Is Rock ‘n’ Roll Dead? It Depends Whom You Ask : While Neil Young and Lenny Kravitz debate the question, Bjork steals the ratings with some music that’s really retro.

Is rock ‘n’ roll dead, or will it never die?

Retro king Lenny Kravitz and ageless rocker Neil Young loosely debate the point in new videos--and guess who wins? Kravitz, looking like your quintessential rock star in his leather pants and double-pierced nose, complains that many musicians now substitute Angst for good music. Young, who looks like your quintessential gas station attendant, hails the return of raw vibrancy to rock.

Though Young tops Kravitz in this month’s edition of Sound & Vision, which rates current videos on a scale of 0-100, it doesn’t capture the top honors. The question Bjork raises isn’t over the health of rock but whether the MTV crowd can relate to Fred Astaire as well as it does Trent Reznor.

Bjork, “It’s Oh So Quiet.” Bjork and director Spike Jonze score again. The Icelandic singer tops the competition for the second straight month, while Jonze adds to a series of video achievements that includes the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly.” In this big-band number, we find a demure Bjork softly singing her way through the mundane setting of a tire store--until the music kicks in. Then patrons and employees break into choreographed dance routines a la old Hollywood musicals.

Grinning mechanics spin crowbars as Astaire once twirled canes and slide across the linoleum floor in criss-cross patterns past a joyously leaping Bjork. Outside the shop, chunky pedestrians and paunchy delivery men join in, lifting Bjork atop car hoods and swinging the tiny singer around as if she were a bride for one of the seven brothers. She even dances with a mailbox.

Aside from brilliant color combos and concept, what makes the video great is its clumsy charm. Bjork and “dancers” look as if they’ve spent more time marveling at dance steps in old movies than actually doing them. 95

Neil Young, “Downtown.” Working again with celebrated video director Julien Temple, the legendary rocker assumes the unexpected role of a stagehand at a surreal concert extravaganza. Young is briefly shown doing such things as tuning guitars backstage and manning a smoke machine while all the activity whirls around him.

So who’s playing onstage (as Young’s music plays in the video)? It doesn’t matter. The focus here is on the audience, where the most exciting show is taking place: Teen hippies, punks, headbangers and dance-club fashion pieces all converge under a big revolving mirror ball. Yes, it’s that simple: a visualization of Young’s belief that the ultimate power of rock ‘n’ roll has always rested in the audience. 85

Coolio, “Gangsta’s Paradise.” “You wanna tell me what this is all about?” Michelle Pfeiffer asks in the toughest tone she can muster. In this song from the soundtrack for “Dangerous Minds,” Coolio answers with stark lyrics about urban struggles.

If you can get over the frequent snippets from the ludicrous story line of the film (a wispy, blond Pfeiffer is the bold savior of troubled teens), Coolio’s video works. Curls of cigarette smoke, strategically cast shadows and Coolio’s icy stares set compelling moods. The video ends with the rapper pulling the gangsta sunglasses off a young boy to reveal his innocent but angry baby face. It may be blatantly symbolic, but, like the song, it moves gracefully and directly to the point. 75

Jill Sobule, “Supermodel.” Sobule follows up the “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” look of her video “I Kissed a Girl” with a takeoff on the Brian De Palma horror classic “Carrie.” Looking like a lobotomized Sissy Spacek, Sobule plays the school outcast who not only wants to fit in at her fashion-conscious school but also wants to be the next Cindy Crawford.

“I won’t eat today or tomorrow, ‘cause I’m gonna be a supermodel,” she sings, as characters who look sickeningly similar to “Carrie” cast members William Katt and Amy Irving taunt her. Sure, the infamous bucket of pig’s blood dumps on her head (and, like, totally wrecks her whole supermodel vibe) and she incinerates the school with her supernatural powers, but where’s Fabio? Oh well, it smokes any Weird Al video to date and secures Sobule’s place as rock’s new goddess of quirk. 75

Lenny Kravitz, “Rock and Roll Is Dead.” And by the looks of this video, Kravitz must feel it’s his job to revive it. The singer-guitarist, who has made a career of pasting classic funk and rock riffs together into addictive pop numbers, flips his ample dreads, wah-wahs his guitar extra hard and dons the biggest fur-collared coat you’ve seen since Hot Chocolate broke up. He also lies face up in the dirt as if to demonstrate what rock looks like when it’s dead (not a pretty sight).

But for all his effort in this mostly black-and-white video, Kravitz’s ability to run in platforms proves more impressive than the video itself, which offers the basic fleeting, groovy images and incongruous shots of Grim Reaper characters and gooey, painted bodies. In this case, the video actually does the already precarious song no favors. 55

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, “1st of Tha Month.” This video combines two basic video rules: the old, “depict-the-lyrics-of-the-song,” and the familiar “throw-in-incongruous-segments-from-left-field-to-spice-things-up.” In this look at the day when welfare checks and food stamps arrive, a single mother prays over a meager meal, a homeless man sleeps on the street and everyone else parties. Simple enough, but wait--the Cleveland rap group views these scenes in a crystal ball from inside an old, spooky mansion, then takes a ride through a wooded neighborhood in a convertible. Add a politician watching the same scenes indifferently through his own looking glass and you have yet another video that packs the right ingredients but becomes so convoluted it spirals into an abyss of nothingness.40