he music video may hardly be in top cultural form at the moment, with both the channels previously known as Music Television and Video Hits 1st becoming bigger misnomers by the day. But even if these previously monolithic video outlets don’t seem to care too much about spreading the gospel anymore, in actuality, possibilities for video watching are arguably greater than ever. Deluxe cable channels like MTV Jams and VH-1 Classic are living up to the 24-hour-a-day music promises previously made by their parent channels, and with larger and more diverse playlists than ever before. And far more miraculously, with the advent of YouTube, video freaks finally have the capabilities to view almost any video they want, whenever they want. Music video democracy is at an all-time high.
With that in mind, we here at Stylus have democratically selected our humble and largely unofficial picks for the 100 best videos ever made, and are presenting them here, fully equipped with YouTube links for your viewing pleasure. Our list spans over four decades of music videos, from Bob Dylan & D.A. Pennebacker’s arguable creation of the art form in 1965 right up to a barely month-old Hot Chip video by Garth Jennings. We’ll be unveiling 20 a day, so be sure to check back throughout the week to keep up. Relive some of your favorite music video memories, and hopefully make a few new ones as well, as we count down the greatest hits of the music video medium.
100. The Geto Boys – “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”
(Dir. Richard Hunt, 1991)
Gangster paranoia is not convincing if the rapper is smirking from behind his wealth and fame, or already reveling in a self-fulfilling, clichéd ghetto martyr story. The paranoia in “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” works because everything is shot in a ruddy made-for-TV special haze; the sets are modest, if they’re sets at all; and there’s no attempt to portray the Geto Boys as anything other than people drowning in fear, even as life goes on around them. The picnic, the senior citizens, the trick-or-treating children, even the music itself—only a few other rappers have believably walked this line, and Geto Boy Scarface returned to it frequently as a solo artist, but he never again sounded or looked as hopeless as he does here, realizing that even paranoia can’t make the tragic melodramatic.
[Erick Bieritz]
099. Blackstreet f/ Dr. Dre & Queen Pen – “No Diggity”
(Dir. Hype Williams, 1996)
Stylus suggests that rather than follow this course, you try pairing scary puppets with more enjoyable elements: a very chunky looking Dre throwing out the kind of hand moves that look very similar to the ones I made the last time I did drunken karaoke (“Gold Digger” and “Girl All the Bad Guys Want,” before you ask), dungarees worn off the shoulder, that “wet road on a hot day” haze effect, the world's angriest looking dance troupe, and Queen Pen actually being shorter than the puppets themselves. Everything you love about the mid 90s in four-and-a-half minutes.
[Dom Passantino]
098. The Cure – “Lovesong”
(Dir. Tim Pope, 1989)
95% of Cure songs sound like Robert Smith is singing them from a cave, alone (or sound like Smith wishes he was singing them from a cave, alone), so it’s only natural that a cave would provide the setting for The Cure’s definitive visual statement. Long-time Cure video director Tim Pope wisely avoids the surreal visions of the “Just Like Heaven” video and instead lets the scenery do the talking, surrounding Smith with dripping stalactites and empty gazes from his similarly isolated bandmates. Smith responds by giving the best acting performance of his career, pouting like only he knows how, and squirming and fidgeting as if he felt like the whole world was staring at him. Soon enough—and largely because of this video—they would be.
[Andrew Unterberger]
097. Modest Mouse – “Ocean Breathes Salty”
(Dir. Chris Milk, 2004)
The video for “Ocean Breathes Salty” is a celebration of nature. Gorgeous lighting, vibrant colors, and expansive landscapes accompany this story of a cutely spectacled boy attempting to nurse a crow (Isaac Brock, who I sincerely hope still has that suit in his closet—the whole outfit is a wardrobe masterpiece) back to health. The whole thing has a sweet Boy’s Life vibe to it, and it definitely brings back some rural childhood memories for me, as I’m sure it does for many others. If nothing else, the video serves as quite possibly the best back story ever created to justify having a band dress up like various small animals. Also worth mentioning: this kid has incredible aim with a baseball, no? Every time he hits that scarecrow in the glove, I’m amazed.
[Jeff Shreve]
096. Robert Palmer – “Addicted to Love”
(Dir. Terence Donovan, 1986)
I'd always been puzzled to see "Addicted to Love" consistently included on Greatest Videos of All-Time lists. And yet here we are including it. And here I am writing about it. The video itself contains slightly more motion than a still picture—the sexless "sexy" mannequins scissor their legs and bop in place slightly, Palmer looks like he's thinking about a latte or his doctor's appointment, and the camera "work" consists of focusing in on small details of the non-event. Occasionally. "Hey, look her fingers are really touching those bass strings." Yes, now if only the thing were plugged into the amp. At the time, people found this offensive. Today it's just vapid and lacking in any kind of eroticism—but therein lies its greatness. Any time we're indulging in character-destroying nostalgia for the era, all we need to do is see this video and we'll quickly remember everything awful about the 80's. Consider it thy medication and be cleansed.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
095. Billy Joel – “Pressure”
(Dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1982)
Long time Joel fans constantly whine about how little respect their pride and joy gets from critics, but his video for “Pressure” clearly demonstrates why this critical snubbing will be the case always and forever. The most ostentatious and shamelessly over-dramatic song ever not to be written by someone with the last name Steinman or performed by someone with the last name Loaf, director Russell Mulcahy complements “Pressure” with a video so over the top it makes the song sound like Music for Airports by comparison. Walls that suck in and imprison little kids, Parallax View-style FLASHY SCREENS WITH MEANINGFUL WORDS AND SCARY IMAGES, and an apparent extreme mistrust of water—nothing is too much for Joel or Mulcahy. And so while critics can continue to thumb their nose at Joel’s artistic gracelessness, his fans can continue to rejoice in the knowledge that their beloved is totally unafraid to look like an idiot for their entertainment.
[Andrew Unterberger]
094. David Bowie & Bing Crosby – “Little Drummer Boy”
(Dir. Dwight Herrison, 1977)
Granted there may be better music videos on this list, but there's no question that the sight of Bing Crosby accompanied by David Bowie for a Christmas medley is the most bizarre. Picture the Thin White Duke and Bing hamming it up, while packaged in canned dialogue and wrapped in the plastic coating of a cheap old-timey set and you'll begin to understand the holiday treat this video offers. Leave it to the family to arrange such an unworkable partnership—Bowie's mum and Crosby's kids are the ones directly responsible for the fixed marriage of the two singers, who needed to patch together "Little Drummer Boy" and "Peace on Earth" to account for differences in voice.
[Nate De Young]
093. Cake – “The Distance”
(Dir. Mark Kohr, 1996)
To be honest, I couldn’t remember why I’d voted for this beyond having spent about a solid month watching it and going “That is a fucking riff, no?” The riff is the reason, though—the whole “businessman runs for miles because work is, er, something” storyline is fairly incidental, as is John McThingy’s constant mugging to camera. What we really loved was the backing band—the bassist in ill-fitting suit and trainers for one, but mostly the guitarist. Rarely, if ever, has playing the guitar simultaneously looked so cool, so nerdy, and so bloody difficult. His body hunches over with every further dig, his knees bend farther and his legs clench tighter. There’s a close-up of his hand, picking out every note while struggling to keep his outsized pinky ring aloft, and then his glorious closing shot, every bone of his Neil Patrick Harris-esque body buckling under the strain of keeping that wonderful, wonderful riff going. Also, we enjoyed the bald feller in the lift going “Hey!”
[William B. Swygart]
092. Alcazar – “Crying at the Discotheque”
(Dir. Jesper Ganslandt, 2001)
Considering that they reigned supreme for five years as Northern Europe's favourite fag 'n' hags connect, it's not really shocking that in their videos Alcazar served you nothing but a big old heap of kitsch. What was a surprise, though, was how well constructed their own particular brand of uber-camp was. Running off a “video within a video” motif like some kind of Melodifestivalen Midsummer Night's Dream, our heroes throw the kind of ironic dancing moves you may have occupied yourself with at the last student disco you went to, whilst attired in tinfoil hot pants and Ibiza 99 sunglasses. The next three-and-a-half minutes unfold in a fantastic storm of diva strops, guys in alien monkey masks walking like an Egyptian, and Alexander Bard as what's presumably supposed to be an aggravated Russian auteur director. Oh, and backing dancers with horse's heads.
[Dom Passantino]
091. The Futureheads – “Hounds of Love”
(Dir. Patrick Daughters, 2005)
This pretty much follows the generic template for every British indie video of the past decade or so—band plays their song while mildly wacky things happen around them. The difference here is that The Futureheads are a band riddled with charisma, just not in the conventional rock band sense. Barry Hyde is simultaneously the least likely and most wonderful frontman in modern music: a scrawny body, a potholed Wearside howl, and a scowl that could generously be described as incompetent. He couldn’t go through the motions if his life depended on it, so he has to make it up as he goes along—he jiggles, he wobbles, his eyes pop and boggle with an intensity that he can’t figure out. Even better, though: Dave Hyde—a cymbal pops out of the hedge, he clangs it, and marches straight on. It’s hard to explain why, but this just couldn’t happen with any normal band, could it?
[William B. Swygart]
090. The Chemical Brothers – “Let Forever Be”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1999)
Like "Sabotage" is the best primer to Spike Jonze, "Let Forever Be" is the perfect introduction to Michel Gondry. For those who watched every Gondry video that came down the pipeline, "Let Forever Be" is easy to dismiss as less original. But the "Let Forever Be" video is essential in how it breezes through every one of Gondry's touchstones—ridiculous in-camera tricks, real life objects blown up into the unreal, and constant synchronization to the Chemical Brother's series of bells and whistles without the terrible 'cutting to the beat' trap. In so many ways, every music video Gondry did before "Let Forever Be" led up to it, and everything he has done since has come directly from it.
[Nate De Young]
089. Kid606 – “Sometimes”
(Dir. Pleix, 2000)
Long after the Twin Towers have fallen, it is still difficult to watch this video. French film company Pleix concocted a computer animation of a skyscraper collapsing and then getting reborn. Kid606’s ballad is little more than a harp that flickers and shimmers in a state of “angelic” grace, but Pleix sings the song as a hymn out of the Book of Revelations. A towering skyscraper explodes into pieces of glass and perfectly shaped black cubes. The debris then floats like lotus petals through the streets and shatters into smaller pieces that threateningly move toward the viewer. One cube hits the screen and past memories suddenly flashes on the screen, as if the viewer dies. After the mortal contact, the blocks then fly and stack up into another building. The televised horror of the World Trade Center’s end is felt here, and though my first reaction was to accuse Pleix of morbid sensationalism, the conclusion unmistakably tells us that there is indeed a hope for rebirth after the storm.
[Cameron MacDonald]
088. Nine Inch Nails – “Closer”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 1994)
While there have been plenty of throwbacks to silent film, few have taken the care to bring film back to its origins—namely the grime of the stag film. Rather than creating the nostalgic and sanitized homage to silent film (a la Smashing Pumpkins' Lumiere-driven "Tonight Tonight") "Closer" oozes out from the underbelly of film history. With a dirty, sepia-tinged film-grain setting the tone for Romanek's series of high-brow sadomasochist art allusions, "Closer" gives Trent Reznor the perfect platform to tell the world he wants to fuck like an animal. And although the film burns out mid-way through the music video, there are far more images burnt into my mind from the first time I saw "Closer" a decade ago. I can't think of any better film to be placed in the MOMA's permanent collection
[Nate De Young]
087. Duran Duran – “Hungry Like the Wolf”
(Dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1982)
Witness the most colonial video ever: Lithe white men sprinting though a vaguely “Middle Eastern” bazaar before apparently stalking some dark-skinned native beauty, all while Simon Le Bon causes a ruckus in another “exotic” looking café. It’s a mix of apoplectic, “how-the-fuck-did-they-get-away-with-this” shock and neon-fried absurdity. Clearly gunning for “Thriller”-sized epicness, Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf” instead becomes the weird juxtaposition of power and race structures straight from Joseph Conrad and bubbling pseudo-Romantic cream. Think of this as one of the ultimate ‘80s baby videos: the looming complexities and new realities of a globalized, decolonized world all pushed aside for a moment of grinning, bawdy indulgence.
[Evan McGarvey]
086. Orbital – “The Box”
(Dir. Luke Losey, 1996)
Considering that Orbital made some of the most visual music of any instrumental group in recent memory, it’s all the more impressive that it’s utterly impossible to listen to “The Box” without picturing Luke Losey’s video. A time-lapsed masterpiece featuring a (shower-capped?) woman walking the streets in slow-motion while the rest of the world moves at hyper-speed, the video perfectly captures the alienation and fear permeating the menacing groove. Of the video’s many memorable images—our heroine staring at golf balls in the driving range, or watching a vine grow out of a brick wall in seconds—the most unforgettable is the two-word phrase that appears on a TV screen she watches through a window at the end of the video: MONSTERS EXIST. At this point in the video, you believe it unquestioningly.
[Andrew Unterberger]
085. Junior Senior – “Move Your Feet”
(Dir. Shynola, 2003)
Seeing Dutch duo Junior Senior’s video “Move Your Feet,” in the luxuriant 256 Tandy colors available with the height of 1988 technology, is a strange sight on its own. Turning on an MTV award show in late 2003 and seeing the dancing fruit from the MYF video and hearing the unmistakable accompanying five-note bell roll that leads into the chorus is even stranger. Junior Senior might not have blown up the charts with their groovy load of animated nonsense, but the memorable video earned them a solid cult following, and rightly so—a good music video should not just match the song’s strengths but double them, and “Move Your Feet” fills the bill admirably. The song is as guileless as it is guiltless about its jumble of borrowed sounds, and the video, from the “Happy Days” bus jump to the “Star Wars” ending, is equally so. But also like the song itself, half the elements in the video seem familiar without actually coming from any other specific place, besides, perhaps, imagined computer screen savers and Saturday morning cartoons that never actually existed.
[Erick Bieritz]
084. Bright Eyes – “First Day of My Life”
(Dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2004)
It's a conceit that probably shouldn't have worked; have a bunch of people listen to the song on headphones, mostly couples, and tape them listening to it. You have people smiling in recognition, gazing longingly at each other, grow abashed, kiss, hug, try not to cry, and so on. The song is a decent enough trembling love song, but the video really does turn it into something magical, the same way Found magazine and the online art project PostSecret manage to have such emotional power—as much as we are different, we have far more in common. From the glazed-eyed Billy Joel lookalike to the guy who only looks at his boyfriend when his boyfriend looks away, to, hell, the dog—we have met those we love, and they are us.
[Ian Mathers]
083. Peter Gabriel – “Shock the Monkey”
(Dir. Brian Grant, 1982)
A resident of a no-cable household until 1999, I had to depend on Friday Night Video to get my MTV fix for most of the eighties. “Shock the Monkey” was one of the first videos I ever saw, and it scared the shit out of me. A gaunt, intense Gabriel, dressed like a low-level administrator, pounds his fists on a desk. Cut to Gabriel, now decked out in a white suit like John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre…wearing monkey paint. The song’s minor key hysteria finds its ideal correlative in shots of Gabriel running through the woods pursued by his simian doppelganger. What it all means only the art school graduate and ex-lead singer of Genesis could explain. But ultimately, “Shock the Monkey” is, like “Sledgehammer,” an excuse for Gabriel to disfigure his body and grimace in extreme close-up while all manner of madness unfolds around him. I haven’t even mentioned the evil dwarfs. Or that last freeze-frame.
[Alfred Soto]
082. Eminem – “My Name Is”
(Dir. Philip Atwell & Dr. Dre, 1999)
Forget for a fact that seven years later, this song sounds like Eminem shooting catfish in a Nalgene bottle. Back when this first hit TRL—shut up, that’s where you saw it too—it felt like someone needed to be making fun of the Spice Girls, peroxide-d buzzcuts weren’t yet a cliché, and damn, is Dr. Dre really backing a bratty white kid? Eminem went on to greater artistic heights, but the lasting image of his career is still this video—teasing his mom about drugs and tits, getting thrown out of a strip club, “The Shady Bunch,” and Dr. Dre in a doctor’s coat (finally!). For four minutes, the ceiling on Eminem’s career was “a funnier Bloodhound Gang.” Okay, okay: A much funnier Bloodhound Gang. For four minutes, that seemed awesome.
[Andrew Gaerig]
081. Radiohead – “Fake Plastic Trees”
(Dir. Jake Scott, 1995)
There was a time, believe it or not, when Radiohead weren’t afraid to be big and obvious. The Jake Scott-directed video for “Fake Plastic Trees” finds Thom Yorke not only singing directly into the camera, but singing as if he were singing for all the inhabitants of the lonely aisle he’s being strolled down, from the old and fading cowboy to the girl price-tagging the thousands of anonymous cans. Like Allan Ginsberg and Perry Farrell before him, Scott knows that no location screams conformity and alienation more than the supermarket, and the video’s key image is Yorke arching his back off the shopping cart, seemingly in surrender, only to pop back up with one of the angriest scowls you’ve ever seen, just as the song kicks into high gear. For almost a decade, Radiohead were misclassified in the US as Britpop, and this video is why—it seems too anthemic to be anything else.
[Andrew Unterberger]
040. Smashing Pumpkins – “Tonight Tonight”
(Dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Farris, 1996)
Sure, it’s really just “A Trip to the Moon,” but seeing this for the first time as a 12 year old not briefed in film history, my immediate reaction was a more visceral “this is freakin’ awesome!” The umbrella-wielding couple’s astronomical exploits kicked off a love of Smashing Pumpkins that would carry on all through my teen years. Although jacked from a decades-old silent film, the aesthetics turned out to be the perfect encapsulation of the Smashing Pumpkins’ sense of grandeur; heartfelt, fantastical, overly-ambitious yet just a bit clunky in all the right places, and, of course, Billy Corgan, sky high, in the heavens with his band playing like angels behind him.
[Jonathan Bradley]
039. Aphex Twin – “Windowlicker”
(Dir. Chris Cunningham, 1999)
During the 90’s, Richard James spent an awful amount of time, energy, and money to show the world how ugly he looks. His Cheshire grin, conquistador beard, gargoyle nose, and leery, squinted eyes were typically exaggerated and demonized with the magic of Photoshop. But an anti-image can still sell the goods and “Windowlicker” is our man’s pinnacle. Director Chris Cunningham subverts the bling-bling, hip-hop video by grafting Master James’s mug onto the faces of bikini-clad ladies conquered by an ice cream-suited James the Playboy. Is he a narcissist, a masochist, or a feminist who wants to prove that men are only interested in “objectifying” bodies, not faces? You make the call. MTV rarely played this video in ’99 for the sake of good taste and moral obligation, but it remains a masterwork of digital art, lysergic-damaged sexual fantasy, and Freudian phenomena.
[Cameron MacDonald]
038. My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)”
(Dir. Marc Webb, 2004)
I admit, the first time I saw this clip, I hoped against hope they really were making a movie. “Helena” may have been the better song, but this is by far the superior video, with hilarious moments (tackling the mascot, “you have something in your eye,” standing on the diving board in a uniform, jumping out of a locker) scattered throughout and beautifully manipulative title cards that, like the best movie trailers, turns what could have been pedestrian footage into something stirring—if you can get through this without feeling a vicarious surge of triumph, you probably occupied a very different niche in high school than the band. Or their fans. Or me.
[Ian Mathers]
037. Fatlip – “What’s Up Fatlip?”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 2000)
The obvious thing to say about this video is that it’s a refreshing change to watch a rapper goofing off and not bigging themselves up in a video. But that’s idiotic, the easy way out, as it’s easier to imagine a hip-hop artist acting like Fatlip does here than any of the other types of musician making videos. And this is all still braggadocio anyway; Fatlip’s just trying to take that particular dare one step further. No matter how dorky he tries to make himself look—bike jacked by kids, punched in the nuts by an eight year old whilst dressed as a clown—he still has total command of the camera. Even in the most uncomfortable scene, the one you don’t notice first time through, where, whilst sitting next to his mother in her pristine house, he raps about chopping up cocaine, it’s all smiles, if queasy ones.
[Patrick McNally]
036. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
(Dir. Sophie Muller, 2004)
After the monochromatic, bare, and ultimately charmless original music video, director Sophie Mueller took that as the starting point of how not to shoot "Mr. Brightside." Enter huge sets, huge costumes, and a swarm of chicks baring their asses for a bunch of aristocrats. Along the way, Brandon Flowers resurrects the idea of the badass pop-crooner and throws the whiny kid of the earlier video to the wayside. Although "Mr. Brightside"'s love-triangle with the lead singer is a staple for music videos, it's the excess and the sprinkles of camp that makes this video taste so sweet—Flowers hamming it up for the camera and romping through checkers boards while his porcelain-doll muse interprets the song through an acrobatic dance.
[Nate De Young]
035. Radiohead – “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1995)
The video for “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” was shot using different film frequencies, allowing various actions to unfold at different rates within the same frame. The emotional effects of this practice range from silly (a regular-speed Yorke easily dodges paint thrown at him in slow motion) to unsettling (the video opens with Yorke falling backwards off a trailer, while lightning strikes unfold in real-time in the distance). Visually, however, the entire sequence of scenes is nothing short of stunning. The use of light and dissolving transitions, especially on Yorke’s face, lends a sense of shifting madness to the proceedings. The ending, with Thom Yorke springing into the air and seemingly hanging there, is surprisingly warm for such a dark and powerful song. Try not to watch this video too many times; it begins to feel a little more disturbing each time.
[Jeff Shreve]
034. Snoop Dogg f/ Pharrell – “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
(Dir. Paul Hunter, 2004)
There is no shortage of music videos filmed in black and white because the creators thought it was an easy way to seem cool or serious. There is a severe shortage of music videos filmed in black and white because the creators understood how it could underscore and enrich the minimalism in the music. From Busta Rhymes to Lil’ Jon, rap videos have often assaulted the eyes with 90 frames-per-minute of sugar-fried madness, a kitchen sink style that certainly has its charm. But it can look a little childish and silly compared to “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” a series of images so serene and smooth that it feels like drinking champagne while sitting on a velvet piano bench around a frozen swimming pool on the deck of a penthouse overlooking the city at midnight during winter.
[Erick Bieritz]
033. Coil – “Tainted Love”
(Dir. Peter Christopherson, 1985)
Soft Cell’s version of “Tainted Love” knocked about a quarter off the speed of the Gloria Jones original and Coil take it down at least another quarter on their honey thick crawl through. The video is a narrative piece, measured and as simple as the logic of disease. Watch as a young man, already too weak to walk, is wheeled into a spartan room in an AIDS hospice to die. The angel of death, played by Marc Almond, eats a grape and, chillingly, dismissively smirks as the patient’s ECG readout flatlines. Words are half swallowed, wanting to remain unsung. From that point there is only the morgue and the grave. The only pop video that has made me cry.
[Patrick McNally]
032. Blur – “Coffee & TV”
(Dir. Hammer & Tongs, 1999)
The fact that the video is now more famous than the song means that the moment when a story about a missing Graham Coxon (oh, the irony) turns into one also about an anthropomorphic dancing milk carton no longer has the same unexpected delight. Its adventures are still enormously funny and way beyond cute though, with a pleasing streak of cruelty to boot: the fate of his female counterpart is surely the most painfully amusing highlight of the whole thing. It also allows for the payoff happy ending, which even makes use of the song’s previously pointless coda, just one example of the perfect fit that makes “Coffee and TV” always seems sweeter and better when accompanied with its visuals.
[Iain Forrester]
031. Human League – “Don’t You Want Me?”
(Dir. Steve Barron, 1981)
“Don’t You Want Me” was an archetypal New Pop move, simultaneously strong narrative pop and a fictionalising of how the Human League got the girls in to sing and thus became popular. The video has a similar patterning as we watch a detective film being made, the behind the scenes romantic tensions of the leads, and the obsessive editing that will lead to a finished product. Nothing is spelt out, the emotion happens in hidden stares and unmet glances. Shots are repeated and rewound and replayed; it’s easier for the characters to watch each other on a screen than to face each other in real life. The viewer is the only person to be looked in the eye. It ends, of course, with the camera dollying away from the set and filming itself in the bright lights of a dressing room mirror. This is Godard’s Le Mépris for Saturday morning TV kids.
[Patrick McNally]
030. t.A.t.U. – “All the Things She Said”
(Dir. Ivan Shapalovov, 2002)
For a few minutes at the start of this decade, music videos were running lame. There was nothing on music television that you could have used as the basis for a mediocre ten minute long observational comedy routine. There was Missy hocking up some long distances loogies, and that's it. But then, hellfire and brimstone, taTu arrived. A career built out of one video, getting what Eminem, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, etc. had all tried and desperately failed to achieve in the previous half-decade: legitimate “MUST WE SLING THIS POP FILTH AT OUR KIDS” headlines. And all they needed to do was hire some people dressed like supporting characters from Eerie, Indiana to stare whilst throwing themselves at a big fence whilst dressed in the costumes left over from a St. Trinian's hen night. Subversion for dummies. [Dom Passantino]
029. Weezer – “Buddy Holly”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1995)
Who better than the 70s to do the 50s? The 90s, of course. Utilizing the speed dial of David Geffen, Weezer got the permission of the whole Happy Days gang—plus the voice of Al Molinaro (who does a shout-out to his hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin)—to impersonate a band playing on a song about a 1950s music star on show from the 70s that was based in the 50s in the 1990s. Confused? Everyone was when this video came out in 1995. But in retrospect, it fit the band perfectly: a bunch of geeky rock kids in love with an idealized time and sound that never quite existed except in their imagination. Kind of like the video, as a matter of fact.
[Todd Burns]
028. Busta Rhymes – “Gimme Some Mo”
(Dir. Hype Daddy & Busta Remo, 1998)
Showing off has, of late, become a deeply average thing. Here’s some cars. Here’s your mates. Here’s some extra mates your record company has shipped in. Mmm, shiny. No, the way you want to show off is to get dressed up like a policeman because your song contains the line “Arrest you / Lyrically” a grand total of one time. Every jacket that you wear should have shoulder pads that extend about a yard beyond your actual shoulders. You should also film your entire video in fisheye, and take every opportunity to use it to make everything in your video look as bendy as you possibly can, so much so that more or less every other use of fisheye before or since winds up looking, well, a bit crap. Also, end your video two minutes early, and signal this by sniffing the camera, because you are Busta Rhymes, and for two and a half wondrous minutes that godawful thing you did with Mariah Carey never happened.
[William B. Swygart]
027. Michael Jackson – “Thriller”
(Dir. John Landis, 1983)
It seems a general consensus now: “Thriller” is the most successfully ambitious pop music video of the MTV era. Hyperbole incubates in the then $800,000, John Landis-helmed, fourteen-minute-long beast: The choreography’s stream of stop-motion jerks and twists have become the lingua franca of R&B, teenpop, hip-hop, and almost any non-ballad that gets within sniffing distance of the Top 40. That red, shoulder-pads-as-coastal-shelves jumpsuit is clearly Smithsonian-bound. And, if that’s not enough, Vincent Price drops what can only be described as 16 bars of seminal, blueprint horrorcore rap: “The funk of forty thousand years / And grizzly ghouls from every tomb / Are closing in to seal your doom.” For a generation of youngsters scarred shitless by the closing image—an apparently human Jackson whipping around, gazing at the camera and revealing demonically feline eyes—music videos would never be as grand, visceral, or authentically epic.
[Evan McGarvey]
026. Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot – “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”
(Dir. Hype Williams, 1997)
You could probably chalk it up to Missy's laconic drawl and a cough from some endo. Few other explanations could describe the act of wearing a suit that looks equal parts S&M-bondage and Willy Wonka-blueberry to achieve instant pop stardom. Contorting Hype Williams' slicker-than-an-oil-wreck style inside out (with a heavy emphasis on out), Missy began her trip into music video surrealism with "The Rain." Along the way, she takes a trip to the beach with Timbaland
[Nate De Young]
025. Pet Shop Boys – “Flamboyant”
(Dir. Nico Beyer, 2004)
Proving that you don’t really need much more for an amazing video than to find some people who do some really cool stuff and film them, the elaborate Japanese TV-inspired set pieces that make up most of “Flamboyant” are worth a video to themselves. A jaw dropping collision of “how can anyone do that?” and “why on earth would anyone do that?” Every time you think they’ve found the best one, the next is even more outrageous. Chris and Neil in some hilarious self-mocking adverts for “Boxycar” and “Shootsumi” are just an added bonus, as are some dazzling views of Japan that act as a fine match to their musical return to futuristic form.
[Iain Forrester]
024. Madonna – “Like a Prayer”
(Dir. Mary Lambert, 1989)
Maddie's finest hour? Undoubtedly, and the tossers can sod—neither before nor since would she encode religion-as-sex and sex-as-religion to such an unbreakable matrix. The ultimate avowal of her own White Negro mythmaking, this is the kind of artistic conceit that should be dipped in wax and released as a limited-edition line of votive candles. She's never been hotter, to boot—the camera and that ever-slipping brown frock caress her pre-yoga form wonderfully as she indulges in scandals as disparate as self-inflicted stigmata and making it with the dude from The Brother From Another Planet. The devotion inspired by this video is such that I'd deeply love to find every single person offended by it, shake them by their shoulders, and laugh at them uproariously until their faces are coated with spittle.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
023. DJ Shadow – “Six Days”
(Dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 2002)
“Six Days” isn’t great because it’s a Wong Kar-wai-helmed music video. It’s great because, for the last decade and a half or so, Wong has seemed legitimately incapable of producing anything that isn’t. But don’t take my word for it. Watch here, as Wong distills DJ Shadow’s war song into the trippiest love-is-a-battlefield metaphor to ever grace MTV2. It’s a seamless reduction of Wong’s signature tics and tricks to 3 ½ sublime minutes: languorous slow-mo; seductive, deeply rhythmic cutting patterns; oversaturated color and tactile surfaces, plus his first nod toward martial arts since 1994’s Ashes of Time. He even tacks on a Bruce Lee quote for good measure. So much for that kitchen sink.
[Josh Timmermann]
022. The Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1997)
What’s most surprising about “Everlong” is just how much of the video came from Michel Gondry just trying to get the Foo Fighters to stop bitching—from Taylor Hawkins playing the damsel in distress to the bizarre morph effects at the end turning the villains into Pat Smear and that other dude, many of the video’s highlights were the results of the Foo Fighters’ expressed desire not to seem sexist or philanderous. But that’s why if you want a problem turned into a solution, Michel Gondry is your man, and he uses these images (with a few Evil Dead references thrown in for good measure) to craft the persona the Foo Fighters are known by today—which, ironically enough, is that of a playful and extremely easygoing group of fun guys. This is the moment when the Foo Fighters stopped being a Nirvana spin-off and started being A-listers in their own right. I hope their mothers made them send Michel a thank you note.
[Andrew Unterberger]
021. The Pharcyde – “Drop”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1995)
So they're walking backwards but it was recorded forwards so it could be played backwards. No, wait, that bit where they jump means they must be walking backwards played forwards because HOLD PAUSE IT FOR A SECOND is that Ad-Rock I think it is you know. Completely ripped off and stripped of all imagination by Coldplay, Pharcyde caused no end of drunken/stoned 3am hip-hop music TV watching confusion with what has to reign as Spike Jonze's least smug video to date, even incorporating the popular “graffiti on a pane of glass in front of the camera” effect from the opening credits of Clarissa Explains All. One of them even wears a bear suit as a little treat for all the plushies out there. Gotta please all fanbases...
[Dom Passantino]
080. Britney Spears – “…Baby One More Time”
(Dir. Nigel Dick, 1999)
How exactly does one praise Britney Spears, “…Baby One More Time,” and particularly its accompanying video without coming off at least vaguely lecherous? It’s partly nostalgia, to be sure—pre-Justin, pre-Crossroads, pre-K-Fed, pre-“Toxic,” pre-pregnancies, pre-pregnancy photo spreads…didn’t life seem so much simpler?—but it’s also undeniably iconic. Britney’s schoolgirl get-up belongs in the Smithsonian, somewhere between Marilyn’s wind-blown Seven Year Itch dress and Janet’s malfunctioned Super Bowl attire. The video’s PG-13 naughty private school theme gels seamlessly with the song’s puppy love histrionics, and the results are flat-out classic. Which is to say, no matter what stupid shit our Brit does or says, we’ll always have “…Baby One More Time.”
[Josh Timmermann]
079. Three 6 Mafia f/ Young Buck, 8Ball & MJG
(Dir. Bernard Gouley, 2005)
Great songs don’t need great videos to announce their greatness. But great songs can use great videos to introduce great groups to the world. And that’s exactly what “Stay Fly” did. And that’s exactly why Juicy J, DJ Paul, Crunchy Black put everyone’s name in lights in the video to “Stay Fly.” The group has been hustling in Tennessee since forever, but they knew that this was their big shot—and they didn’t disappoint. The girls are hot, the white people are terrified, the guest stars are famous (Young Buck) and regional heroes (8Ball & MJG), the frenetic camera work matches the song (except when the stout 8Ball takes over and everything begins to stand slooow dooown), and Juicy’s glow-in-the-dark goblin T-shirt has become iconic. What else can you ask for?
[Todd Burns]
078. Missy Elliot f/ Ludacris – “Gossip Folks”
(Dir. Dave Meyers, 2001)
There’s a gaggle of multi-ethnic kids, and the video is shot in a school—two strikes already on paper, but there’s nothing wrong with “Gossip Folks” in practice, a video that finds the perfect balance between expository schoolhouse clichés and dance sequences that are showy, but never tiresome. The kids are cute but not obnoxious, and where else is gossip as common as it is at school? When the professor at the Music Video Academy lectures on turn-of-the-millennium pop, and asks the student operating the projector (or future equivalent) to cue up Britney’s epochal “…Baby One More Time,” one can only hope the kid has the guts to throw this out instead, and that Missy is rightly remembered as the one that really moved dance floors and school halls in the early Oughties.
[Erick Bieritz]
077. Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
(Dir. Samuel Bayer, 1991)
I could go on with the blah blahs about how this defined a generation, about how 15 years ago it probably didn’t seem that stupid to have cheerleaders wearing anarchy symbols, and about how “It’s about a deodorant!” and all that, but here’s what’s really striking about this video: For a band that publicly decried ever looking “cool”—they often looked like hobos, and not hipster junkie hobos from the 70’s, just regular old high school dropout hobos—they never looked better than in this video. Kurt, if not sexy, at least looked healthy, Dave Grohl’s shirtless drumming seemed natural, and even Novoselic acted like he belonged. There’s a point where Cobain is unleashing another chorus, and the kids are coming off the bleachers and almost mobbing him, Kurt screaming them back to their seats; it might be the only time in his entire life the Cobain looked “cool,” and it was very likely the only time he ever felt that way, too.
[Andrew Gaerig]
076. New Order – “True Faith”
(Dir. Philipe de Couffle, 1987)
Beautifully random and impeccably synchronized to the music, “True Faith” intercuts performance footage of the band with a weird netherworld where brightly attired clowns jump backwards, slap each other to the beat and sign the words to the song (or possibly just gibberish, but properly timed gibberish), clad in a rotating, round ensemble that resembles one of those inflatable punching clowns. Like all the best non-sequitur videos, all the fighting and jumping and dancing begins to seem fitting almost immediately, until the beginning of the song instantly brings to mind that odd featureless room stocked with jesters. For a song and a band so concerned with the mundaneness of human emotion, it's a masterstroke to marry that tone with the garish acrobatics and puzzling conflict on display in the “True Faith” video; not only is it eye-catching, it stays with you.
[Ian Mathers]
075. Master P f/ Silkk the Shocker, Mystikal, Fiend & Mia X – “Make ‘em Say Uggh”
(Dir. Michael Martin, 1998)
Criminally overlooked subplot of this video: There is a basketball game being played, and some of the players appear to playing some pretty hearty defense. In fact, if there was ever any question about the sexual or societal subtext of the phrase “Make ‘em say ugh!” this video obliterates them, proving that the No Limit’s most indelible slang was basically just a rallying cry for all things shiny and awesome. There’s no gang wars, no racial tension, no sexual abuse; just a hotly-contested basketball game with a Gorilla mascot, some cheerleaders, and a raucous crowd. And a huge golden tank, of course. “Make ‘Em Say Ugh” is the answer to the question: “What if that gym in the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video didn’t suck?”
[Andrew Gaerig]
074. Aphex Twin – “Come to Daddy”
(Dir. Chris Cunningham, 1997)
Who knew that the world’s collective nightmares involved Richard D. James’ face grafted on to hoards of crazed schoolchildren? When this was released, Australia was yet to enter the era of 24-hour music television, so my exposure to “Come to Daddy,” was limited almost entirely to its appearances on Rage, a late-night music program broadcast by the government-owned ABC. There is little more terrifying than waking up at 3 a.m. after falling asleep on the couch, and being confronted by a run-down tenement echoing with the digital shrieks of a fiend emerging from a television set. If Aphex Twin wanted your soul, Chris Cunningham’s video was surely the means of taking it.
[Jonathan Bradley]
073. Bjork – “It’s Oh So Quiet”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1995)
Bjork’s genius gift for finding beauty, terror, and magic in the commonplace means she’s perfect for musicals, something Lars Von Trier would make into a masochistic display for 2000’s Dancer in the Dark. Five years earlier, however, Spike Jonze was the first to perceive Bjork’s song-and-dance potential, giving the singer a drab canvas of auto mechanics, mailboxes, and deliverymen and letting her giddiness over newfound love transform them into perfectly choreographed props that move in tune to her heart’s demands. The song’s message concerns the power of love to alter our psychic landscape, and Jonze nails it perfectly in making the backdrop so purposefully unglamorous and benign. In love, the mind can truly make a heaven of hell, and if Tires Plus ain’t the latter I don’t know what is.
[Josh Love]
072. OutKast – “Hey Ya”
(Dir. Bryan Barber, 2003)
Three years removed from those tasteless feather get-ups and “roses really smell like boo-boo-boo,” are we ready to collectively re-admit that “Hey Ya” is pretty awesome? If not, I understand. We all went a tad apeshit. But if we are ready to resume shaking it like a Polaroid picture, the video is the best place to start “getting” it again. And it’s not like it’s tough to get anyway. If it’s too meta and cute for its own good, it’s also flat-out delirious, Leprechaun-clad frontman Andre swaying those chicken legs like “Sex Machine”-era James Brown or a Greyhound over a fire hydrant. We still like, you know, pop, right?
[Josh Timmermann]
071. Lisa Loeb – “Stay (I Missed You)”
(Dir. Ethan Hawke, 1994)
With some songs, it seems like there’s only one video that could possibly have been made for it. Appropriate for a song that never pauses even for a breath, the video for Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)” features little but an uninterrupted tracking shot of Lisa walking around her bare and desolate apartment. It feels so real and unforced that watching it almost seems intrusive—this actually seems like it could be Lisa just thinking out loud while pacing around her apartment, the same sort of naturalistic charm that made “Stay” such a surprise hit in the first place. Ethan Hawke has failed miserably at more artistic mediums than 99% of us will ever even attempt, but he nailed it with this one. And if you’re not already sold, two words: those glasses.
[Andrew Unterberger]
070. Juvenile – “Back That Azz Up”
(Dir. David Meyers, 1999)
Women from all walks of life: young office professionals, high school girls playing hookie, even safe, auntie-looking women dropping it like it is the hottest of hot. Juve’s “Back That Azz Up” does a lot of transgressive work in its three-minute video—all of Cash Money is decked in the early-vintage set-up of small chains and white tees; besides the guy who’s rapping, the group is nearly indistinguishable from the raucous concert in the video. Juve raps from behind barriers of chain link fence as the crowd goes nuts and presses against the wire-mesh. I remember when this song and video absolutely invaded the white-bread Eastern ‘burbs. I saw what this video did for girls who would go to Smith or Princeton and work for a senator or goody-goody NGO. No matter your color, size, creed or age, if you can’t let the video’s dusty neighborhood party infiltrate your pleasure centers, you’ve got bigger problems than reconciling yourself with the South.
[Evan McGarvey]
069. Daft Punk – “Da Funk”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1996)
Oh, the pathos! Charles, hobbled by the crutch of an inescapable attachment to a “Da Funk” blasting boom box, meets rejection on the streets of New York City, in the form of an exasperated bookseller, a pair of unkind children and an attractive ex-neighbor with whom, due to his sound system, he cannot catch a bus downtown. I would imagine the video has something important to say with its portrayal of the ever put-upon Charles’s optimistic attempts to negotiate his Big City Nights, only to encounter rejection and insurmountable obstacles at every turn, but Daft Punker Thomas Bangalter assures us that it is “just a man-dog walking with a ghetto-blaster in New York.” OK, fine, but the difficulty of the dog-guy’s travails, and the way he greets them with such unassuming friendliness and indefatigable good humor makes him undoubtedly one of music video’s most lovable creations.
[Jonathan Bradley]
068. B.G. – “Bling Bling”
(Dir. Scott Kalvert, 1999)
A real group effort: Cash Money standing on an anonymous bridge, and two quick camera cuts to cars and motorcycles later, everyone is rushing the camera, sticking wrists, pinkies and necks toward the lens, slathering the camera’s eye with carat after carat. It’s a flagship anthem, each young lion trying to find new ways to express just how goddamned rich they are as the camera hovers on the spoils: aimless, blank-eyed women gyrating around Ducatis, Hummers, and (inexplicably) VW Beetles. This video, in so many ways, helped set up the East Egg/West Egg dichotomy between New York/The South. Old vs. new. Restraint vs. exuberance. The moody soliloquies of the standard-bearing metropolis vs. the succinct, patois-inflected catchphrase. For an artifact of the new, moneyed South, it’s only fitting that the video’s most symbolic moment has Cash Money’s best weapon, Mannie Fresh, descending from a “candy-coated helicopter” and carrying a Nuclear Football-looking briefcase that presumably holds, in the eyes of a suddenly Lear-ish NYC, all of the Dirty South’s state secrets.
[Evan McGarvey]
067. We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Going to Use It – “Love Is the Slug”
(Dir. Nick Small, 1986)
I learnt to dance in the indie clubs of Birmingham, and the main thing I learnt was this: don’t dance like nobody’s watching. Dance like everybody’s watching and you are, in fact, really good at dancing. The best way to do this is to make up a dance routine all of your very own for each individual song, including moves pertaining to the lyrics wherever possible. The video for “Love Is the Slug” takes this noble concept and bases an entire video around it, and films it in An Actual Indie Club In Birmingham In The Late 1980’s, resplendent with craply mirrored walls, a drunk guy who either isn’t with anyone or is with some people who have long since dissociated themselves from him, and first-hand evidence of what happens when you take STUDIO LINE hairspray and six-inch heels out of the hands of trained professionals. The high point: probably the bit where Fuzzbox illustrate “I feel emotion, I feel pain” by stumbling backward into a wall and going “Ow.”
[William B. Swygart]
066. R.E.M. – “Imitation of Life”
(Dir. Garth Jennings, 2001)
While it would certainly be well within our rights to forget the last decade or so of R.E.M., it shouldn’t be at the expense of this criminally overlooked, mind-bending 20-second pan-and-scan masterpiece for the band’s last great single. With camera as grappling tool scanning the clip’s living mural of simultaneous disparate images (Peter Buck being “that guy” with his mandolin while man on fire falls in awesome pool), director Garth Jennings manages to perfectly capture all that Stipe evokes: misguided desires, unexpected disappointments, the party you’re not invited to that doesn’t even exist. But even a pale imitation of life can be better than the real thing
[Barry Schwartz]
065. N.W.A. – “Straight Outta Compton”
(Dir. Rupert Wainwright, 1988)
The power of the music video writ large. NWA were straight-up pussy, a ragtag group of geeks who'd lose a straight man-on-man dust up with Crowded House. Ice Cube's gait here in particular gives the impression that his spine is constructed entirely from marshmallow. But they learned from Mussolini: look grander by being shot from beneath. Add to this camera trick people walking around with their shoes on fire, masturbatory gun craft, cops with cartoon moustaches, lingering cartographer friendly map shops, Eazy E getting skin like the Fresh Prince returning to West Philadelphia, and you've just made the CPT Chess Club look a) cool and b) like the kind of guys who could cause a kerfuffle. So iconic that Rockstar managed to create an entire video game from it.
[Dom Passantino]
064. My Chemical Romance – “Helena”
(Dir. Marc Webb, 2005)
MCR lead singer Gerard Way might fancy himself as one of the great rock stars, but here, it doesn’t matter. I can’t get away from his eyes, because I don’t know what he’s looking at, or where he’s looking from. He quivers, he scowls, he never looks away, he shifts through all the gears he can muster but never gets any closer to what it is he’s looking for. At times you can argue that he’s trying too hard, and it’s all just a pose because death and being all-too-serious sells. The thing with “Helena” is that talking about it in those terms just feels fucking wrong. A series of moments, turning points, choreographed and stage-managed to perfection, but that’s art, isn’t it? It’s never for shock or for schlock, but because of the momentum, sheer, raw momentum, incessantly building to the explosion of pressure, as Helena seizes up and falls, stiff as a board, into the coffin. It’s clean, precise, and devastating.
[William B. Swygart]
063. 2Pac f/ Dr. Dre – “California Love”
(Dir. Hype Williams, 1996)
Does anyone doubt that this is what 2095 will be like? A post-apocalyptic California is ruled by tribal overlords—one of whom employs Chris Tucker as his hype-man—that are waging war over the West Coast’s dance floor. You know a video is predicting truth when the most unrealistic part is Dr. Dre repping Sacramento. Director Hype Williams is on some Bruckheimer shit here, aping Mad Max, dancing around in the Thunderdome and racing around the desert on dirt-bikes. Tupac and Dre have rarely looked looser, which is strange, considering they’re dressed like castoffs from the Gladiator set trying to get into a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A strangely stupid, strangely captivating, strangely hilarious re-imagining of Hollywood’s wild wild west.
[Andrew Gaerig]
062. Duran Duran – “Girls on Film”
(Dir. Godley & Crème, 1981)
You gotta hand it to Duran Duran. When every other band has bought a private yacht on which to do their cocaine, they're the kind of guys figuring out how to get a private yacht that’s actually made out of cocaine. Godley & Creme directed this remarkable tribute to arrow-straight male sexuality—it begins with two models in negligees having a pillow fight while straddling a shaving cream-covered pole, and doesn't really let up. Between cuts to the band, who seem to be "performing" to this makeshift theatre of the male Id, we get a man ridden as a horse, ice cubes on nipples, girls in Sumo diapers, some slightly disturbing lifeguard fantasy, and, of course, two hookers mud-wrestling. Like no other band in the 80's, Duran epitomized the queasy edge of rock excess, and "Girls on Film" is all their schoolboy celluloid fantasies realized.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
061. Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean”
(Dir. Steve Barron, 1983)
“Billie Jean” is a dream of Michael Jackson, literally circa 1983 and ostensibly (if not credibly) “gritty.” It’s the seedy side of some vintage Hollywood movie set, harmless insofar as its star is “childlike.” You half-expect Gene Kelly to turn up for a quickie tap solo, yet at the same time, you want to warn Michael that he’s moon-walking toward actual danger—toward infamy and rhinoplasty and Elizabeth Taylor. That’s because this marks the precise point of no return, of the transition from “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” to “stop fuckin’ with me.” You want to warn the poor guy somehow, but you can’t. The dream is over.
[Josh Timmermann]
060. Ludacris – “Stand Up”
(Dir. David Meyers, 2003)
Luda's vinyl weighs a ton, his woman grow booty like Viagra, and we shouldn't even start with the midget around his neck. David Meyers might riff off of filming Ludacris' similes and Michel Gondry's disproportionate body parts, but the melee is all essentially "Stand Up." The video is haphazard in all the right ways, with an inexplicable animated sequence, a pause for Luda's "time and clothes to coordinate," as well as a baby Luda getting his diapers change (Proving that not every musician will get charged for peeing on girls on tape.). Meyers makes sure that no tasteless rock goes unturned, getting even those stuck in wheel-chairs to "Stand Up."
[Nate De Young]
059. Judas Priest – “Breaking the Law”
(Dir. Julien Temple, 1980)
“Breaking the Law” is the type of video that gets called “so bad it’s good,” but let’s not fall into that trap, as guilty pleasures have got no rhythm. Instead this is interesting for showing a band struggling to come to terms with a relatively new medium—this is 1980—and one that might’ve seemed antithetical to heavy metal beyond cock-thrusting live clips. Check out the tension between the fashions in the band; Rob Halford looking good, short haired in a new wave black skinny leg suit, like Marc Almond reincarnated as a provincial hairdresser, and the rest of the group hairy, bearded, and leathered. Observe the dismal prosaicness of the semi-detached houses and amusement arcades that they pass on their way to rob the bank. And try to solve the biggest mystery of them all: why are they stealing their own gold discs?
[Patrick McNally]
058. The Notorious B.I.G. f/ 112 & Ma$e – “The Sky’s the Limit”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1997)
Puffy and Biggie may have been the best indicator of hip-hop's shift from street to nightclub during the early 90's, but the critiques of hip-hop and its Will to Bling miss the same materialism when exhibited by melonheads like Keith Richards. Bad Boy cemented the high fashion end of rap because they flashed with style, and thus were more visible, more camera worthy. Though the words of the chorus are nabbed from my favorite D-Train song, there's a lot less "upliftment" going on here and a lot more representin' from the clouds. It's not much of a song, either, Biggies' limber tongue aside—but by casting children as the various players in the BB Dynasty for the video, Spike Jonze delicately highlights the innocent delight in fame and riches that only the formerly poor can have. Plus it's cuter than a three-week old kitten.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
057. Bjork – “Human Behaviour”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1993)
Though the video for “Once in a Lifetime” was great, David Byrne didn’t score his true televisual presence until he dropped himself into the Big Suit, a distortion of sense and space that made him simultaneously more wide-eyed and more powerful. Björk, whose alien intuition and total self-possession made her a potent relative of Byrne’s, struck the balance immediately. Björk is big, Björk is small, Björk spazzes out next to a stop-motion moth; Björk pouts alone in a small cottage and dances through the forest like the deeply sexy weirdo we all took her to be. She colonizes the moon for the Soviet Union, smiles a deceptively naïf smile, and alas, gets eaten by a huge teddy bear, who disturbingly proceeds to beat the shit out of a hunter by the glow of the moon. It was surreal, but felt tactile and humanistic—now hallmarks of director Michel Gondry’s style and Björk’s well-constructed image.
[Mike Powell]
056. Chris Isaak – “Wicked Game”
(Dir. Herb Ritts, 1991)
Chris Isaak seems like a good sport, considering he owes his career more to Helena Christensen’s ass cleavage than his own talent, though he did parlay this exquisite bit of soft-core tease into his own TV show and a guest spot on Friends, so I imagine he’s not complaining. Still the gold standard for sexy video clippage, mostly because it contains elements of mystery and yearning you can’t quite replicate with Jessica Simpson dry-humping the General Lee. Credit goes to director and famed photographer Herb Ritts, who made a miniature cottage industry of tastefully sensual shorts in the late 80s and early 90s, additionally shooting Janet Jackson’s “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” and Madonna’s “Cherish” with his gorgeously intimate lens. As for “Wicked Game,” it’s currently enjoying an unexpected second life thanks to, of all people, Paris Hilton—her new video “Stars are Blind” is a blatant rip-off of Ritts’ masterstroke.
[Josh Love]
055. Talking Heads – “Wild Wild Life”
(Dir. David Byrne, 1986)
As the band’s third (and last) Top 40 hit from their most unbearable album, “Wild, Wild Life” marries forced whimsy with big beat rawk as adeptly as the film in which it was first heard overstates its disgust for the big country. Rescreening True Stories is a rather grueling experience, as narrator David Byrne’s affectless commentary drips liberal condescension to small town rubes and shills which (he thinks) is mitigated by his big ol’ 10-gallon hat and lime-green suit. “Wild, Wild Life” allows Byrne’s prisoners a day in court, though, as they shimmy, waddle, breakdance, and walk like Egyptians before an audience of enthusiastic peers. The star is John Goodman, who manages to be charming and infectious in silver Velcro-strapped sneakers. With ampler screen time he could have effaced the memory of Byrne mugging behind a look-at-me-now-wearing-a-funny-mustache.
[Alfred Soto]
054. Depeche Mode – “Enjoy the Silence”
(Dir. Anton Corbijn, 1990)
On the surface, a guy walking around various terrains wearing a robe and crown, deckchair in hand, should be ridiculous or comic. In “Enjoy the Silence” it’s neither. Never looking to camera, Dave Gahan brings an absolute pride and dignity to his role, tinged with just a little loneliness, and sells himself as owner of all that he surveys to an extent that lesser mortals would not likely have managed. It helps that even the interspersed band shots and attempts at subliminal album advertising look cool, and has become so iconic an image for Depeche Mode that even the barely animated cartoon version of it shown during their live set works wonders.
[Iain Forrester]
053. Jamiroquai – “Virtual Insanity”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1997)
I love these videos, the ones without a story or meaning. Sometimes you’ve just got to decide, “The video for this song is just going to make me look cool, OK? We’ll throw in some weird cockroaches and bleeding couches to create the illusion of meaning, but mostly the point is to jack my awesome-meter up through the roof.” Mission accomplished, Jay Kay. With a simple parlor trick (the only digital manipulations were the crow and the cockroaches), Jonathan Glazer improved Kay’s already funky-smooth dance moves tenfold while sparking countless adolescent arguments over exactly how it was done. This definitely tops my list of “Man, I’d Love to Try That Sometime!” music videos. Not to mention the bonus points for sporting Adidas Gazelles. Best non-dance dance shoes ever. Seriously. Try them on sometime.
[Jeff Shreve]
052. Hot Chip – “Boy from School”
(Dir. Garth Jennings, 2006)
Essentially Art Attack gone electro-soul, “Boy From School” is way too well-done for it to matter. Not only are Hot Chip and friends going to make a massive, amusingly surreal tableau, featuring jelly and inflatable bananas, they’re going to do it in the most fun and cool looking way possible. Keeping main singer Alexis Taylor lying down the entire time while it’s built around him is a masterstroke, perfectly capturing the resigned, powerless nature of the song’s melancholy. More than anything else, it’s the intrigue of what the hell it is that they’re making that makes “Boy From School” so addictive. Can you tell what it is yet?
[Iain Forrester]
051. Pulp – “This Is Hardcore”
(Dir. Doug Nichol, 1998)
From the opening footage of actors screen-testing, to lightning, pianos, murder scenes, “SCENE MISSING,” men tied to chairs, sudden awareness of the crushing existential Void, resentful nurses, broken glass, red phones, file footage, driving, blood on pillows, dinner parties, “you can't be a spectator, oh no,” a woman dancing with a photograph (the one moment of actual happiness), fistfights, heart attacks, deathbed utterances, swirling Jack O'Lanterns, Jarvis swanning down a line of Busby Berkeley dancers, and the “and then it's over” as the camera pans away from the sets—if anything, the video improves on the noir/porno/PoMo/misanthropic dread of the song. The two have virtually nothing to do with each other, but that atmosphere of cracking up, of men made dangerous by their lack of real human contact, carries over. A lush, overripe, and completely seductive nightmare.
[Ian Mathers]
050. Nine Inch Nails – “The Perfect Drug”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 1997)
Most music videos strive to create an image memorable enough to stick with the viewer after the video finishes. The video for “Perfect Drug,” half-blue, half-green, and entirely gorgeous, created about a dozen. The shrouded feminine harbingers of death on the hillside, a caped Trent Reznor wielding a blade upon a marble platform, the stunning, cold-as-ice garden with its high hedge walls, even the sinister drip of the neon-green filtered absinthe. More than just visually arresting, the video revealed another dark layer of meaning to the song, specifically depicting the anguish of a father who has lost his daughter. The closing images, with Reznor alternately lingering over a stone railing and slowly sinking beneath murky waters, reinforce the suicidal undertones of the repeating line “Take me with you.” Hard to watch only once, and hard to shake once it gets under your skin.
[Jeff Shreve]
049. Nada Surf – “Popular”
(Dir. Jake Nava, 1996)
Welcome to Bayonne High, with its fresh-faced youngsters, intrusive security guards, locker-room nudity, and, of course, Mr. Caws, who takes a class full of cheerleaders and instructs them on the finer points of high school social niceties: “I propose a one month limit on going steady.” His advice turns out to be invaluable; the video’s thrillingly superficial climax features that attentive cheerleader winning the affections of Johnny Football Hero and giving the camera a huge Mentos smirk. Packing more into its sub-four minute runtime than the combined efforts of She’s All That, Can’t Hardly Wait, and Ten Things I Hate About You, and all coated with a thematically-suitable mid ‘90s alt. rock grime that oozes around the hallways and football fields, “Popular” illustrates perfectly that, at times, the most fitting video for a track is one that follows the lyrics as closely as possible, even if that inseparability pretty much guaranteed one hit wonder status for the band. Go Bees!
[Jonathan Bradley]
048. Nirvana – “Heart-Shaped Box”
(Dir. Anton Corbijn, 1993)
The final video of Nirvana’s active career and certainly the most affecting, brazenly mixing the tragic (crucifixes, dead fetuses), comic (Cobain’s pratfall, the mimicking crows), and plainly bizarre (the KKK girl and the fat lady in the In Utero suit). There’s plenty here for art snobs and shrinks alike to chew on, thanks to director Anton Corbijin’s beautifully surrealistic vision, which added heaps of religious imagery to a song already highly charged by sex and gender. Say what you will about Nirvana’s legend being overvalued by death-obsessed boomer hacks, but how many popular rock bands in 2006 would bother to acknowledge high art and the avant-garde even exist?
[Josh Love]
047. Fatboy Slim – “Weapon of Choice”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 2001)
After a brief Wikipedia venture, I was elated to find that Christopher Walken actually helped choreograph his dance moves in this Fatboy Slim video. The whole thing smacks of Gene Kelly, but Walken’s dour expression, coupled with a few choice funk-inspired moves (check out his version of “Thriller” at 2:13) make the video anything but derivative. Highlights include Walken’s “I’m-gonna-git-ya!” advance toward the camera during the line “Walk without rhythm / And you won’t attract the worm,” his foray through the hall of mirrors, and the absurdist and majestic leap-into-flight from the second floor toward the end. Still, the thing that always sticks with me in this video is Walken’s depressing return to business-as-usual. The smile he sports during his romp is so unexpected and refreshing that the moment he sinks back into despondency, I can’t help but respond with empathy. It’s a strangely melancholic ending to such a silly video.
[Jeff Shreve]
046. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
(Dir. Patrick Daughters, 2003)
It’s worth nothing that “Maps” was the third single released off Fever to Tell, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 full-length debut, and that by that point the band had been all but written off as a textbook case of critical praise and music geek hype failing to translate into airplay and sales. So, let’s be clear here: “Maps,” and specifically its accompanying video, saved, if not the group’s career then certainly its blip on the cultural radar screen. The catch with this video is that there is no catch—no gimmicks, no bells and whistles, no superfluous, state-of-the-art bullshit. Just a gal, two guys, and a single, indelible teardrop. Rarely has a clip so beautifully complemented the strengths and sentiments of the song it’s promoting.
[Josh Timmermann]
045. The White Stripes – “Fell in Love with a Girl”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 2002)
Quick: Name the last star-making video appearance not to feature the star in question. Parallel for comparison’s sake: In the late 90s, auto-makers tried a series a commercials that never actually showed you the car in question. Interesting psychological experiment? The car ads were abject failures; Jack and Meg White went onto international superstardom. The difference? Kick-ass punk rock song? Well, that and a collective 20-something generation’s nostalgia for Legos and—the video’s great unsung reference point—8-bit video games. A = Strum. B = Cymbal Crash. Thumb in A-B-A-B-Up-Down-Left-Right to unlock Buddy Holly lightning round. Dig the building blocks of rock ‘n’ roll.
[Andrew Gaerig]
044. Cat Power – “Cross-Bones Style”
(Dir. Brett Vapneck, 1998)
First off, fuck the five black clad dancing girls in this video. With their studiedly awkward movements and quasi-sensible hair-dos they could come out of some mid-period REM video. They’re no fun and surely only there to throw Chan Marshall into even starker relief. Really, this shouldn’t be seen as any more than what it is, a brazen knock off of the video to Madonna’s “Lucky Star”, but Marshall proves that if often she can’t perform live, she sure can on film. One person and simple movements—goofy roller-walking, the clock, finger pointing, fake Chinese eyes, miming you’ve got a gun—that’s all it takes to make a great video. Well, that stuff plus yellow nail varnish.
[Patrick McNally]
043. Sigur Ros – “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa”
(Dir. Celebrator, 2001)
Gorgeously shot Icelandic scenery and children are present and correct, of course. This time though, what magic and hope there is in their world is stamped out as the video proceeds as slowly but inexorably as the song itself towards a conclusion so cruel that it still leaves me gasping for breath to this day.
[Iain Forrester]
042. Radiohead – “Karma Police”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1997)
Director Jonathan Glazer shoves us into the driver’s seat for “Karma Police,” forcing the viewer to be the merciless antagonist who hunts down a desperate, fleeing man, the metaphoric rabbit in literal headlights. Thom Yorke rides along as a willing accomplice, content to lazily mouth the chorus, but notably, when the hunted turns the tables and seeks revenge on his tormentor—that is, the viewer—the ever-wily Yorke manages to escape, leaving us to burn in the flame-engulfed vehicle. The video is gorgeous to look at, too; the car’s luxurious red leather insulates us from the bleak country road outside, and the single shot that lasts for more than half the song drags us into the power struggle and subsequent revenge of the track’s latter half. It’s a typically warped Radiohead device, gleefully encouraging us to revel in the immorality, savoring the chase even as we recoil at the horror of it.
[Jonathan Bradley]
041. Guns n’ Roses – “November Rain”
(Dir. Andy Morahan, 1992)
The middle section in Guns n’ Roses’ epic Use Your Illusions trilogy, “November Rain” manages to keep at least one toe on the ground (that is to say, no one disappears into the wall and there’s not a dolphin in sight), but still manages to pack a wedding ceremony, a funeral, and at least two Slash 360-degree cliff solos in its nine-minute running time. The difference between this and other famously epic videos like “Thriller’ or Puff Daddy’s “Victory” is that “November Rain” features no additional dialogue or mid-song breaks to augment its running time or theatricality—“November Rain” the song simply demanded such a large-scale video, and Axl and director Andy Morahan were more than happy to comply. Hardcore Gn’R fans might still be holding out hope for the release of Chinese Democracy, but I’d settle for a sequel video explaining what happens to the guy who jumps into the wedding cake.
[Andrew Unterberger]
020. Talking Heads – “Once in a Lifetime”
(Dir. David Byrne & Toni Basil, 1980)
When it comes to music video performance, David Byrne is something of a nerdy Robert DeNiro, and “Once in a Lifetime” is his Raging Bull. He huffs, he puffs, and he generally freaks the fuck out, looking about four times as ragged as Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (meaning he probably stayed up the last four nights straight before the shoot). Byrne is Jake LaMotta without an opponent, mentally and physically kicking his own ass as if the stress of the modern world had actually made him lose sense of his motor functions. And then comes the chorus, where Byrne surrenders completely, floating on a sea of blue screen and looking unsure as to whether he’s reached heaven or is merely stuck in limbo. Music video acting may have existed before “Once in a Lifetime,” but it’s Byrne that made it Strasberg worthy.
[Andrew Unterberger]
019. Juvenile – “Get Ya Hustle On”
(Dir. Ben Mor, 2006)
In the BBC’s miniseries Traffik, Fazal, a helpless Opium grower in rural Pakistan says to an British diplomatic visitor, “We just grow opium, it’s Europe that’s got the heroin problem.” Post-Katrina New Orleans and Juvenile paints a similar picture: a cheap, fractured suburban stone angel with a somber on-screen dedication gives way to the totems of gangsta life (SUV, limo, big house) smashed up and strewn between ditches, rivers, and fresh gulches. Horses pull the carcasses of dead, lost cars. Three young boys slowly peruse the wreckage and pull paper masks of Cheney, Nagin, and Bush with the message “HELP IS COMING” scrawled on the inside. Juve rattles off amoral survival instinct before plummeting the song into its most communal moment: a circle of dispossessed D-boys offering a dark, searing vision of post-Katrina reality, pantomiming crack preparation while singing what sounds like a feed-your-family nursery rhyme, “we take the Pyrex and we rock with it, roll with it!”
[Evan McGarvey]
018. Smashing Pumpkins – “1979”
(Dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Farris, 1996)
I was about ten years old when I first saw the video for “1979,” and I fully expected it to be a forecast of what the next ten years of my life were going to be like. Or, at least, I hoped as much. I couldn’t wait to skid my car in circles around parking lots, or to bowl with liquor bottles and soda 2-liters, or to throw all my friends’ patio furniture into their swimming pool (which I actually goaded a couple of my friends into doing once), or to go to the top of a big cliff overlooking my town and just flip them the big one. I doubt anyone ever has one night as ideal as this during their teenage years, but I only hope that when I think back on being eighteen a few decades from now, my memories will congeal into a Greatest Hits package like this. Billy Corgan can even ride in the back seat.
[Andrew Unterberger]
017. R.E.M. – “Losing My Religion”
(Dir. Tarsim, 1991)
Fans cited Caravaggio and Gabriel Garcia Marquez as referents in this beloved video, but, really, its most striking image is Michael Stipe, before canonization as Saint Hip of Baldness, doing the safety dance or something (hint: it involved twitching his elbows). Bill Berry glowers like he’s Charlie Watts and Stipe is Mick Jagger. A pink-mouthed youth, too pretty for rough trade, does a convincing Sebastian, although he looks annoyed rather than agonized by the arrows sticking out of him. As a visual representation of the most teasingly ambiguous hit song ever to hit the top five, it’s garish, a tenth-grader’s idea of surrealism; as a means of selling R.E.M. as four ugly men of mystery to a mass audience ready to welcome them, it was a gesture of consummate shrewdness.
[Alfred Soto]
016. The Chemical Brothers – “Star Guitar’
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 2002)
Director Michel Gondry took one of the oldest music clichés and wrote a symphony. He works with the gimmick of syncing supposedly candid moments of street life and the countryside to the music’s beat, but he makes it all look like a complete innovation. At first, it appears that nothing is going on. Through a moving train’s window, we first see a railroad crossing glide by right on the song’s beat, and then an identical one appears, and another as the rhythm quickens—an industrial European landscape becoming a musical instrument. Daylight suddenly fades into night and back to the sun again when a melody floats from the TV, a pedestrian walks by after each verse is sung, the window view flickers in perfect time to the Brothers’ chopped beats. The entire video plays tricks with the mind and reveals a new sight with every viewing. Well done.
[Cameron MacDonald]
015. Peter Gabriel – “Sledgehammer”
(Dir. Stephen R. Johnson, 1986)
Simply put, a work of absolute, cheeky genius. There’s a sense of childlike playfulness throughout, from the opening shots of blood pumping along to the music (What part of the body is that? Hmm.) to the literal manifestations of the countless sexual metaphors. Makes me laugh every time, especially during the lines “You could have a steam train / If you’d just lay down your tracks,” and “Show me round your fruit cage / Cause I will be your honeybee.” The impressive claymation and pixelation techniques gel perfectly with the playful atmosphere of the song while also expanding the boundaries of what a music video could be. I sometimes wonder if this video would air on MTV if it premiered nowadays, what with moral conservatism running rampant. Oh Peter Gabriel, we thought you were such a nice boy!
[Jeff Shreve]
014. Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1994)
Spike Jonze’s talent for restaging the pop-culture crap of his childhood found its best expression in this video, in which the Beastie Boys make like Starsky and Hutch. Their Method seriousness would give Owen Wilson pause. Their hairpieces would be the envy of Robert Blake. Jonze’s frantic editing—you didn’t find that on “Beretta”—mistakenly creates the impression that “Sabotage” has a monster groove. In actuality, it’s closer to the Average White Band than Bad Brains, and I doubt the Beasties would get offended by that.
[Alfred Soto]
013. Bob Dylan – “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
(Dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)
The hands down winner on this list for “artist who had the least fun making their video” (could Dylan look more bored?), and also probably a shoo-in in our “Least Precedented,” “Cheapest to Shoot,” and “Most Parodied” categories. This remains one of the simplest, strangest, and most indelible moments of Dylan’s career. He’s standing stage right, and his cue cards are as mixed and varied as his live renditions of the song. Allen Ginsberg seems to be having a blast, following his poet boy-toy around London. But this, as opposed to most of Dylan’s acting in the mid-60’s, was myth-making of the most passive order. Dylan was flippant, annoyed, even aggressive, and the scene seems glibly unscripted, even if you know that it was filmed three different times.
[Andrew Gaerig]
012. Pulp – “Bad Cover Version”
(Dir. Jarvis Cocker & Martin Wallace, 2002)
From Macca to Missy to Meatloaf, from Cher to Cobain to Cocker (!), celebrity impersonators get their comeuppance for one of Pulp's final singles. The song, of course, is about the lover that you jump to that's ever so slightly reminiscent of the one you've just lost. The video is one long sight gag riffing on celeb charity songs and the awkward and/or endearing quirks those crazy-famous mofos have, but the subtext is Pulp's own bizarre brush with the public eye—first we have a Cocker imitator and then Jarvis with a wig playing Brian May in the closing moments. What does it all mean? How the Hell should I know—how in the world did Pulp ever get big to begin with?
[Mallory O’Donnell]
011. Fiona Apple – “Criminal”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 1997)
Questions. It’s all you have after seeing the Mark Romanek directed video for Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” Just who is the criminal here? Why is everyone half naked? Why does she have red eyes—are we taking pictures too? Why am I completely repulsed and strangely attracted to this person that hides in a closet and seems to have an eating disorder? What are those people doing swimming in that dolphin tank? Why are those stuffed animals staring at me? Whose foot is she trying to eat? Why is she in my parent’s rec room? What’s up with that TV that appears out of the floor? Who put oranges in the bathtub? What’s up with the car’s engine? Why does she squeeze that bottle with the soap? Oh. Ohhh.
[Todd Burns]
010. Dr. Dre f/ Snoop Dogg – “Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang”
(Dir. Andre Young, 1993)
In late 1992, Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he shall forever be known by me) unleashed the “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” video, and before you could say “one, two, three an’ to the four,” rap was forever changed. “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” invited kids previously terrified by Gangsta Rap to the after-party for the first time, where they could just chill till the next episode. It wasn’t good time-y, but good times were certainly had—who wouldn’t want to chill with Dre and Snoop for a barbeque, go cruising down Crenshaw in a drop-top and spray the snotty girl at the party with some shook up St. Ides? But Dre saves the best shot for last, as an obviously inebriated Snoop Dogg gets dropped off and stumbles back to his house, the newly risen sun shining bright into the camera, and you know it’s just a matter of hours before they get up and do it all over again.
[Andrew Unterberger]
009. Daft Punk – “Around the World”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1997)
In a genre strewn with videos that sought to recreate Microsoft Screen Savers, Daft Punk’s decision to hire prominent music video directors for the singles of their seminal Homework album was sort of a revolution in and of itself. Following up Spike Jonze’s dog-with-a-boombox treatment of “Da Funk,” the two French robots tapped Michel Gondry. His idea? A cornucopia of Halloween costumes, each signifying one of the five elements of the song: drum machine (mummies), vocoder (robots), guitar (skeletons), bass (those weird tall guys with small heads), and synth (what Gondry termed “disco girls”), all dancing in front of the blinking disco lights set up by Gondry’s brother—a long-time collaborator. Gondry calls it one of his favorite videos that he has done. It’s also one of dance music’s most epochal.
[Todd Burns]
008. Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 2004)
There’s so much wound into such a brief space here that it practically has to be cut down frame by frame to be analyzed. The most startling and memorable—the costumed dancer in the tunnel, the man holding the urn among the coffins—are further underscored by the jarring contrast between the jumpy, canted action shots and the smooth close-ups on people’s faces. The rest of the world might take umbrage at the New-York-is-all universality of human experience on display, but the only reason that Spike Lee-style NY-centricity fits at all is because it unquestionably suits Jay-Z. If Public Enemy was the ideal soundtrack for the colorful but angry “Do the Right Thing,” then Black Album-era Jay-Z is the music that could match The 25th Hour—dark, fuming, fearless, and held back only by its inability to single out a clear enemy from a crowd of people whose problems all seem too numerous to count.
[Erick Bieritz]
007. Bjork – “All Is Full of Love”
(Dir. Chris Cunningham, 1999)
Its sound, its process, its arrangements, everything about Homogenic suggests its music should be cold and detached, emotionally devoid. And yet … and yet, as we’ve all surely come to experience, it is without question one of the most affecting albums you or I may ever hear. So for all that is made of the truly incredible and fruitful collaborative relationship between Bjork and Michel Gondry, it is Chris Cunningham, with his clip for “All Is Full of Love,” who visually perfectly captures Homogenic’s deceptive essence. With robots borne straight from Asimov’s own waking dreams, Cunningham, using little more than shadows and shades of whites and blacks and silvers, crafts an authentic and pure sensuality where none should conceivably exist. What results is one of the most visually stunning and deeply affecting music videos you or I may ever see.
[Barry Schwartz]
006. The Replacements – “Bastards of Young”
(Dir. Unknown, 1985)
To a certain mindset, this is the Best Video Of All Time: One simple shot of an speaker, slowly pulling out to show the rest of the stereo and a bit of a rundown living room. Eventually someone comes in, sits down and smokes a cigarette, but the camera stays where it was—we barely see the guy. The sheer perversity of the video's lethargy in the face of the power of the music, its refusal to engage in the fledgling tropes of the medium, is still compelling today. Although it was created out of a disdain for MTV that seems woefully old fashioned now, it was also one of the first clips to show us that you didn't have to stick to the band playing, or even to anything involving the song, to make for riveting viewing.
[Ian Mathers]
005. Radiohead – “Just”
(Dir. Jamie Thraves, 1995)
To this day, some 11 years after it first appeared, you can go to any Radiohead message board, chat room or forum in the known universe, and somewhere, likely on the first page, will be that one question that has vexed so many—“What does the guy say at the end of the ‘Just’ video?” It is our generation’s version of “I buried Paul,” but for all director Jamie Thraves or anyone in the band has ever revealed, he may as well be saying “cranberry sauce” too. Whenever he’s been asked what few words compel the video’s hero to disconnect from the surrounding world and plop himself down on the pavement, Thom Yorke insists he’ll never tell. Most likely Yorke doesn’t know the phrase himself, as the ensuing decade has seen Radiohead striving with their music to solve just that kind of riddle themselves.
[Josh Love]
004. A-Ha – “Take on Me”
(Dir. Steve Barron, 1985)
Iconic. It's really the only sure way to describe the video for "Take on Me," one of the earliest examples of how an MTV clip propelled a song from being nothing to enumerating everything. It's also the first time I ever saw a video that depicted an actual story, or at least that curtailed montage techniques together to form some kind of narrative, albeit one of a fantastically Swedish bent. From the eyebrows-appealingly-raised initiation to the Pinocchio hammering-on-the-door-of-life finale, it also marks the debut of a love affair brought from contemplation to consummation in three minutes and 45 seconds time. The life-into-animation-into-life analogy and windswept 80's pencil drawings may have aged, but the neo-classical sentiments enshrined in "Take on Me" remain as a virtual bible of the video age.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
003. Joy Divison – “Atmosphere”
(Dir. Anton Corbijn, 1988)
It’s a funeral of mourning and slapstick. Children or midgets dressed in Druid robes conduct the ceremony on a beach, and waddle around carrying a church steeple and iconic photographs of St. Ian Curtis. The first impression is that director Anton Corbjin made a tasteless tribute to Joy Division’s late singer and drifter of Britain’s post-industrial wasteland. Yet, the band’s brooding, hymnal melodies and tribal, danse macabre rhythms still takes hold of the viewer, and the visuals soon make sense. Corbjin lets the music flow with the gritty, decayed black and white cinematography, and he only displays the band and Curtis in still photographs, as if Joy Division is just a fading memory. Corbijn beautifully captures the moment when you lose a loved one, and you walk outside to see everything around you in stinging detail. Unforgettable.
[Cameron MacDonald]
002. Johnny Cash – “Hurt”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 2003)
“You stay the hell away from me, you hear?” Even before American Recordings proved it beyond all doubt, JC' was a man with two careers in parallel: one bringing the poignancy, the other novelty tunes like “One Piece at a Time,” and that one where he does an impression of a guy being hung. So how better to close his career than by dovetailing the two: a novelty cover version paired with a video featuring poignancy laid on so thick as to crush your heart through sheer persistence. Cash as Jesus, Cash as the pouting rebel, Cash the American, Cash as America personified, Cash the husband, Cash the man in black, Cash the guy who sold records in their droves, Cash the lonely, scared, dying old man. It's hard to imagine there could have been a better way to close the piano lid on his career.
[Dom Passantino]
001. U.N.K.L.E. f/ Thom Yorke – “Rabbit in Your Headlights”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1998)
The first time I saw “Rabbit in Your Headlights” was during the full light of day, with friends, only paying half attention—I believe we laughed as the decrepit, muttering vagrant walking through an underpass was creamed by passing cars only to stumble to his feet again. The second time I saw the video it was late and I was alone; as it started I settled in for some prime comedy. But this time, actually watching the man's progress, it wasn't funny. It was sad and powerful and strangely damning; like Philip K. Dick's invented religion of Mercerism, it's hard to escape the impression that the muttering man is suffering for our catharsis. And then there's the end of the video, the part no-one forgets. As with the rest of “Rabbit in Your Headlights” it's utterly cryptic and undeniably powerful, stretching towards transcendence in a beautifully shot shower of broken glass and metal like some kind of weird apotheosis. It's almost impossible to say what it means, but it's equally hard to find someone who can watch it, really watch it, and remain unmoved.
[Ian Mathers]
040. Smashing Pumpkins – “Tonight Tonight”
(Dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Farris, 1996)
Sure, it’s really just “A Trip to the Moon,” but seeing this for the first time as a 12 year old not briefed in film history, my immediate reaction was a more visceral “this is freakin’ awesome!” The umbrella-wielding couple’s astronomical exploits kicked off a love of Smashing Pumpkins that would carry on all through my teen years. Although jacked from a decades-old silent film, the aesthetics turned out to be the perfect encapsulation of the Smashing Pumpkins’ sense of grandeur; heartfelt, fantastical, overly-ambitious yet just a bit clunky in all the right places, and, of course, Billy Corgan, sky high, in the heavens with his band playing like angels behind him.
[Jonathan Bradley]
039. Aphex Twin – “Windowlicker”
(Dir. Chris Cunningham, 1999)
During the 90’s, Richard James spent an awful amount of time, energy, and money to show the world how ugly he looks. His Cheshire grin, conquistador beard, gargoyle nose, and leery, squinted eyes were typically exaggerated and demonized with the magic of Photoshop. But an anti-image can still sell the goods and “Windowlicker” is our man’s pinnacle. Director Chris Cunningham subverts the bling-bling, hip-hop video by grafting Master James’s mug onto the faces of bikini-clad ladies conquered by an ice cream-suited James the Playboy. Is he a narcissist, a masochist, or a feminist who wants to prove that men are only interested in “objectifying” bodies, not faces? You make the call. MTV rarely played this video in ’99 for the sake of good taste and moral obligation, but it remains a masterwork of digital art, lysergic-damaged sexual fantasy, and Freudian phenomena.
[Cameron MacDonald]
038. My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)”
(Dir. Marc Webb, 2004)
I admit, the first time I saw this clip, I hoped against hope they really were making a movie. “Helena” may have been the better song, but this is by far the superior video, with hilarious moments (tackling the mascot, “you have something in your eye,” standing on the diving board in a uniform, jumping out of a locker) scattered throughout and beautifully manipulative title cards that, like the best movie trailers, turns what could have been pedestrian footage into something stirring—if you can get through this without feeling a vicarious surge of triumph, you probably occupied a very different niche in high school than the band. Or their fans. Or me.
[Ian Mathers]
037. Fatlip – “What’s Up Fatlip?”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 2000)
The obvious thing to say about this video is that it’s a refreshing change to watch a rapper goofing off and not bigging themselves up in a video. But that’s idiotic, the easy way out, as it’s easier to imagine a hip-hop artist acting like Fatlip does here than any of the other types of musician making videos. And this is all still braggadocio anyway; Fatlip’s just trying to take that particular dare one step further. No matter how dorky he tries to make himself look—bike jacked by kids, punched in the nuts by an eight year old whilst dressed as a clown—he still has total command of the camera. Even in the most uncomfortable scene, the one you don’t notice first time through, where, whilst sitting next to his mother in her pristine house, he raps about chopping up cocaine, it’s all smiles, if queasy ones.
[Patrick McNally]
036. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”
(Dir. Sophie Muller, 2004)
After the monochromatic, bare, and ultimately charmless original music video, director Sophie Mueller took that as the starting point of how not to shoot "Mr. Brightside." Enter huge sets, huge costumes, and a swarm of chicks baring their asses for a bunch of aristocrats. Along the way, Brandon Flowers resurrects the idea of the badass pop-crooner and throws the whiny kid of the earlier video to the wayside. Although "Mr. Brightside"'s love-triangle with the lead singer is a staple for music videos, it's the excess and the sprinkles of camp that makes this video taste so sweet—Flowers hamming it up for the camera and romping through checkers boards while his porcelain-doll muse interprets the song through an acrobatic dance.
[Nate De Young]
035. Radiohead – “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1995)
The video for “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” was shot using different film frequencies, allowing various actions to unfold at different rates within the same frame. The emotional effects of this practice range from silly (a regular-speed Yorke easily dodges paint thrown at him in slow motion) to unsettling (the video opens with Yorke falling backwards off a trailer, while lightning strikes unfold in real-time in the distance). Visually, however, the entire sequence of scenes is nothing short of stunning. The use of light and dissolving transitions, especially on Yorke’s face, lends a sense of shifting madness to the proceedings. The ending, with Thom Yorke springing into the air and seemingly hanging there, is surprisingly warm for such a dark and powerful song. Try not to watch this video too many times; it begins to feel a little more disturbing each time.
[Jeff Shreve]
034. Snoop Dogg f/ Pharrell – “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
(Dir. Paul Hunter, 2004)
There is no shortage of music videos filmed in black and white because the creators thought it was an easy way to seem cool or serious. There is a severe shortage of music videos filmed in black and white because the creators understood how it could underscore and enrich the minimalism in the music. From Busta Rhymes to Lil’ Jon, rap videos have often assaulted the eyes with 90 frames-per-minute of sugar-fried madness, a kitchen sink style that certainly has its charm. But it can look a little childish and silly compared to “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” a series of images so serene and smooth that it feels like drinking champagne while sitting on a velvet piano bench around a frozen swimming pool on the deck of a penthouse overlooking the city at midnight during winter.
[Erick Bieritz]
033. Coil – “Tainted Love”
(Dir. Peter Christopherson, 1985)
Soft Cell’s version of “Tainted Love” knocked about a quarter off the speed of the Gloria Jones original and Coil take it down at least another quarter on their honey thick crawl through. The video is a narrative piece, measured and as simple as the logic of disease. Watch as a young man, already too weak to walk, is wheeled into a spartan room in an AIDS hospice to die. The angel of death, played by Marc Almond, eats a grape and, chillingly, dismissively smirks as the patient’s ECG readout flatlines. Words are half swallowed, wanting to remain unsung. From that point there is only the morgue and the grave. The only pop video that has made me cry.
[Patrick McNally]
032. Blur – “Coffee & TV”
(Dir. Hammer & Tongs, 1999)
The fact that the video is now more famous than the song means that the moment when a story about a missing Graham Coxon (oh, the irony) turns into one also about an anthropomorphic dancing milk carton no longer has the same unexpected delight. Its adventures are still enormously funny and way beyond cute though, with a pleasing streak of cruelty to boot: the fate of his female counterpart is surely the most painfully amusing highlight of the whole thing. It also allows for the payoff happy ending, which even makes use of the song’s previously pointless coda, just one example of the perfect fit that makes “Coffee and TV” always seems sweeter and better when accompanied with its visuals.
[Iain Forrester]
031. Human League – “Don’t You Want Me?”
(Dir. Steve Barron, 1981)
“Don’t You Want Me” was an archetypal New Pop move, simultaneously strong narrative pop and a fictionalising of how the Human League got the girls in to sing and thus became popular. The video has a similar patterning as we watch a detective film being made, the behind the scenes romantic tensions of the leads, and the obsessive editing that will lead to a finished product. Nothing is spelt out, the emotion happens in hidden stares and unmet glances. Shots are repeated and rewound and replayed; it’s easier for the characters to watch each other on a screen than to face each other in real life. The viewer is the only person to be looked in the eye. It ends, of course, with the camera dollying away from the set and filming itself in the bright lights of a dressing room mirror. This is Godard’s Le Mépris for Saturday morning TV kids.
[Patrick McNally]
030. t.A.t.U. – “All the Things She Said”
(Dir. Ivan Shapalovov, 2002)
For a few minutes at the start of this decade, music videos were running lame. There was nothing on music television that you could have used as the basis for a mediocre ten minute long observational comedy routine. There was Missy hocking up some long distances loogies, and that's it. But then, hellfire and brimstone, taTu arrived. A career built out of one video, getting what Eminem, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, etc. had all tried and desperately failed to achieve in the previous half-decade: legitimate “MUST WE SLING THIS POP FILTH AT OUR KIDS” headlines. And all they needed to do was hire some people dressed like supporting characters from Eerie, Indiana to stare whilst throwing themselves at a big fence whilst dressed in the costumes left over from a St. Trinian's hen night. Subversion for dummies. [Dom Passantino]
029. Weezer – “Buddy Holly”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1995)
Who better than the 70s to do the 50s? The 90s, of course. Utilizing the speed dial of David Geffen, Weezer got the permission of the whole Happy Days gang—plus the voice of Al Molinaro (who does a shout-out to his hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin)—to impersonate a band playing on a song about a 1950s music star on show from the 70s that was based in the 50s in the 1990s. Confused? Everyone was when this video came out in 1995. But in retrospect, it fit the band perfectly: a bunch of geeky rock kids in love with an idealized time and sound that never quite existed except in their imagination. Kind of like the video, as a matter of fact.
[Todd Burns]
028. Busta Rhymes – “Gimme Some Mo”
(Dir. Hype Daddy & Busta Remo, 1998)
Showing off has, of late, become a deeply average thing. Here’s some cars. Here’s your mates. Here’s some extra mates your record company has shipped in. Mmm, shiny. No, the way you want to show off is to get dressed up like a policeman because your song contains the line “Arrest you / Lyrically” a grand total of one time. Every jacket that you wear should have shoulder pads that extend about a yard beyond your actual shoulders. You should also film your entire video in fisheye, and take every opportunity to use it to make everything in your video look as bendy as you possibly can, so much so that more or less every other use of fisheye before or since winds up looking, well, a bit crap. Also, end your video two minutes early, and signal this by sniffing the camera, because you are Busta Rhymes, and for two and a half wondrous minutes that godawful thing you did with Mariah Carey never happened.
[William B. Swygart]
027. Michael Jackson – “Thriller”
(Dir. John Landis, 1983)
It seems a general consensus now: “Thriller” is the most successfully ambitious pop music video of the MTV era. Hyperbole incubates in the then $800,000, John Landis-helmed, fourteen-minute-long beast: The choreography’s stream of stop-motion jerks and twists have become the lingua franca of R&B, teenpop, hip-hop, and almost any non-ballad that gets within sniffing distance of the Top 40. That red, shoulder-pads-as-coastal-shelves jumpsuit is clearly Smithsonian-bound. And, if that’s not enough, Vincent Price drops what can only be described as 16 bars of seminal, blueprint horrorcore rap: “The funk of forty thousand years / And grizzly ghouls from every tomb / Are closing in to seal your doom.” For a generation of youngsters scarred shitless by the closing image—an apparently human Jackson whipping around, gazing at the camera and revealing demonically feline eyes—music videos would never be as grand, visceral, or authentically epic.
[Evan McGarvey]
026. Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot – “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”
(Dir. Hype Williams, 1997)
You could probably chalk it up to Missy's laconic drawl and a cough from some endo. Few other explanations could describe the act of wearing a suit that looks equal parts S&M-bondage and Willy Wonka-blueberry to achieve instant pop stardom. Contorting Hype Williams' slicker-than-an-oil-wreck style inside out (with a heavy emphasis on out), Missy began her trip into music video surrealism with "The Rain." Along the way, she takes a trip to the beach with Timbaland
[Nate De Young]
025. Pet Shop Boys – “Flamboyant”
(Dir. Nico Beyer, 2004)
Proving that you don’t really need much more for an amazing video than to find some people who do some really cool stuff and film them, the elaborate Japanese TV-inspired set pieces that make up most of “Flamboyant” are worth a video to themselves. A jaw dropping collision of “how can anyone do that?” and “why on earth would anyone do that?” Every time you think they’ve found the best one, the next is even more outrageous. Chris and Neil in some hilarious self-mocking adverts for “Boxycar” and “Shootsumi” are just an added bonus, as are some dazzling views of Japan that act as a fine match to their musical return to futuristic form.
[Iain Forrester]
024. Madonna – “Like a Prayer”
(Dir. Mary Lambert, 1989)
Maddie's finest hour? Undoubtedly, and the tossers can sod—neither before nor since would she encode religion-as-sex and sex-as-religion to such an unbreakable matrix. The ultimate avowal of her own White Negro mythmaking, this is the kind of artistic conceit that should be dipped in wax and released as a limited-edition line of votive candles. She's never been hotter, to boot—the camera and that ever-slipping brown frock caress her pre-yoga form wonderfully as she indulges in scandals as disparate as self-inflicted stigmata and making it with the dude from The Brother From Another Planet. The devotion inspired by this video is such that I'd deeply love to find every single person offended by it, shake them by their shoulders, and laugh at them uproariously until their faces are coated with spittle.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
023. DJ Shadow – “Six Days”
(Dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 2002)
“Six Days” isn’t great because it’s a Wong Kar-wai-helmed music video. It’s great because, for the last decade and a half or so, Wong has seemed legitimately incapable of producing anything that isn’t. But don’t take my word for it. Watch here, as Wong distills DJ Shadow’s war song into the trippiest love-is-a-battlefield metaphor to ever grace MTV2. It’s a seamless reduction of Wong’s signature tics and tricks to 3 ½ sublime minutes: languorous slow-mo; seductive, deeply rhythmic cutting patterns; oversaturated color and tactile surfaces, plus his first nod toward martial arts since 1994’s Ashes of Time. He even tacks on a Bruce Lee quote for good measure. So much for that kitchen sink.
[Josh Timmermann]
022. The Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1997)
What’s most surprising about “Everlong” is just how much of the video came from Michel Gondry just trying to get the Foo Fighters to stop bitching—from Taylor Hawkins playing the damsel in distress to the bizarre morph effects at the end turning the villains into Pat Smear and that other dude, many of the video’s highlights were the results of the Foo Fighters’ expressed desire not to seem sexist or philanderous. But that’s why if you want a problem turned into a solution, Michel Gondry is your man, and he uses these images (with a few Evil Dead references thrown in for good measure) to craft the persona the Foo Fighters are known by today—which, ironically enough, is that of a playful and extremely easygoing group of fun guys. This is the moment when the Foo Fighters stopped being a Nirvana spin-off and started being A-listers in their own right. I hope their mothers made them send Michel a thank you note.
[Andrew Unterberger]
021. The Pharcyde – “Drop”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1995)
So they're walking backwards but it was recorded forwards so it could be played backwards. No, wait, that bit where they jump means they must be walking backwards played forwards because HOLD PAUSE IT FOR A SECOND is that Ad-Rock I think it is you know. Completely ripped off and stripped of all imagination by Coldplay, Pharcyde caused no end of drunken/stoned 3am hip-hop music TV watching confusion with what has to reign as Spike Jonze's least smug video to date, even incorporating the popular “graffiti on a pane of glass in front of the camera” effect from the opening credits of Clarissa Explains All. One of them even wears a bear suit as a little treat for all the plushies out there. Gotta please all fanbases...
[Dom Passantino]
080. Britney Spears – “…Baby One More Time”
(Dir. Nigel Dick, 1999)
How exactly does one praise Britney Spears, “…Baby One More Time,” and particularly its accompanying video without coming off at least vaguely lecherous? It’s partly nostalgia, to be sure—pre-Justin, pre-Crossroads, pre-K-Fed, pre-“Toxic,” pre-pregnancies, pre-pregnancy photo spreads…didn’t life seem so much simpler?—but it’s also undeniably iconic. Britney’s schoolgirl get-up belongs in the Smithsonian, somewhere between Marilyn’s wind-blown Seven Year Itch dress and Janet’s malfunctioned Super Bowl attire. The video’s PG-13 naughty private school theme gels seamlessly with the song’s puppy love histrionics, and the results are flat-out classic. Which is to say, no matter what stupid shit our Brit does or says, we’ll always have “…Baby One More Time.”
[Josh Timmermann]
079. Three 6 Mafia f/ Young Buck, 8Ball & MJG
(Dir. Bernard Gouley, 2005)
Great songs don’t need great videos to announce their greatness. But great songs can use great videos to introduce great groups to the world. And that’s exactly what “Stay Fly” did. And that’s exactly why Juicy J, DJ Paul, Crunchy Black put everyone’s name in lights in the video to “Stay Fly.” The group has been hustling in Tennessee since forever, but they knew that this was their big shot—and they didn’t disappoint. The girls are hot, the white people are terrified, the guest stars are famous (Young Buck) and regional heroes (8Ball & MJG), the frenetic camera work matches the song (except when the stout 8Ball takes over and everything begins to stand slooow dooown), and Juicy’s glow-in-the-dark goblin T-shirt has become iconic. What else can you ask for?
[Todd Burns]
078. Missy Elliot f/ Ludacris – “Gossip Folks”
(Dir. Dave Meyers, 2001)
There’s a gaggle of multi-ethnic kids, and the video is shot in a school—two strikes already on paper, but there’s nothing wrong with “Gossip Folks” in practice, a video that finds the perfect balance between expository schoolhouse clichés and dance sequences that are showy, but never tiresome. The kids are cute but not obnoxious, and where else is gossip as common as it is at school? When the professor at the Music Video Academy lectures on turn-of-the-millennium pop, and asks the student operating the projector (or future equivalent) to cue up Britney’s epochal “…Baby One More Time,” one can only hope the kid has the guts to throw this out instead, and that Missy is rightly remembered as the one that really moved dance floors and school halls in the early Oughties.
[Erick Bieritz]
077. Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
(Dir. Samuel Bayer, 1991)
I could go on with the blah blahs about how this defined a generation, about how 15 years ago it probably didn’t seem that stupid to have cheerleaders wearing anarchy symbols, and about how “It’s about a deodorant!” and all that, but here’s what’s really striking about this video: For a band that publicly decried ever looking “cool”—they often looked like hobos, and not hipster junkie hobos from the 70’s, just regular old high school dropout hobos—they never looked better than in this video. Kurt, if not sexy, at least looked healthy, Dave Grohl’s shirtless drumming seemed natural, and even Novoselic acted like he belonged. There’s a point where Cobain is unleashing another chorus, and the kids are coming off the bleachers and almost mobbing him, Kurt screaming them back to their seats; it might be the only time in his entire life the Cobain looked “cool,” and it was very likely the only time he ever felt that way, too.
[Andrew Gaerig]
076. New Order – “True Faith”
(Dir. Philipe de Couffle, 1987)
Beautifully random and impeccably synchronized to the music, “True Faith” intercuts performance footage of the band with a weird netherworld where brightly attired clowns jump backwards, slap each other to the beat and sign the words to the song (or possibly just gibberish, but properly timed gibberish), clad in a rotating, round ensemble that resembles one of those inflatable punching clowns. Like all the best non-sequitur videos, all the fighting and jumping and dancing begins to seem fitting almost immediately, until the beginning of the song instantly brings to mind that odd featureless room stocked with jesters. For a song and a band so concerned with the mundaneness of human emotion, it's a masterstroke to marry that tone with the garish acrobatics and puzzling conflict on display in the “True Faith” video; not only is it eye-catching, it stays with you.
[Ian Mathers]
075. Master P f/ Silkk the Shocker, Mystikal, Fiend & Mia X – “Make ‘em Say Uggh”
(Dir. Michael Martin, 1998)
Criminally overlooked subplot of this video: There is a basketball game being played, and some of the players appear to playing some pretty hearty defense. In fact, if there was ever any question about the sexual or societal subtext of the phrase “Make ‘em say ugh!” this video obliterates them, proving that the No Limit’s most indelible slang was basically just a rallying cry for all things shiny and awesome. There’s no gang wars, no racial tension, no sexual abuse; just a hotly-contested basketball game with a Gorilla mascot, some cheerleaders, and a raucous crowd. And a huge golden tank, of course. “Make ‘Em Say Ugh” is the answer to the question: “What if that gym in the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video didn’t suck?”
[Andrew Gaerig]
074. Aphex Twin – “Come to Daddy”
(Dir. Chris Cunningham, 1997)
Who knew that the world’s collective nightmares involved Richard D. James’ face grafted on to hoards of crazed schoolchildren? When this was released, Australia was yet to enter the era of 24-hour music television, so my exposure to “Come to Daddy,” was limited almost entirely to its appearances on Rage, a late-night music program broadcast by the government-owned ABC. There is little more terrifying than waking up at 3 a.m. after falling asleep on the couch, and being confronted by a run-down tenement echoing with the digital shrieks of a fiend emerging from a television set. If Aphex Twin wanted your soul, Chris Cunningham’s video was surely the means of taking it.
[Jonathan Bradley]
073. Bjork – “It’s Oh So Quiet”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1995)
Bjork’s genius gift for finding beauty, terror, and magic in the commonplace means she’s perfect for musicals, something Lars Von Trier would make into a masochistic display for 2000’s Dancer in the Dark. Five years earlier, however, Spike Jonze was the first to perceive Bjork’s song-and-dance potential, giving the singer a drab canvas of auto mechanics, mailboxes, and deliverymen and letting her giddiness over newfound love transform them into perfectly choreographed props that move in tune to her heart’s demands. The song’s message concerns the power of love to alter our psychic landscape, and Jonze nails it perfectly in making the backdrop so purposefully unglamorous and benign. In love, the mind can truly make a heaven of hell, and if Tires Plus ain’t the latter I don’t know what is.
[Josh Love]
072. OutKast – “Hey Ya”
(Dir. Bryan Barber, 2003)
Three years removed from those tasteless feather get-ups and “roses really smell like boo-boo-boo,” are we ready to collectively re-admit that “Hey Ya” is pretty awesome? If not, I understand. We all went a tad apeshit. But if we are ready to resume shaking it like a Polaroid picture, the video is the best place to start “getting” it again. And it’s not like it’s tough to get anyway. If it’s too meta and cute for its own good, it’s also flat-out delirious, Leprechaun-clad frontman Andre swaying those chicken legs like “Sex Machine”-era James Brown or a Greyhound over a fire hydrant. We still like, you know, pop, right?
[Josh Timmermann]
071. Lisa Loeb – “Stay (I Missed You)”
(Dir. Ethan Hawke, 1994)
With some songs, it seems like there’s only one video that could possibly have been made for it. Appropriate for a song that never pauses even for a breath, the video for Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)” features little but an uninterrupted tracking shot of Lisa walking around her bare and desolate apartment. It feels so real and unforced that watching it almost seems intrusive—this actually seems like it could be Lisa just thinking out loud while pacing around her apartment, the same sort of naturalistic charm that made “Stay” such a surprise hit in the first place. Ethan Hawke has failed miserably at more artistic mediums than 99% of us will ever even attempt, but he nailed it with this one. And if you’re not already sold, two words: those glasses.
[Andrew Unterberger]
070. Juvenile – “Back That Azz Up”
(Dir. David Meyers, 1999)
Women from all walks of life: young office professionals, high school girls playing hookie, even safe, auntie-looking women dropping it like it is the hottest of hot. Juve’s “Back That Azz Up” does a lot of transgressive work in its three-minute video—all of Cash Money is decked in the early-vintage set-up of small chains and white tees; besides the guy who’s rapping, the group is nearly indistinguishable from the raucous concert in the video. Juve raps from behind barriers of chain link fence as the crowd goes nuts and presses against the wire-mesh. I remember when this song and video absolutely invaded the white-bread Eastern ‘burbs. I saw what this video did for girls who would go to Smith or Princeton and work for a senator or goody-goody NGO. No matter your color, size, creed or age, if you can’t let the video’s dusty neighborhood party infiltrate your pleasure centers, you’ve got bigger problems than reconciling yourself with the South.
[Evan McGarvey]
069. Daft Punk – “Da Funk”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1996)
Oh, the pathos! Charles, hobbled by the crutch of an inescapable attachment to a “Da Funk” blasting boom box, meets rejection on the streets of New York City, in the form of an exasperated bookseller, a pair of unkind children and an attractive ex-neighbor with whom, due to his sound system, he cannot catch a bus downtown. I would imagine the video has something important to say with its portrayal of the ever put-upon Charles’s optimistic attempts to negotiate his Big City Nights, only to encounter rejection and insurmountable obstacles at every turn, but Daft Punker Thomas Bangalter assures us that it is “just a man-dog walking with a ghetto-blaster in New York.” OK, fine, but the difficulty of the dog-guy’s travails, and the way he greets them with such unassuming friendliness and indefatigable good humor makes him undoubtedly one of music video’s most lovable creations.
[Jonathan Bradley]
068. B.G. – “Bling Bling”
(Dir. Scott Kalvert, 1999)
A real group effort: Cash Money standing on an anonymous bridge, and two quick camera cuts to cars and motorcycles later, everyone is rushing the camera, sticking wrists, pinkies and necks toward the lens, slathering the camera’s eye with carat after carat. It’s a flagship anthem, each young lion trying to find new ways to express just how goddamned rich they are as the camera hovers on the spoils: aimless, blank-eyed women gyrating around Ducatis, Hummers, and (inexplicably) VW Beetles. This video, in so many ways, helped set up the East Egg/West Egg dichotomy between New York/The South. Old vs. new. Restraint vs. exuberance. The moody soliloquies of the standard-bearing metropolis vs. the succinct, patois-inflected catchphrase. For an artifact of the new, moneyed South, it’s only fitting that the video’s most symbolic moment has Cash Money’s best weapon, Mannie Fresh, descending from a “candy-coated helicopter” and carrying a Nuclear Football-looking briefcase that presumably holds, in the eyes of a suddenly Lear-ish NYC, all of the Dirty South’s state secrets.
[Evan McGarvey]
067. We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Going to Use It – “Love Is the Slug”
(Dir. Nick Small, 1986)
I learnt to dance in the indie clubs of Birmingham, and the main thing I learnt was this: don’t dance like nobody’s watching. Dance like everybody’s watching and you are, in fact, really good at dancing. The best way to do this is to make up a dance routine all of your very own for each individual song, including moves pertaining to the lyrics wherever possible. The video for “Love Is the Slug” takes this noble concept and bases an entire video around it, and films it in An Actual Indie Club In Birmingham In The Late 1980’s, resplendent with craply mirrored walls, a drunk guy who either isn’t with anyone or is with some people who have long since dissociated themselves from him, and first-hand evidence of what happens when you take STUDIO LINE hairspray and six-inch heels out of the hands of trained professionals. The high point: probably the bit where Fuzzbox illustrate “I feel emotion, I feel pain” by stumbling backward into a wall and going “Ow.”
[William B. Swygart]
066. R.E.M. – “Imitation of Life”
(Dir. Garth Jennings, 2001)
While it would certainly be well within our rights to forget the last decade or so of R.E.M., it shouldn’t be at the expense of this criminally overlooked, mind-bending 20-second pan-and-scan masterpiece for the band’s last great single. With camera as grappling tool scanning the clip’s living mural of simultaneous disparate images (Peter Buck being “that guy” with his mandolin while man on fire falls in awesome pool), director Garth Jennings manages to perfectly capture all that Stipe evokes: misguided desires, unexpected disappointments, the party you’re not invited to that doesn’t even exist. But even a pale imitation of life can be better than the real thing
[Barry Schwartz]
065. N.W.A. – “Straight Outta Compton”
(Dir. Rupert Wainwright, 1988)
The power of the music video writ large. NWA were straight-up pussy, a ragtag group of geeks who'd lose a straight man-on-man dust up with Crowded House. Ice Cube's gait here in particular gives the impression that his spine is constructed entirely from marshmallow. But they learned from Mussolini: look grander by being shot from beneath. Add to this camera trick people walking around with their shoes on fire, masturbatory gun craft, cops with cartoon moustaches, lingering cartographer friendly map shops, Eazy E getting skin like the Fresh Prince returning to West Philadelphia, and you've just made the CPT Chess Club look a) cool and b) like the kind of guys who could cause a kerfuffle. So iconic that Rockstar managed to create an entire video game from it.
[Dom Passantino]
064. My Chemical Romance – “Helena”
(Dir. Marc Webb, 2005)
MCR lead singer Gerard Way might fancy himself as one of the great rock stars, but here, it doesn’t matter. I can’t get away from his eyes, because I don’t know what he’s looking at, or where he’s looking from. He quivers, he scowls, he never looks away, he shifts through all the gears he can muster but never gets any closer to what it is he’s looking for. At times you can argue that he’s trying too hard, and it’s all just a pose because death and being all-too-serious sells. The thing with “Helena” is that talking about it in those terms just feels fucking wrong. A series of moments, turning points, choreographed and stage-managed to perfection, but that’s art, isn’t it? It’s never for shock or for schlock, but because of the momentum, sheer, raw momentum, incessantly building to the explosion of pressure, as Helena seizes up and falls, stiff as a board, into the coffin. It’s clean, precise, and devastating.
[William B. Swygart]
063. 2Pac f/ Dr. Dre – “California Love”
(Dir. Hype Williams, 1996)
Does anyone doubt that this is what 2095 will be like? A post-apocalyptic California is ruled by tribal overlords—one of whom employs Chris Tucker as his hype-man—that are waging war over the West Coast’s dance floor. You know a video is predicting truth when the most unrealistic part is Dr. Dre repping Sacramento. Director Hype Williams is on some Bruckheimer shit here, aping Mad Max, dancing around in the Thunderdome and racing around the desert on dirt-bikes. Tupac and Dre have rarely looked looser, which is strange, considering they’re dressed like castoffs from the Gladiator set trying to get into a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A strangely stupid, strangely captivating, strangely hilarious re-imagining of Hollywood’s wild wild west.
[Andrew Gaerig]
062. Duran Duran – “Girls on Film”
(Dir. Godley & Crème, 1981)
You gotta hand it to Duran Duran. When every other band has bought a private yacht on which to do their cocaine, they're the kind of guys figuring out how to get a private yacht that’s actually made out of cocaine. Godley & Creme directed this remarkable tribute to arrow-straight male sexuality—it begins with two models in negligees having a pillow fight while straddling a shaving cream-covered pole, and doesn't really let up. Between cuts to the band, who seem to be "performing" to this makeshift theatre of the male Id, we get a man ridden as a horse, ice cubes on nipples, girls in Sumo diapers, some slightly disturbing lifeguard fantasy, and, of course, two hookers mud-wrestling. Like no other band in the 80's, Duran epitomized the queasy edge of rock excess, and "Girls on Film" is all their schoolboy celluloid fantasies realized.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
061. Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean”
(Dir. Steve Barron, 1983)
“Billie Jean” is a dream of Michael Jackson, literally circa 1983 and ostensibly (if not credibly) “gritty.” It’s the seedy side of some vintage Hollywood movie set, harmless insofar as its star is “childlike.” You half-expect Gene Kelly to turn up for a quickie tap solo, yet at the same time, you want to warn Michael that he’s moon-walking toward actual danger—toward infamy and rhinoplasty and Elizabeth Taylor. That’s because this marks the precise point of no return, of the transition from “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” to “stop fuckin’ with me.” You want to warn the poor guy somehow, but you can’t. The dream is over.
[Josh Timmermann]
060. Ludacris – “Stand Up”
(Dir. David Meyers, 2003)
Luda's vinyl weighs a ton, his woman grow booty like Viagra, and we shouldn't even start with the midget around his neck. David Meyers might riff off of filming Ludacris' similes and Michel Gondry's disproportionate body parts, but the melee is all essentially "Stand Up." The video is haphazard in all the right ways, with an inexplicable animated sequence, a pause for Luda's "time and clothes to coordinate," as well as a baby Luda getting his diapers change (Proving that not every musician will get charged for peeing on girls on tape.). Meyers makes sure that no tasteless rock goes unturned, getting even those stuck in wheel-chairs to "Stand Up."
[Nate De Young]
059. Judas Priest – “Breaking the Law”
(Dir. Julien Temple, 1980)
“Breaking the Law” is the type of video that gets called “so bad it’s good,” but let’s not fall into that trap, as guilty pleasures have got no rhythm. Instead this is interesting for showing a band struggling to come to terms with a relatively new medium—this is 1980—and one that might’ve seemed antithetical to heavy metal beyond cock-thrusting live clips. Check out the tension between the fashions in the band; Rob Halford looking good, short haired in a new wave black skinny leg suit, like Marc Almond reincarnated as a provincial hairdresser, and the rest of the group hairy, bearded, and leathered. Observe the dismal prosaicness of the semi-detached houses and amusement arcades that they pass on their way to rob the bank. And try to solve the biggest mystery of them all: why are they stealing their own gold discs?
[Patrick McNally]
058. The Notorious B.I.G. f/ 112 & Ma$e – “The Sky’s the Limit”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1997)
Puffy and Biggie may have been the best indicator of hip-hop's shift from street to nightclub during the early 90's, but the critiques of hip-hop and its Will to Bling miss the same materialism when exhibited by melonheads like Keith Richards. Bad Boy cemented the high fashion end of rap because they flashed with style, and thus were more visible, more camera worthy. Though the words of the chorus are nabbed from my favorite D-Train song, there's a lot less "upliftment" going on here and a lot more representin' from the clouds. It's not much of a song, either, Biggies' limber tongue aside—but by casting children as the various players in the BB Dynasty for the video, Spike Jonze delicately highlights the innocent delight in fame and riches that only the formerly poor can have. Plus it's cuter than a three-week old kitten.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
057. Bjork – “Human Behaviour”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1993)
Though the video for “Once in a Lifetime” was great, David Byrne didn’t score his true televisual presence until he dropped himself into the Big Suit, a distortion of sense and space that made him simultaneously more wide-eyed and more powerful. Björk, whose alien intuition and total self-possession made her a potent relative of Byrne’s, struck the balance immediately. Björk is big, Björk is small, Björk spazzes out next to a stop-motion moth; Björk pouts alone in a small cottage and dances through the forest like the deeply sexy weirdo we all took her to be. She colonizes the moon for the Soviet Union, smiles a deceptively naïf smile, and alas, gets eaten by a huge teddy bear, who disturbingly proceeds to beat the shit out of a hunter by the glow of the moon. It was surreal, but felt tactile and humanistic—now hallmarks of director Michel Gondry’s style and Björk’s well-constructed image.
[Mike Powell]
056. Chris Isaak – “Wicked Game”
(Dir. Herb Ritts, 1991)
Chris Isaak seems like a good sport, considering he owes his career more to Helena Christensen’s ass cleavage than his own talent, though he did parlay this exquisite bit of soft-core tease into his own TV show and a guest spot on Friends, so I imagine he’s not complaining. Still the gold standard for sexy video clippage, mostly because it contains elements of mystery and yearning you can’t quite replicate with Jessica Simpson dry-humping the General Lee. Credit goes to director and famed photographer Herb Ritts, who made a miniature cottage industry of tastefully sensual shorts in the late 80s and early 90s, additionally shooting Janet Jackson’s “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” and Madonna’s “Cherish” with his gorgeously intimate lens. As for “Wicked Game,” it’s currently enjoying an unexpected second life thanks to, of all people, Paris Hilton—her new video “Stars are Blind” is a blatant rip-off of Ritts’ masterstroke.
[Josh Love]
055. Talking Heads – “Wild Wild Life”
(Dir. David Byrne, 1986)
As the band’s third (and last) Top 40 hit from their most unbearable album, “Wild, Wild Life” marries forced whimsy with big beat rawk as adeptly as the film in which it was first heard overstates its disgust for the big country. Rescreening True Stories is a rather grueling experience, as narrator David Byrne’s affectless commentary drips liberal condescension to small town rubes and shills which (he thinks) is mitigated by his big ol’ 10-gallon hat and lime-green suit. “Wild, Wild Life” allows Byrne’s prisoners a day in court, though, as they shimmy, waddle, breakdance, and walk like Egyptians before an audience of enthusiastic peers. The star is John Goodman, who manages to be charming and infectious in silver Velcro-strapped sneakers. With ampler screen time he could have effaced the memory of Byrne mugging behind a look-at-me-now-wearing-a-funny-mustache.
[Alfred Soto]
054. Depeche Mode – “Enjoy the Silence”
(Dir. Anton Corbijn, 1990)
On the surface, a guy walking around various terrains wearing a robe and crown, deckchair in hand, should be ridiculous or comic. In “Enjoy the Silence” it’s neither. Never looking to camera, Dave Gahan brings an absolute pride and dignity to his role, tinged with just a little loneliness, and sells himself as owner of all that he surveys to an extent that lesser mortals would not likely have managed. It helps that even the interspersed band shots and attempts at subliminal album advertising look cool, and has become so iconic an image for Depeche Mode that even the barely animated cartoon version of it shown during their live set works wonders.
[Iain Forrester]
053. Jamiroquai – “Virtual Insanity”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1997)
I love these videos, the ones without a story or meaning. Sometimes you’ve just got to decide, “The video for this song is just going to make me look cool, OK? We’ll throw in some weird cockroaches and bleeding couches to create the illusion of meaning, but mostly the point is to jack my awesome-meter up through the roof.” Mission accomplished, Jay Kay. With a simple parlor trick (the only digital manipulations were the crow and the cockroaches), Jonathan Glazer improved Kay’s already funky-smooth dance moves tenfold while sparking countless adolescent arguments over exactly how it was done. This definitely tops my list of “Man, I’d Love to Try That Sometime!” music videos. Not to mention the bonus points for sporting Adidas Gazelles. Best non-dance dance shoes ever. Seriously. Try them on sometime.
[Jeff Shreve]
052. Hot Chip – “Boy from School”
(Dir. Garth Jennings, 2006)
Essentially Art Attack gone electro-soul, “Boy From School” is way too well-done for it to matter. Not only are Hot Chip and friends going to make a massive, amusingly surreal tableau, featuring jelly and inflatable bananas, they’re going to do it in the most fun and cool looking way possible. Keeping main singer Alexis Taylor lying down the entire time while it’s built around him is a masterstroke, perfectly capturing the resigned, powerless nature of the song’s melancholy. More than anything else, it’s the intrigue of what the hell it is that they’re making that makes “Boy From School” so addictive. Can you tell what it is yet?
[Iain Forrester]
051. Pulp – “This Is Hardcore”
(Dir. Doug Nichol, 1998)
From the opening footage of actors screen-testing, to lightning, pianos, murder scenes, “SCENE MISSING,” men tied to chairs, sudden awareness of the crushing existential Void, resentful nurses, broken glass, red phones, file footage, driving, blood on pillows, dinner parties, “you can't be a spectator, oh no,” a woman dancing with a photograph (the one moment of actual happiness), fistfights, heart attacks, deathbed utterances, swirling Jack O'Lanterns, Jarvis swanning down a line of Busby Berkeley dancers, and the “and then it's over” as the camera pans away from the sets—if anything, the video improves on the noir/porno/PoMo/misanthropic dread of the song. The two have virtually nothing to do with each other, but that atmosphere of cracking up, of men made dangerous by their lack of real human contact, carries over. A lush, overripe, and completely seductive nightmare.
[Ian Mathers]
050. Nine Inch Nails – “The Perfect Drug”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 1997)
Most music videos strive to create an image memorable enough to stick with the viewer after the video finishes. The video for “Perfect Drug,” half-blue, half-green, and entirely gorgeous, created about a dozen. The shrouded feminine harbingers of death on the hillside, a caped Trent Reznor wielding a blade upon a marble platform, the stunning, cold-as-ice garden with its high hedge walls, even the sinister drip of the neon-green filtered absinthe. More than just visually arresting, the video revealed another dark layer of meaning to the song, specifically depicting the anguish of a father who has lost his daughter. The closing images, with Reznor alternately lingering over a stone railing and slowly sinking beneath murky waters, reinforce the suicidal undertones of the repeating line “Take me with you.” Hard to watch only once, and hard to shake once it gets under your skin.
[Jeff Shreve]
049. Nada Surf – “Popular”
(Dir. Jake Nava, 1996)
Welcome to Bayonne High, with its fresh-faced youngsters, intrusive security guards, locker-room nudity, and, of course, Mr. Caws, who takes a class full of cheerleaders and instructs them on the finer points of high school social niceties: “I propose a one month limit on going steady.” His advice turns out to be invaluable; the video’s thrillingly superficial climax features that attentive cheerleader winning the affections of Johnny Football Hero and giving the camera a huge Mentos smirk. Packing more into its sub-four minute runtime than the combined efforts of She’s All That, Can’t Hardly Wait, and Ten Things I Hate About You, and all coated with a thematically-suitable mid ‘90s alt. rock grime that oozes around the hallways and football fields, “Popular” illustrates perfectly that, at times, the most fitting video for a track is one that follows the lyrics as closely as possible, even if that inseparability pretty much guaranteed one hit wonder status for the band. Go Bees!
[Jonathan Bradley]
048. Nirvana – “Heart-Shaped Box”
(Dir. Anton Corbijn, 1993)
The final video of Nirvana’s active career and certainly the most affecting, brazenly mixing the tragic (crucifixes, dead fetuses), comic (Cobain’s pratfall, the mimicking crows), and plainly bizarre (the KKK girl and the fat lady in the In Utero suit). There’s plenty here for art snobs and shrinks alike to chew on, thanks to director Anton Corbijin’s beautifully surrealistic vision, which added heaps of religious imagery to a song already highly charged by sex and gender. Say what you will about Nirvana’s legend being overvalued by death-obsessed boomer hacks, but how many popular rock bands in 2006 would bother to acknowledge high art and the avant-garde even exist?
[Josh Love]
047. Fatboy Slim – “Weapon of Choice”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 2001)
After a brief Wikipedia venture, I was elated to find that Christopher Walken actually helped choreograph his dance moves in this Fatboy Slim video. The whole thing smacks of Gene Kelly, but Walken’s dour expression, coupled with a few choice funk-inspired moves (check out his version of “Thriller” at 2:13) make the video anything but derivative. Highlights include Walken’s “I’m-gonna-git-ya!” advance toward the camera during the line “Walk without rhythm / And you won’t attract the worm,” his foray through the hall of mirrors, and the absurdist and majestic leap-into-flight from the second floor toward the end. Still, the thing that always sticks with me in this video is Walken’s depressing return to business-as-usual. The smile he sports during his romp is so unexpected and refreshing that the moment he sinks back into despondency, I can’t help but respond with empathy. It’s a strangely melancholic ending to such a silly video.
[Jeff Shreve]
046. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”
(Dir. Patrick Daughters, 2003)
It’s worth nothing that “Maps” was the third single released off Fever to Tell, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 full-length debut, and that by that point the band had been all but written off as a textbook case of critical praise and music geek hype failing to translate into airplay and sales. So, let’s be clear here: “Maps,” and specifically its accompanying video, saved, if not the group’s career then certainly its blip on the cultural radar screen. The catch with this video is that there is no catch—no gimmicks, no bells and whistles, no superfluous, state-of-the-art bullshit. Just a gal, two guys, and a single, indelible teardrop. Rarely has a clip so beautifully complemented the strengths and sentiments of the song it’s promoting.
[Josh Timmermann]
045. The White Stripes – “Fell in Love with a Girl”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 2002)
Quick: Name the last star-making video appearance not to feature the star in question. Parallel for comparison’s sake: In the late 90s, auto-makers tried a series a commercials that never actually showed you the car in question. Interesting psychological experiment? The car ads were abject failures; Jack and Meg White went onto international superstardom. The difference? Kick-ass punk rock song? Well, that and a collective 20-something generation’s nostalgia for Legos and—the video’s great unsung reference point—8-bit video games. A = Strum. B = Cymbal Crash. Thumb in A-B-A-B-Up-Down-Left-Right to unlock Buddy Holly lightning round. Dig the building blocks of rock ‘n’ roll.
[Andrew Gaerig]
044. Cat Power – “Cross-Bones Style”
(Dir. Brett Vapneck, 1998)
First off, fuck the five black clad dancing girls in this video. With their studiedly awkward movements and quasi-sensible hair-dos they could come out of some mid-period REM video. They’re no fun and surely only there to throw Chan Marshall into even starker relief. Really, this shouldn’t be seen as any more than what it is, a brazen knock off of the video to Madonna’s “Lucky Star”, but Marshall proves that if often she can’t perform live, she sure can on film. One person and simple movements—goofy roller-walking, the clock, finger pointing, fake Chinese eyes, miming you’ve got a gun—that’s all it takes to make a great video. Well, that stuff plus yellow nail varnish.
[Patrick McNally]
043. Sigur Ros – “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa”
(Dir. Celebrator, 2001)
Gorgeously shot Icelandic scenery and children are present and correct, of course. This time though, what magic and hope there is in their world is stamped out as the video proceeds as slowly but inexorably as the song itself towards a conclusion so cruel that it still leaves me gasping for breath to this day.
[Iain Forrester]
042. Radiohead – “Karma Police”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1997)
Director Jonathan Glazer shoves us into the driver’s seat for “Karma Police,” forcing the viewer to be the merciless antagonist who hunts down a desperate, fleeing man, the metaphoric rabbit in literal headlights. Thom Yorke rides along as a willing accomplice, content to lazily mouth the chorus, but notably, when the hunted turns the tables and seeks revenge on his tormentor—that is, the viewer—the ever-wily Yorke manages to escape, leaving us to burn in the flame-engulfed vehicle. The video is gorgeous to look at, too; the car’s luxurious red leather insulates us from the bleak country road outside, and the single shot that lasts for more than half the song drags us into the power struggle and subsequent revenge of the track’s latter half. It’s a typically warped Radiohead device, gleefully encouraging us to revel in the immorality, savoring the chase even as we recoil at the horror of it.
[Jonathan Bradley]
041. Guns n’ Roses – “November Rain”
(Dir. Andy Morahan, 1992)
The middle section in Guns n’ Roses’ epic Use Your Illusions trilogy, “November Rain” manages to keep at least one toe on the ground (that is to say, no one disappears into the wall and there’s not a dolphin in sight), but still manages to pack a wedding ceremony, a funeral, and at least two Slash 360-degree cliff solos in its nine-minute running time. The difference between this and other famously epic videos like “Thriller’ or Puff Daddy’s “Victory” is that “November Rain” features no additional dialogue or mid-song breaks to augment its running time or theatricality—“November Rain” the song simply demanded such a large-scale video, and Axl and director Andy Morahan were more than happy to comply. Hardcore Gn’R fans might still be holding out hope for the release of Chinese Democracy, but I’d settle for a sequel video explaining what happens to the guy who jumps into the wedding cake.
[Andrew Unterberger]
020. Talking Heads – “Once in a Lifetime”
(Dir. David Byrne & Toni Basil, 1980)
When it comes to music video performance, David Byrne is something of a nerdy Robert DeNiro, and “Once in a Lifetime” is his Raging Bull. He huffs, he puffs, and he generally freaks the fuck out, looking about four times as ragged as Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (meaning he probably stayed up the last four nights straight before the shoot). Byrne is Jake LaMotta without an opponent, mentally and physically kicking his own ass as if the stress of the modern world had actually made him lose sense of his motor functions. And then comes the chorus, where Byrne surrenders completely, floating on a sea of blue screen and looking unsure as to whether he’s reached heaven or is merely stuck in limbo. Music video acting may have existed before “Once in a Lifetime,” but it’s Byrne that made it Strasberg worthy.
[Andrew Unterberger]
019. Juvenile – “Get Ya Hustle On”
(Dir. Ben Mor, 2006)
In the BBC’s miniseries Traffik, Fazal, a helpless Opium grower in rural Pakistan says to an British diplomatic visitor, “We just grow opium, it’s Europe that’s got the heroin problem.” Post-Katrina New Orleans and Juvenile paints a similar picture: a cheap, fractured suburban stone angel with a somber on-screen dedication gives way to the totems of gangsta life (SUV, limo, big house) smashed up and strewn between ditches, rivers, and fresh gulches. Horses pull the carcasses of dead, lost cars. Three young boys slowly peruse the wreckage and pull paper masks of Cheney, Nagin, and Bush with the message “HELP IS COMING” scrawled on the inside. Juve rattles off amoral survival instinct before plummeting the song into its most communal moment: a circle of dispossessed D-boys offering a dark, searing vision of post-Katrina reality, pantomiming crack preparation while singing what sounds like a feed-your-family nursery rhyme, “we take the Pyrex and we rock with it, roll with it!”
[Evan McGarvey]
018. Smashing Pumpkins – “1979”
(Dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Farris, 1996)
I was about ten years old when I first saw the video for “1979,” and I fully expected it to be a forecast of what the next ten years of my life were going to be like. Or, at least, I hoped as much. I couldn’t wait to skid my car in circles around parking lots, or to bowl with liquor bottles and soda 2-liters, or to throw all my friends’ patio furniture into their swimming pool (which I actually goaded a couple of my friends into doing once), or to go to the top of a big cliff overlooking my town and just flip them the big one. I doubt anyone ever has one night as ideal as this during their teenage years, but I only hope that when I think back on being eighteen a few decades from now, my memories will congeal into a Greatest Hits package like this. Billy Corgan can even ride in the back seat.
[Andrew Unterberger]
017. R.E.M. – “Losing My Religion”
(Dir. Tarsim, 1991)
Fans cited Caravaggio and Gabriel Garcia Marquez as referents in this beloved video, but, really, its most striking image is Michael Stipe, before canonization as Saint Hip of Baldness, doing the safety dance or something (hint: it involved twitching his elbows). Bill Berry glowers like he’s Charlie Watts and Stipe is Mick Jagger. A pink-mouthed youth, too pretty for rough trade, does a convincing Sebastian, although he looks annoyed rather than agonized by the arrows sticking out of him. As a visual representation of the most teasingly ambiguous hit song ever to hit the top five, it’s garish, a tenth-grader’s idea of surrealism; as a means of selling R.E.M. as four ugly men of mystery to a mass audience ready to welcome them, it was a gesture of consummate shrewdness.
[Alfred Soto]
016. The Chemical Brothers – “Star Guitar’
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 2002)
Director Michel Gondry took one of the oldest music clichés and wrote a symphony. He works with the gimmick of syncing supposedly candid moments of street life and the countryside to the music’s beat, but he makes it all look like a complete innovation. At first, it appears that nothing is going on. Through a moving train’s window, we first see a railroad crossing glide by right on the song’s beat, and then an identical one appears, and another as the rhythm quickens—an industrial European landscape becoming a musical instrument. Daylight suddenly fades into night and back to the sun again when a melody floats from the TV, a pedestrian walks by after each verse is sung, the window view flickers in perfect time to the Brothers’ chopped beats. The entire video plays tricks with the mind and reveals a new sight with every viewing. Well done.
[Cameron MacDonald]
015. Peter Gabriel – “Sledgehammer”
(Dir. Stephen R. Johnson, 1986)
Simply put, a work of absolute, cheeky genius. There’s a sense of childlike playfulness throughout, from the opening shots of blood pumping along to the music (What part of the body is that? Hmm.) to the literal manifestations of the countless sexual metaphors. Makes me laugh every time, especially during the lines “You could have a steam train / If you’d just lay down your tracks,” and “Show me round your fruit cage / Cause I will be your honeybee.” The impressive claymation and pixelation techniques gel perfectly with the playful atmosphere of the song while also expanding the boundaries of what a music video could be. I sometimes wonder if this video would air on MTV if it premiered nowadays, what with moral conservatism running rampant. Oh Peter Gabriel, we thought you were such a nice boy!
[Jeff Shreve]
014. Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”
(Dir. Spike Jonze, 1994)
Spike Jonze’s talent for restaging the pop-culture crap of his childhood found its best expression in this video, in which the Beastie Boys make like Starsky and Hutch. Their Method seriousness would give Owen Wilson pause. Their hairpieces would be the envy of Robert Blake. Jonze’s frantic editing—you didn’t find that on “Beretta”—mistakenly creates the impression that “Sabotage” has a monster groove. In actuality, it’s closer to the Average White Band than Bad Brains, and I doubt the Beasties would get offended by that.
[Alfred Soto]
013. Bob Dylan – “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
(Dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)
The hands down winner on this list for “artist who had the least fun making their video” (could Dylan look more bored?), and also probably a shoo-in in our “Least Precedented,” “Cheapest to Shoot,” and “Most Parodied” categories. This remains one of the simplest, strangest, and most indelible moments of Dylan’s career. He’s standing stage right, and his cue cards are as mixed and varied as his live renditions of the song. Allen Ginsberg seems to be having a blast, following his poet boy-toy around London. But this, as opposed to most of Dylan’s acting in the mid-60’s, was myth-making of the most passive order. Dylan was flippant, annoyed, even aggressive, and the scene seems glibly unscripted, even if you know that it was filmed three different times.
[Andrew Gaerig]
012. Pulp – “Bad Cover Version”
(Dir. Jarvis Cocker & Martin Wallace, 2002)
From Macca to Missy to Meatloaf, from Cher to Cobain to Cocker (!), celebrity impersonators get their comeuppance for one of Pulp's final singles. The song, of course, is about the lover that you jump to that's ever so slightly reminiscent of the one you've just lost. The video is one long sight gag riffing on celeb charity songs and the awkward and/or endearing quirks those crazy-famous mofos have, but the subtext is Pulp's own bizarre brush with the public eye—first we have a Cocker imitator and then Jarvis with a wig playing Brian May in the closing moments. What does it all mean? How the Hell should I know—how in the world did Pulp ever get big to begin with?
[Mallory O’Donnell]
011. Fiona Apple – “Criminal”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 1997)
Questions. It’s all you have after seeing the Mark Romanek directed video for Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” Just who is the criminal here? Why is everyone half naked? Why does she have red eyes—are we taking pictures too? Why am I completely repulsed and strangely attracted to this person that hides in a closet and seems to have an eating disorder? What are those people doing swimming in that dolphin tank? Why are those stuffed animals staring at me? Whose foot is she trying to eat? Why is she in my parent’s rec room? What’s up with that TV that appears out of the floor? Who put oranges in the bathtub? What’s up with the car’s engine? Why does she squeeze that bottle with the soap? Oh. Ohhh.
[Todd Burns]
010. Dr. Dre f/ Snoop Dogg – “Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang”
(Dir. Andre Young, 1993)
In late 1992, Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he shall forever be known by me) unleashed the “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” video, and before you could say “one, two, three an’ to the four,” rap was forever changed. “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” invited kids previously terrified by Gangsta Rap to the after-party for the first time, where they could just chill till the next episode. It wasn’t good time-y, but good times were certainly had—who wouldn’t want to chill with Dre and Snoop for a barbeque, go cruising down Crenshaw in a drop-top and spray the snotty girl at the party with some shook up St. Ides? But Dre saves the best shot for last, as an obviously inebriated Snoop Dogg gets dropped off and stumbles back to his house, the newly risen sun shining bright into the camera, and you know it’s just a matter of hours before they get up and do it all over again.
[Andrew Unterberger]
009. Daft Punk – “Around the World”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1997)
In a genre strewn with videos that sought to recreate Microsoft Screen Savers, Daft Punk’s decision to hire prominent music video directors for the singles of their seminal Homework album was sort of a revolution in and of itself. Following up Spike Jonze’s dog-with-a-boombox treatment of “Da Funk,” the two French robots tapped Michel Gondry. His idea? A cornucopia of Halloween costumes, each signifying one of the five elements of the song: drum machine (mummies), vocoder (robots), guitar (skeletons), bass (those weird tall guys with small heads), and synth (what Gondry termed “disco girls”), all dancing in front of the blinking disco lights set up by Gondry’s brother—a long-time collaborator. Gondry calls it one of his favorite videos that he has done. It’s also one of dance music’s most epochal.
[Todd Burns]
008. Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 2004)
There’s so much wound into such a brief space here that it practically has to be cut down frame by frame to be analyzed. The most startling and memorable—the costumed dancer in the tunnel, the man holding the urn among the coffins—are further underscored by the jarring contrast between the jumpy, canted action shots and the smooth close-ups on people’s faces. The rest of the world might take umbrage at the New-York-is-all universality of human experience on display, but the only reason that Spike Lee-style NY-centricity fits at all is because it unquestionably suits Jay-Z. If Public Enemy was the ideal soundtrack for the colorful but angry “Do the Right Thing,” then Black Album-era Jay-Z is the music that could match The 25th Hour—dark, fuming, fearless, and held back only by its inability to single out a clear enemy from a crowd of people whose problems all seem too numerous to count.
[Erick Bieritz]
007. Bjork – “All Is Full of Love”
(Dir. Chris Cunningham, 1999)
Its sound, its process, its arrangements, everything about Homogenic suggests its music should be cold and detached, emotionally devoid. And yet … and yet, as we’ve all surely come to experience, it is without question one of the most affecting albums you or I may ever hear. So for all that is made of the truly incredible and fruitful collaborative relationship between Bjork and Michel Gondry, it is Chris Cunningham, with his clip for “All Is Full of Love,” who visually perfectly captures Homogenic’s deceptive essence. With robots borne straight from Asimov’s own waking dreams, Cunningham, using little more than shadows and shades of whites and blacks and silvers, crafts an authentic and pure sensuality where none should conceivably exist. What results is one of the most visually stunning and deeply affecting music videos you or I may ever see.
[Barry Schwartz]
006. The Replacements – “Bastards of Young”
(Dir. Unknown, 1985)
To a certain mindset, this is the Best Video Of All Time: One simple shot of an speaker, slowly pulling out to show the rest of the stereo and a bit of a rundown living room. Eventually someone comes in, sits down and smokes a cigarette, but the camera stays where it was—we barely see the guy. The sheer perversity of the video's lethargy in the face of the power of the music, its refusal to engage in the fledgling tropes of the medium, is still compelling today. Although it was created out of a disdain for MTV that seems woefully old fashioned now, it was also one of the first clips to show us that you didn't have to stick to the band playing, or even to anything involving the song, to make for riveting viewing.
[Ian Mathers]
005. Radiohead – “Just”
(Dir. Jamie Thraves, 1995)
To this day, some 11 years after it first appeared, you can go to any Radiohead message board, chat room or forum in the known universe, and somewhere, likely on the first page, will be that one question that has vexed so many—“What does the guy say at the end of the ‘Just’ video?” It is our generation’s version of “I buried Paul,” but for all director Jamie Thraves or anyone in the band has ever revealed, he may as well be saying “cranberry sauce” too. Whenever he’s been asked what few words compel the video’s hero to disconnect from the surrounding world and plop himself down on the pavement, Thom Yorke insists he’ll never tell. Most likely Yorke doesn’t know the phrase himself, as the ensuing decade has seen Radiohead striving with their music to solve just that kind of riddle themselves.
[Josh Love]
004. A-Ha – “Take on Me”
(Dir. Steve Barron, 1985)
Iconic. It's really the only sure way to describe the video for "Take on Me," one of the earliest examples of how an MTV clip propelled a song from being nothing to enumerating everything. It's also the first time I ever saw a video that depicted an actual story, or at least that curtailed montage techniques together to form some kind of narrative, albeit one of a fantastically Swedish bent. From the eyebrows-appealingly-raised initiation to the Pinocchio hammering-on-the-door-of-life finale, it also marks the debut of a love affair brought from contemplation to consummation in three minutes and 45 seconds time. The life-into-animation-into-life analogy and windswept 80's pencil drawings may have aged, but the neo-classical sentiments enshrined in "Take on Me" remain as a virtual bible of the video age.
[Mallory O’Donnell]
003. Joy Divison – “Atmosphere”
(Dir. Anton Corbijn, 1988)
It’s a funeral of mourning and slapstick. Children or midgets dressed in Druid robes conduct the ceremony on a beach, and waddle around carrying a church steeple and iconic photographs of St. Ian Curtis. The first impression is that director Anton Corbjin made a tasteless tribute to Joy Division’s late singer and drifter of Britain’s post-industrial wasteland. Yet, the band’s brooding, hymnal melodies and tribal, danse macabre rhythms still takes hold of the viewer, and the visuals soon make sense. Corbjin lets the music flow with the gritty, decayed black and white cinematography, and he only displays the band and Curtis in still photographs, as if Joy Division is just a fading memory. Corbijn beautifully captures the moment when you lose a loved one, and you walk outside to see everything around you in stinging detail. Unforgettable.
[Cameron MacDonald]
002. Johnny Cash – “Hurt”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 2003)
“You stay the hell away from me, you hear?” Even before American Recordings proved it beyond all doubt, JC' was a man with two careers in parallel: one bringing the poignancy, the other novelty tunes like “One Piece at a Time,” and that one where he does an impression of a guy being hung. So how better to close his career than by dovetailing the two: a novelty cover version paired with a video featuring poignancy laid on so thick as to crush your heart through sheer persistence. Cash as Jesus, Cash as the pouting rebel, Cash the American, Cash as America personified, Cash the husband, Cash the man in black, Cash the guy who sold records in their droves, Cash the lonely, scared, dying old man. It's hard to imagine there could have been a better way to close the piano lid on his career.
[Dom Passantino]
001. U.N.K.L.E. f/ Thom Yorke – “Rabbit in Your Headlights”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1998)
The first time I saw “Rabbit in Your Headlights” was during the full light of day, with friends, only paying half attention—I believe we laughed as the decrepit, muttering vagrant walking through an underpass was creamed by passing cars only to stumble to his feet again. The second time I saw the video it was late and I was alone; as it started I settled in for some prime comedy. But this time, actually watching the man's progress, it wasn't funny. It was sad and powerful and strangely damning; like Philip K. Dick's invented religion of Mercerism, it's hard to escape the impression that the muttering man is suffering for our catharsis. And then there's the end of the video, the part no-one forgets. As with the rest of “Rabbit in Your Headlights” it's utterly cryptic and undeniably powerful, stretching towards transcendence in a beautifully shot shower of broken glass and metal like some kind of weird apotheosis. It's almost impossible to say what it means, but it's equally hard to find someone who can watch it, really watch it, and remain unmoved.
[Ian Mathers]
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By: Stylus Staff Published on: 2006-07-17 Comments (0) |
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