Favorite Music Videos. I rather doubt you’ll care.
Here’s a self-indulgent post (another, I guess). I’ve been thinking about my favorite music videos of all time. This is sure to be a fascinating list, given that I don’t watch music videos, and haven’t since the mid-’90s, so the chance that these are representative in any fashion is vanishingly small.
Still, though, these five struck me as seminal when I first saw them. All (huh) were directed by feature film directors, significant animators, or those who went on to direct feature films. I believe this suggests something about the legitimacy of the art form.
In chronological order:
1984, Thriller by Michael Jackson
Director John Landis directed the films The Blues Brothers, Twilight Zone: The Movie, and the (excellent) Masters of Horror episode “Family”
1990, Vogue by Madonna
Director David Fincher directed the films Se7en, Fight Club, The Game, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
1994, Sabotage by Beastie Boys
Director Spike Jonze directed the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are
1998, Do the Evolution by Pearl Jam
Directors were Todd McFarlane (the artist behind Spawn) and Kevin Altieri of Batman: The Animated Series
2009, Bad Romance by Lady Gaga
Director Francis Lawrence directed the film I Am Legend and has another in development
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10 Responses to “Favorite Music Videos. I rather doubt you’ll care.”
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July 21st, 2010 at 12h21
John Landis (of Thriller) is directing Burke and Hare. I am super-excited about this movie.
Also, I’ll add my music video favorites list later.
July 24th, 2010 at 08h54
@Mike: Time’s up! Fave videos?
July 27th, 2010 at 23h18
First Lady Gaga video I’ve seen. That set must have been enormous and I can imagine what the lighting director had to figure out when they shot this. Not to mention and dancers that had their eyes covered in those latex outfits.Wow. And I see that Gaga is properly tatooed but the whole thing has a feel of early Madonna. Still pretty good overall.
July 27th, 2010 at 23h42
the whole thing has a feel of early Madonna
I agree. It is highly derivative. However, I think she has a stronger voice, is a better songwriter, is a better dancer, and has a better costumer than Madonna did, especially early on. She has a quarter of a billion views of that video on YouTube. I found that amazing until I watched it the first time and realized it was only a thousand people who each watched it 250,000 times. So addictive.
That set must have been enormous
I’ll bow to your stage experience here, but in my understanding “white room” cinematography can be done in a very small space with proper lighting.
I see that Gaga is properly tattooed
Her Wikipedia page says she has “seven known tattoos”. Known?! The eighth would have to be a tiny, painful-to-get tattoo, yes?
July 28th, 2010 at 00h01
@Uncle Dan: Did you watch the Pearl Jam? Or the others? What did you think?
@Mike: ping ping ping. I hope WordPress will respect your embedded video HTML. If not, I’ll either hack the source code or ransom the developers’ children.
July 29th, 2010 at 00h34
It’s late and I’m tired, so this is bound to be scattershot and not nearly as in-depth as I feel the subject deserves. There’s a much longer and more interesting comment in here somewhere, as I’m sort-of obsessed with music videos, but I just can’t coax it out at the moment. Topics to possibly be visited later:
1.) How too much money can easily ruin a music video (why Closer is a better video than The Perfect Drug.
2.) General inability to disentangle the quality of the song from the video (I Can’t Go to Sleep is a mediocre video, for an amazing song, so I give it more credit than it deserves).
GaGa is interesting, because she’s not innovative at all, but she’s perfected an art that arguably more innovative artists have tried and failed. She does Bowie’s false-face routine arguably better than Bowie himself did it, and certainly better than Madonna, Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson did. The mask never slips with her. She’s still new enough that it’s questionable whether she can maintain it over the long haul, but it’s perfect at the moment.
I’m glad you made your list before me, because it has a couple of stock favorites that one can’t really leave out, but that have already been discussed to death (did MTV ever put out a Top 5 of All Time list that didn’t include Thriller and Sabotage?). You can’t really leave them out, because they’re two of the most influential videos ever, but there’s not really much else to say about them at this point.
Enough foreplay; here’s my Top Five (not about quality, just my favorites):
Aphex Twin: Windowlicker
Aphex Twin hurts my brain. You can safely skip the first 3:50 of the video, because it’s a flimsy set-up for the total insanity that comes after that point. Chris Cunningham has done some other amazing work (All is Full of Love is incredible, for example), but Windowlicker tops everything else for pure demented joy.
Basement Jaxx: You Don’t Know Me
The original video for Red Alert (no longer available on YouTube, but I found it at the site linked) is arguably the better video, but You Don’t Know Me is nuts fun. Where’s Your Head At? is also a great video. Jaxx just makes stuff that’s fun to watch.
Electric Six: Danger! High Voltage
I saw this video, and when I sobered up, I convinced myself that it had all been in my head. Watching it still makes me feel inebriated. That’s got to count for something.
Lucas: Lucas with the Lid Off
Michel Gondry is the master of the tracking shot video (see also Sugar Water and Protection), and Lucas with the Lid Off is where I saw it first. Single shot, done with mirrors and monitors. Very technically impressive. Also, Gondry’s work with the White Stripes should be on both our lists, but for some reason it’s not.
Jonny McGovern: Soccer Practice
This list wasn’t nearly gay enough, so… uh… this.
Also, strictly from a technical standpoint, this list needs more OK Go.
July 29th, 2010 at 00h42
Looks like WordPress hosed your embedded videos. I’ll go back and add them manually tomorrow.
Thanks for the post.
July 29th, 2010 at 00h43
It appears my embedded videos aren’t appearing, but maybe after the moderation they’ll show up?
August 2nd, 2010 at 00h30
Oh me, oh my.
December 5th, 2010 at 21h24
YouTube is a weird, ephemeral place. I promised to embed the videos Bob Mike used in his post, but about half are now gone or have embedding disabled. If anyone wants to use embed code, please email it to me directly.
For my own part I was negligent in excluding two favorites. This one by Rage Against the Machine:
And, how-in-the-world-could-I-have-ever-forgotten: Radiohead’s video for Just, which also has embedding disabled. So go watch it through that link.