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. 

Thanks for the post.

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.

@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.

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?

Also, I’ll add my music video favorites list later.