Top 10 Music Videos

Love is Strong - Rolling Stones

Jagger and co wandering supersized around the streets of NYC.

Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel

“Pete, we want you to lay under a sheet of glass for sixteen hours while we mess around with bits of Play-Doh. You up for it?” LONG PAUSE. “Er...yeah ok.” Such was the scene just before this epic went into production. The stop motion photography was produced by Aardman Animations, creators of Creature Comforts and of course, Wallace and Gromit. Always near the top of best video charts, it won a record nine MTV VMA awards in 1987. Best bit: The egg hatching into dancing chickens is cracking, Gromit. Sorry.

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.

Black Or White – Michael Jackson

Wot no Thriller? Yes, I know ‘Black Or White’ has a frankly disturbing scene of MacCaulay Culkin miming a rap but this one really is a true classic. Picture the scene: It’s 1991 and aside from Tony Hart, nobody knows what Morphing is. Suddenly, Jacko releases his latest epic and it’s all anyone can talk about. In a video which uses a sledgehammer to thump home the message of equality, that end sequence is certainly a high point. Could it be a meaningful, visual statement that we are truly all the same? Perhaps. Does it show the ultimate futility of racial disharmony? Probably. Is it just a really cool effect? Definitely.

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.

She Was Hot - Rolling Stones