Jennifer Lopez might be a phenomenally successful singer, actress, producer, dancer, designer and American Idol judge, but she ain't your mama, and she ain't gonna do your laundry.
Ain't Your Mama was released in April this year, followed by a video in May that features J. Lo getting down and dirty with a bucket full of soap suds in order to address gender role stereotypes in 2016 (and, having now clocked up 100m plays, the message has disseminated widely).
The song, penned by recent Big Weekend performer Meghan Trainor, is just the latest in a long list that have included a variety of household chores in their videos, including Meghan's Dear Future Husband. Motivations are varied - some comic, some really quite political. Here are our 10 favourites, beginning with Queen, of course...
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Queen - I Want to Break Free (1984)
I Want to Break Free is Queen's hilarious love letter to working-class domesticity, featuring references to Coronation Street (those of a certain vintage will remember the flying duck mise-en-scène of Hilda Ogden's living room).
Freddie Mercury pushing a vacuum cleaner in a tight leather micro mini-skirt has entered the pantheon of iconic pop moments in Britain - and is indeed part of the great lineage of our theatrical past - but the David Mallet-directed video was actually banned by MTV at the time of its release for being too racy. "I think at that point we lost America," Brian May said retrospectively, "which is a shame, as it means there's a whole chunk of Queen songs which never got played or heard there."
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
One of the most identifiable videos in all of alternative rock, Smells Like Teen Spirit features anarchist cheerleaders, a janitor, and Kurt Cobain leaping back and forth thrashing his Fender Mustang in a green stripy jumper. Incredibly, it was director Samuel Bayer's first assignment, and Bayer himself said he believed he was hired on the strength of a very poor test reel, with Nirvana forever striving for anti-corporate punk authenticity.
The video features a caretaker mopping assiduously as the band plays on, and while we realise that it's not Kurt doing the household chore in the promo, the angsty frontman actually did get a job as janitor at Weatherwax High School after he left the very same alma mater.
LISTEN: Butch Vig, producer of Smells Like Teen Spirit, talks about when he first heard that riff
Lisa Stansfield - All Woman (1991)
Nobody brings classy soul and down-to-earth grit together like Rochdale chanteuse Lisa Stansfield, and All Woman is so classy and gritty that it almost strays into self-parody.
In the video - shot by Nick Brandt, who's more famous for photographing African wildlife - Lisa’s spectre lurks on the landing giving moral support to a downtrodden female character whose husband is a bit of a git. "From Monday to Sunday," she cries as she's cleaning the floor, "I work my fingers to the bone." The male lead has no doubt just rolled in from his natural habitat, the pub.
LISTEN: Lisa Stansfield joins Radio 2's Craig Charles to speak about her career and recent touring
Pulp - Common People (1995)
We've all been there: You go to the supermarket, pop a quid in the trolley rack in order to liberate a shopping cart, and there within is a miniature Jarvis Cocker engaging in indie class war.
Released at the height of Britpop, the song about a minted Greek with a thirst for knowledge (played by Sadie Frost in the video) momentarily elevated Pulp into pop's top strata, with Cocker's personal fame peaking the following February when he famously wiggled his bum at Michael Jackson at the 1996 Brit Awards. The fuss eventually died down, but Common People survives - still regularly coming out on top in 'Best songs of the 90s' polls.
S Club 7 - You (2002)
In this Jetsons-style video, Rachel Stevens plays the good wife, mowing the lawn, operating a futuristic oven and - perhaps most puzzlingly - making a lava lamp bubble with just an ice cube dropped into its inner workings with some tongs. And she has romantic competition for her jetpack-riding hubby, from Jo O’Meara, who plays the all-singing, all-dancing mistress).
Caught between Tomorrow's World-style technology and the archetypal 50s dream home aesthetic, the video is perhaps trying to do too much; as a send up, it doesn't entirely work. Still, it could be worse: S Club 7 recorded a version of The Long and Winding Road for the b-side that was so melismatic and treacly it made Phil Spector’s string arrangements sound positively tasteful.
Beyonc茅 - Why Don鈥檛 You Love Me? (2008)
While Why Don’t You Love Me? might look like a tongue-in-cheek poke at patriarchal oppression, Beyoncé claimed in a 2010 interview that it actually more reflected her life while taking a break from work.
The Melina Matsoukas-directed clip features Queen Bey soaking the floor with a wet sponge, shearing the hedgerow and watering the plants, dusting off her many Grammys and more improbably fixing a car in six-inch heels.
"I came up with the concept for that video because lately I decided to take a break, and I’ve been home, being a wife," she told . "I figured it could be nice to give a little wink toward the things that I've been doing, so that's why I'm a housewife in the video."
WATCH: Beyoncé chats to Lauren Laverne and Jo Whiley at Glastonbury, 2011
Sade - Babyfather (2010)
British-Nigerian soul singer Sade proves she's a smooth operator when cleaning the saucepans in this Sophie Muller-directed promo. The song is a celebration of fatherhood, while the video appears to hark back to a more traditional time when motherhood was as synonymous with domesticity as it was for rearing spawn.
Dressed in a negligee and fetching orange marigolds, Ms Abu rummages in a foamy sink, hangs washing on the line and inexplicably pours what looks like ectoplasm all over the dinner. The video's unusual in the 21st century in that it doesn't seem to have any subtext or overt agenda; it simply celebrates matriarchal stereotypes and seeks to bring glamour to the tyranny of household chores, albeit with some green gravy.
LISTEN: Sade is inducted into Michael Ball's Singers Hall of Fame
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Handy (2014)
"Weird Al" Yankovic overlapped the worlds of home improvement and Iggy Azalea in 2014, which is a fairly niche Venn diagram crossover. In the promo - funded by fans on social media when label RCA withdrew financing - the relentless spoofer explores the mindset of a nailed on (see what we did there?) DIY freak so you don't have to. Al dons a tool holster, a waistcoat and a wig, looking not unlike Football Focus regular Mark Lawrenson. "I got 99 problems but the switch ain't one," he deadpans at one point (we included this spoiler to prevent you from injuring yourself ROFLing too hard).
What this all has to do with Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX's Fancy (which itself is a Clueless spoof) is anyone's guess, but then "Weird Al" was always a parodist rather than a satirist. You may wonder what the point is then, but does "Weird Al" need a point? Probably, but having done this for the last 40 years he's unlikely to worry about that now.
Meghan Trainor - Dear Future Husband (2015)
Dear Future Husband is a throwback to the 1950s when doo-wop, the Cold War and gender apartheid ruled the waves. The video, directed by Fatima Robinson, features Meghan Trainor scrubbing floors and working tirelessly in the kitchen, with some critics wondering when the payoff might arrive. noted that while the song is “very, very catchy”, it also enforces “a lot of gender stereotypes” and, if it does come with a sense of irony, "it's a very, very hard-to-find sense of irony".
Trainor expressed surprise at being asked if the video was sexist; the following number she wrote for Jennifer Lopez redresses the balance somewhat with its lack of ambiguity.
LISTEN: Cel Spellman chats to Meghan Trainor backstage at Radio 1's Big Weekend in Exeter
Jennifer Lopez - Ain't Your Mama (2016)
Yet another video featuring the protagonist floor scrubbing, though this time the message is clear, albeit by using irony to fortify the message. "I ain't gonna do your laundry," states Jenny from the Block, "I ain't your mama."
The concept for the video returns us to the 1950s yet again, though this time there’s a twist. "I just thought, 'How about we show the progression of women and how we've grown, but also how things are kind of the same,'" J. Lo said in a Facebook Q&A. "So I thought we'd go from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, to present day, and how today we're standing up for everything that we really, truly deserve. It's not about man-hating. We love you. We just want you to see us for all that we are, and never take us for granted."
READ: How a Jennifer Lopez dress helped lead to the launch of Google Images
