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We'll Always Have CarsonA stroll through the Top 10 videos in honor of Total Request Live's cancellation.

By Troy PattersonPosted Friday, Sept. 19, 2008, at 5:13 PM ET

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The director of the clip, Chris Robinson, appears to be developing a subspecialty in woman-positive statements on the R&B tip, with his video for Jennifer Hudson's "Spotlight" (No.6) espousing a kind of feminism derived from Candace Bushnell books, Diana Ross singles, and couples counseling. In a prologue, Hudson chats with a friend on her iPhone, complaining about her boyfriend: "Mm-hmm, I really like him, but he is too possessive and too controlling. I can't be myself around him." The recommendation? "Girl, every time a man has me stressed, I put on my best heels and go out." Thus is Hudson on the road to liberation, achieved partly via the delivery of advice-column lyrics: "Is this relationship fulfilling your needs/ as well as mi-i-ine?"

Robinson's third contribution to the countdown, Cassie's "Official Girl" (No. 5), is a bit more problematic, largely because Cassie is not so much a singer as a bikini model with a few dance moves. The speaker of "Official Girl" explains that she's fed up with being "your unofficial girl": In turn, the video depicts Cassie demanding proper respect by taking half-nude photos of herself, getting them developed, and triumphantly flinging them at her man. It's unclear whether this gesture represents a final kiss-off or a first warning, but I think she gives him the photographs in a Louis Vuitton document pouch.

Somewhat less ambiguous, Pink's "So What" (No. 2) is a 3½-minute sneer. It seems that singer has recently suffered a divorce and is eager to share the feelings she's working through. Here, Pink, wearing a wide array of cute outfits and bleating "I don't need you," acts out by trashing a guitar store, engaging in a pillow fight, piloting a riding mower to the liquor store, slipping urine into the drinks of unsuspecting acquaintances, stripping naked for a bank of red-carpet photographers, and cutting down someone else's tree. You've got to admire how she sets a good example by wearing goggles when using that chainsaw. Technically, these are oversize bubble shades favored by California girls from Oedipa Maas to Rachel Zoe, but a shop teacher still might approve.

Much of the rest of the list is a dull rehash of blingy posturing, with the No. 1 clip, T.I.'s "Whatever You Like," emerging as a hearty celebration of high-end tequila, large stacks of money, and kept women. The scenario finds the rapper giving his number to a pretty cashier at a fast-food joint. Soon, he's buying her cars and diamonds, and she's on his arm at a party celebrating the release of the very record this video is promoting. Ultimately, that all turns out to be a Robb Report daydream. T.I. didn't hand her his digits: He merely gave her a big tip, leaving a $100 bill for an order of hot wings.

The list's lone white male is Jason Mraz at No. 7 with "I'm Yours." Mraz, like T.I., is depicted as having ready access to a private jet, but mostly he's a low-key dude. He flies to frolic somewhere blessed by ska beats and sandy beaches. The song is about plunging into an affair; the video is about cliff-diving.

The most beguiling video on the list hustles the M.I.A. song "Paper Planes" (No. 3). The song, released last year, appeared in the Top 40 this summer, popularized by the film Pineapple Express. M.I.A.—a fly girl, a critics' darling, a lady rapper from Brooklyn by way of Sri Lanka—is the only person here who might be accused of doing something subversive, to employ a term much appropriated, abused, and cheapened by the people upstairs at Viacom. In fact, the video was the subject of a teapot tempest upon its initial release, when MTV tried suppressing the chorus, with its addicting syncopation of gun blasts and cash-register ring.

In "Paper Planes," M.I.A. appears as a small thing in sassy eye shadow. Selling sandwiches out of a van in Bed-Stuy, she looks like an immigrant working a shift, unless that's just her cover. She's lilting prettily about visa papers, drug markets, gas stations, pirates, spies, murder. Paper planes are bearing down on New York City. She's chanting, "All I wanna do is … take your money"—and chanting it rather persuasively. The song is criminally catchy, partly because its gangster-rap fantasy, rock-star swaggering, and riddling geopolitics never coalesce into anything so dull as a message. All the videos on TRL's countdown are about pop's idea of success; "Paper Planes" is the only one clever enough to make paranoid puns about blowing up and getting paid.