The best way to show that your music group is "down with the kids" and "funky" — or whatever it is the under-25s say these days — is to stick them in a hopelessly contrived-looking nightclub set full of impossibly attractive young women and maybe a few men and have them break it down on the dance floor, generally being the life of the party.
If the video is for a proper instrumental band, expect the lead singer and lead guitarist to grab most of the screen time while the funny-looking drummer and bassist get a few standard shots of some women mooning over them.
The club itself will notably lack ugly people, people older than thirty, terrifying predatory girls on a hen night do, creepy predatory guys seeking out extremely intoxicated women, VIPs pissing off the staff and eventually getting thrown out for motorboating the hostess, people drunk off their asses, people buying drugs, people getting blowjobs in the corner, wannabe tough guys trying to start fights, and people looking incredulously at bar staff after learning how much a JD and coke costs.
Extensive use of Slow Motion brings the speed of the dancers down to the typically sedate pace of a hip-hop song.
Straight examples
Film
- We Are the Night: The "Nightlife"-sequence, where Lena goes into the nightclub which the vampires own. It's full of attractive young people dancing. Louise spots and dances flirtatiously with Lena, clearly smitten by her. It's very nicely maintained, without signs of intoxication or riffraff.
Live-Action TV
- When the ITV network introduced all-night weekend TV in the middle 1980s, a cheap infill series broadcast around midnight on a Saturday was called The Hit-Man and Her. This was presented by the Simon Cowell of the day, pop impresario Pete Waterman, assisted by a very young and toothy Michaela Strachan. It was recorded in nightclubs around the UK, consisted of three hours worth of chart dance tunes interspersed with daft games and interviews, and sure enough nobody ugly ended up on film, nobody got drunk, nobody had the crap beaten out of them by neanderthal Bouncers, etc. This idealised nightclub, it was later revealed, was usually filmed during the day with an invited and pre-selected audience consisting of models, aspirant actors, and fame wannabes.
- Spaced had a pretty realistic techno/dance club for one of its episodes.. well, until they started playing an A-Team theme remix. And it was awesome.
Music
- Unsurprisingly, the 50 Cent video "In Da Club" features...oh, you can work it out. Now that's mentioned, nearly half of Hip-hop/dancehall/reggaeton music video features a club or some kind of wild party of similar characteristics.
- System of a Down's "B.Y.O.B." has the band playing in a club but that club is invaded by soldiers wearing helmets with displays on the front apparently in some sort of sting operation and force all the club goers and the band to wear such helmets.
- The Sum 41 video for "What we're all about"
twists this trope slightly. They band is playing at a night club, but because it's the Spider-Man soundtrack, the band is on the ceiling while the clubbers watch from below.
- Done with a twist in Linkin Park's "Bleed It Out"; while the band is playing normally up on a stage, around them a Bar Brawl is happening backwards!
- Pick a Basshunter video, any Basshunter video. Yes, even that one
- Turisas' cover of Boney M.'s hit "Rasputin" features the band playing In Da Club. Warlord Nygard first appears in a fine suit and hat, surrounded by babes, but by the end, the whole band is playing in their usual leather, fur, and warpaint.
- The video for Adam Lambert's "For Your Entertainment" is a classic example.
- Nearly all of Pitbull's output, and that includes the songs that he's featured on.
Discussions, subversions, parodies, deconstructions, etc.
Live-Action TV
- Spoofed on Chappelle's Show in his sketch on how slow motion makes some things better... and other things worse.
- Deconstructed in The Office (UK), with an episode that ended at a works outing at one of these places... which was depicted as rather unpleasant and sleazy, and no fun at all unless you happened to be completely drunk.
Music
- Subverted by the Soulwax video for E Talking - everyone's on drugs from literally A-Z and the clubbers cover a spectrum of old/young/attractive/not so much, but because of the drugs even the most generically pretty among them don't look so great.
- Within Temptation's "Sinead" starts out like this... but then an assassin walks in and tries to kill two men present at the club.
- Parodied in Garfunkel and Oates' "This Party Took A Turn For The Douche."
- Parodied in The Lonely Island's "Jack Sparrow." It starts with everyone in a club, singing about how awesome and cool they are. Then Michael Bolton derails the song by singing about Pirates of the Caribbean.
- Deconstructed in the Chester See music video (also featuring Tobuscus and Wayne Brady) "Whistle While I Work It", where a group of guys are trying to get into a club. They get drunk at home before that due to the overpriced drinks at the club, park five blocks away to avoid the expensive valet parking, get sent to the back of the huge line by the bouncers for not having any girls with them, have one of them barred from coming in for wearing flip-flops, try to hit on girls and fail (either because of the crowded dance floor or the loud music), are unable to get a bartender or a waiter (since they're sober by the time they get in), too afraid to use the filthy bathroom, try to move in on a guy who has a table only to be dragged away. Wayne Brady shows up and has the hostess recognize him but even someone like him can't get into the VIP section. The group's signature "dance move" is a basic pelvic thrust that both disgusts and amazes everyone else. Word of God is that the intention was to show what clubs are like for most of the guys in Real Life.
- Beautifully sent up by South African musical comedian Robbie Wessels in Macarena Mambo. you don't need to be fluent in Afrikaans to get the visual humour of the piece and the way it sends up king-sized egos and the vacuousness of club-goers.
- The Axis of Awesome parodies and deconstructs club songs in "In The Club Tonight", complete with Lee styling himself after Pitbull. The lyrics below are followed by a chorus of "Whoa-oh-whoa-oh":
See, it's easy to remember and it's easy to learn
That's why people call it catchy when they mean that it's terrible
The chorus has no words, we only singing Yo
It's not even English, sing along, here we go - While the music video for Hollywood Undead’s “Levitate” remix is in a club, only Danny is actually present in the club.
Web Video
- In the first few years of his show, Todd in the Shadows ended up reviewing a lot of songs about this, to the point where he openly complained about the trope appearing so often.
- One of Mac Lethal's 27 Styles of Rapping is "Club", which he claims isn't a parody of a specific rapper but just a bunch of generic radio hip-hop jams:
Uh, you know I be in the club
Me and my thugs got VIP in the club
I say the same line in the club
'Cause you know the word 'club' always rhymes with the club
Uh, I love the club, let's go to the club
I got my girlfriend, my wife, and my ho at the club
Club club, club at the club
If the seal don't dance, he gettin' clubbed at the club
