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Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 12:27:03 +0200

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Nicole Scherzinger, inexplicably hot in balaclava.

I’ve mentioned The VH1 Effect in the past; the strange process through which a seemingly mediocre or outright terrible song transforms into a quality single you can’t get enough of simply because you’ve heard it so many times. (The opposite? The Pictures Of You Effect, in which a song that seemed either comically bad or sort-of-tolerable becomes completely, life-alteringly fucking terrible upon repeated listenings).

Which brings us to Scream, the fifth single from Timbaland’s Shock Value.

On first listen, it definitely sounds like a classic fifth single: not especially catchy or accessible, seemingly released solely to cash in on whatever Timbalust the record-buying public still needs sated. But upon further listens, and after your tenth viewing of the film clip, the VH1 Effect comes into effect. Full effect. And all of a sudden you love the song.

And you try to understand why you love it. You ask questions:

1) Why is the chorus so goddamned good? Is it the way it emerges from nowhere, exploding like a melodic dove shot from a cannon? Is it the way ’scream’ is more of a whisper than an exclamation point?

2) Seriously, why are girls in balaclavas so hot?

Here’s one theory: the hotness of the women sets off one part of your brain (the part that likes attractive humans), and the garb so strongly associated with criminal behaviour sets off another (the part that gets excited/freaked out when you see bank robbers). When both parts of the brain go off, there’s a culmination of senses, leading to a heightened ‘that’s weirdly and totally sexy’ response. This is, of course, an extremely scientific theory.

Another idea: the women are transformed into hypersexual caricatures of feminity, the focus resting solely on their eyes, lips, arse and tits. As such, men enjoy the image… but it’s kind of chauvinist that they do. I know a woman named Germaine who agrees with this.

And the final theory: Timbaland understands something about aesthetics, and women, that the rest of us never could. This is likely.

3) Why does Timbaland now insist on going shirtless in his clips?

4) And why is he always diddling about with futuristic touch-screen technology in his film clips? Did he pop one thousand boners watching Minority Report or something?

Via FeedShow.com