Top 10 Music Videos
- The Top1046
- Ren Atkins’s version
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×Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
This was the one that started it all. In the mid 1970s, while the style of the time was music videos simply featuring a band playing their instruments, Queen busted out with this extravagant video to accompany their outrageous and influential song. The music video as people knew it was to change forever as a result, and bands began to make clips that told a story. And if anyone had any doubt that Queen was a band that likes a bit of an extravaganza, this rock opera video would have put their misconceptions to rest.
×Hurt
An unlikely cover by Johnny Cash, this song was originally recorded by Nine Inch Nails in 1994. Cash’s recording in 2003 and the accompanying video are heartbreaking and poignant, as he takes the song and makes it sound as though it was written just for him. The video is incredibly moving, as the elderly Cash looks back on the heartache and tragedy of his life rendered in memorable and famous images for the audience, and tells us “you can have it all…. my empire of dirt.”
×Thriller by Michael Jackson
Not content to just make another music video, Michael Jackson made a film. Complete with zombies, werewolves, mummies and a cast of finely choreographed horror-feature dance moves, Thriller was THE music video of the 1980s, and it positioned Michael Jackson as more than just another pop singer. This was the beginning of Michael the over-the-top man of extravaganza, but despite the increasing budgets over the following years he never made a video quite this amazing again.
×Rabbit in Your Headlights by U.N.K.L.E. f/ Thom Yorke
It’s impossible not to be moved by this clip, in which a muttering vagrant walks through a busy tunnel and is repeatedly hit by cars, none of which stop to see if the man is alright. As the clip progresses, he finds it easier to get up and seems more determined and less surprised by each graphic hit. Somehow his determination makes it harder to watch, as though he’s resigned to being hit by cars but is unwilling or unable to remove himself from the road – until the final scene, in which he braces himself for the hit and a shower of glass and steel explodes around him. What does it all mean? Who knows? But you will be left wondering.
×Take on Me by A-Ha
The video for Take on Me caused a sensation when it was released in 1985, and it’s still great fun to watch today even though it has dated. When a woman is seduced into entering a comic book to become part of the art, the world’s fastest love affair begins and the comic hero eventually bashes his way out of the frame to be with her in reality. It’s a pretty trite storyline, but the execution was impressive for the time, and it still comes across as an interesting concept for a simple medium like a music video clip.
×Just by Radiohead
After watching this simple video, in which a man decides to simply lie immobile on the pavement, you’ll find it impossible to keep your mind from wandering back to the question that Radiohead fans have been asking since 1995…”what did he say?” The subtitled clip helps us understand the story as it evolves – a man lies down on the pavement and gradually draws a crowd of people asking what he’s doing. Is he drunk? Did he fall? Is he having an existentialist meltdown? Is he insane? Pressed, he tells the crowd – not the audience – why he is lying there; and upon hearing, they all lie down too. Compelling and infuriating.
×Bastards of Young by The Replacements
This is music video rebellion. Amongst all the candy colours and poppy glitz of the 1980s, artists were embracing music videos and sometimes climbed the charts simply because their music video pleased MTV and got a lot of airplay. Amongst all this, The Replacements made a music video for their song Bastards of Young that seemed to be purely derisive of the medium. Starting with a close shot of a speaker, the camera pans out to a long shot of the same speaker, with the occasional arm in view on a couch. And that’s all. But for some reason it’s actually watchable….so did The Replacements fail or succeed in their mission?
×Star Guitar by The Chemical Brothers
It’s a ride on a train. Not much seems to be going on outside the window. A factory. More factories. Some power poles. And then it hits – the scenery is perfectly in synch with the music. The music is complex and multilayered, so even after a few viewings you find new ways in which the visual matches the audio – look into the background of the train view and listen to the tiniest elements in the song and the way it all comes together may well blow your mind. It’s simply incredible.
×Sabotage by The Beastie Boys
This Spike Jonze homage to Starsky and Hutch (and all the replicas of the era) gets extra points for just how insanely fun it must have been for the Beastie Boys to make. Bonnet rolls, rooftop jumps, bushy mustaches, bad 70s hair and polyester pants with short sleeved shirts – this film clip has it all. The Beastie Boys need to be credited for their ‘acting’ in this clip, as it’s comedic on all the right levels.
×1979 by Smashing Pumpkins
This clip is all about teen utopia. Fun, friends, unrealistic glinting sunlight, and no parents in sight. For the lilting and sunny song, this is the ideal matching set of visuals – all the crazy fun is distilled down into a simple sense of contentment. It’s impossible to watch this without a sense of nostalgia for the adventures and misadventures of youth. Even when the boys in the video are trashing aisles of drinks in a 7-11, something about it seems so clean and innocent.
