncanny Valley-esque, due to the weird CGI and puppets they use in their videos.
  • The Concept Video for Weezer's "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" features an entire small town made up of Weezer members. Mostly this just means the members of the band dressed up in different costumes, but there are four children with the heads of the band members pasted onto them. While the effect is more natural looking than the similar Aphex Twin and The Love Guru examples, they're still at least a little unnerving.
  • The album cover for Hybrid's Wide Angle has this in spades. The back is color inverted, which makes it worse.
  • 2D of Gorillaz is described in-universe as a Bishonen type, but he's decidedly creepy. His arms and legs are just slightly too long for his movements to look natural. According to the backstory he has eight-ball fractures in both eyes, rendering them totally black, but if you don't know this it looks like he has no eyes at all, and his name doesn't help - he was nicknamed 2D, short for "Two Dents", after he suffered the two car accidents which wrecked his eyes. Add to this his missing two front teeth, and his smile is pure horror, made worse by the fact that he is still kinda cute. It's particularly noticeable in the videos for "Feel Good Inc" and "Dirty Harry".
    • Underscored in the video for Stylo. 3D Murdoc, 2D and malfunctioning cyborg Noodle are creepy as hell. Then again, Cyborg Noodle is creepy under the best of circumstances.
      • Don't forget the Boogie Man. The way he nearly glides over the earth to get to the cop....brrrr.
    • The Superfast Jellyfish's unchanging smiles and balloon-like movements, even after being microwaved, are weirdly frightening. The side-to-side flopping motion is somehow reminiscent of a hanging victim, and the crazily-smiling guy eating them in the video really does not help.
    • Cyborg Noodle just became even more frightening. The Uncanny Valley has ensured us that this monster will never leave our heads. Why? It's Murdoc's fault. This is completely Nightmare Fuel for unattached face and creepy as fuck smile. DO NOT WATCH IN THE DARK. And as of Melancholy Hill, the Superfast Jellyfish are no longer emotionless jelly bags, and express fear as they rather quickly get sucked up into the jets of the Gorillaz submarine. Even that though has it's own creep factor.
  • The "Supermassive Black Hole" music video for the band Muse, has people with digitally projected faces. You can just imagine...
    • Also on the subject of Muse, Feeling Good may be even worse.
    • The video for "Plug in Baby" falls under it in certain parts. Hint: Watch the ladies particularly near the end...
  • Certain settings of Auto-Tune can have this effect.
  • There's this video from The Wiggles, an Australian children's musical group. Those puppets are incredibly unsettling, specially with those dead, crystalline eyes.
  • The three Christina Aguileras from the Candyman music video, anyone? It's only really when they're all side by side, because they all look so animated, since they're supposed to be tributes to hand-drawn pinups, obviously, so what we essentially have is three identical three-dimensional ink people.
  • The cover art of the Eels' Beautiful Freak album.
  • The scary puppet in the video for Interpol's song "Evil" is a weird example. It's very, very puppety. It almost looks like a muppet, and it moves its hands like they're on strings. But there's no visible strings and the thing's got a very expressive face, enough that you still get this effect.
  • Genesis' Land of Confusion is this.
  • Laurie Anderson loves this trope. It's probably most notable in her video for "Sharkey's Day," in which she wears an eerie Chroma Key mask with fake white eyes and articulated lips that move as she sings. Also, any time she uses the "Big Voice" (her own voice electronically treated to sound male).
  • We came this far without mentioning the robots in Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" video?!
  • The extensive use of cheap halloween masks in Devo's early ouevre apply, notably booji boy. This video features the guys wearing shiny translucent masks that, combined with their performances style, make them look like mannequins that have come mostly to life.
  • The popularity of a certain “surrealistic realism” can elicit this response from certain Italian progressive rock album covers of the early 70s. Most notable candidates: Clowns by Nuova Idea and Dedicato a Frazz by Semiramis (and its detailed inner gatefold) are the most prominent examples.
  • Daniel Amos' album Doppelgänger features photos of a department-store mannequin in the liner notes. In some of the pictures, he's wearing an eerily-realistic mask, then removes it to show that the too-human eyes are his.
  • The music video for the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow."
  • Any of Lady Gaga's videos.
    • ESPECIALLY "Bad Romance" and "Alejandro", in which she uses computer effects to enlarge and shrink her eyes. It's really unsettling to see her with these huge bug eyes in one video, and these squinted tiny ones in another.
  • Enter Shikari's video for Thumper is a mix of a "regular" (albeit Deliberately Monochrome) Performance Video and an exaggerated cartoon version of the band performing. It's... deeply unsettling to say the least.
  • Purposely invoked via makeup and image manipulation with the photos of the various characters in the liner notes for David Bowie's Rock Opera 1. Outside, as well as on the album itself with their spoken-word "segues" between songs, which are digitally tweaked to vary the voices further. It doesn't take long to realize Bowie is playing all of them, including the women; the low point of the valley here is Baby Grace Blue, the 14-year-old girl whose murder kicks off the story.
  • The music video for E.T. by Katy Perry ft. Kanye West. When they show close-ups of her face with the obvious CGI and makeup, it's CREEPY AS HELL! That scary albino alien dude also sends some chills. But the icing on the cake is when Katy removes her robe/dress at the end and inexplicably reveals that she has a FAUN BODY! It was frightening to see those thin hoofed legs. Who ever expected THAT?
  • The puppet-people in the video for Falls Apart by Thousand Foot Krutch. This troper wasn't expecting anything of the sort the first time she started the video, and was thusly scared of it for a month or so.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic intentionally creates this effect for his "Perform This Way" video, a parody of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way". The video has a female dancer wearing a bunch of outlandish outfits, with Al's face digitally superimposed over hers. Not only is it obviously fake in and of itself, but it's also disturbingly out of sync in some places.
  • This Japanese music video.
  • Does It Offend You, Yeah's Weird Science music video.
  • Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree is in love with this trope, and the video for his song Index, from his latest solo album Grace For Drowning, proves it most of all. It IS the trope! Steven himself even seems to look like he's one of the mannequins surrounding him, given how unnaturally still he's sitting as he sings. The death-march-like beat and sadistic lyrics only add to the Nightmare Fuel..
  • Bjork's strange angular motions in her music videos.
  • Mindless Self Indulgence's Shut Me Up video. Everything in the video is just a bit off, and the guy's movements are so exaggerated and such that it's like watching a cartoon with realistic people.
  • Epica embraced this trope like it's own for "Requiem For The Indifferent"
  • The music video of the Carnival of Rust
  • David Guetta's new single, Turn Me On. It contains the trifecta of Uncanny Valley nightmares, including half formed, yet still animated, robots, (a la AI) a terrifying amount of fake-looking CGI, and truly abominable doll-faced humans. Most likely one of the most terrifying music videos in existence.
  • Sparklehorse, in both the albums' artwork and the songs themselves, which often have a decaying, rummage sale-like quality that's very off, as if Linkous himself is a faulty clockwork puppet.
  • The video for The Smashing Pumpkins' song "Ava Adore" feature Billy Corgan in that creepy black mu-mu of his moving around in unsettling, jerky motions throughout.
  • Coachella 2012 gave us a holographic version of Tupac Shakur that joined Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg onstage to perform a couple of his songs. The realness of the projection made it beyond creepy.
  • Linkin Park's music video for "Points of Authority" has stunning CGI of an apparent war between aliens and robots commanded by disembodied human heads. All of this is rendered in a quasi-realistic style... up until the close up shot of one of the aforementioned heads' face (the lead singer). Beautifully-textured skin... flat, unshaded cartoon eyes reminiscent of The Sims. The rest of the video is difficult to enjoy.
  • The "mile-wide-grin" from Warrant's video for "Cherry Pie".
  • The cover of Die Antwoord 's Ten$ion album.
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