Later this summer, MTV will resurrect perhaps its most popular and controversial original series of all-time, Beavis and Butthead. While MTV hasn't released much information about the form in which the series will make its return (let's hope, for the love of God, Hollywood's current crush with "gritty reboots" doesn't find its way into this revival. I don't think I could stomach a Cornholio with a painkiller addiction and a Butthead driven to revenge-fueled madness after being laid off of his job following the housing bubble burst), it is highly likely several staple features of the show will return. Chief among these necessary elements, of course, should be the duo's hilariously-misinformed criticism of contemporary music videos.
But, have you taken a look at the stable of potential fodder for MTV's poster-boy idiots this year? Let's try and overlook the fact (like MTV's marketing department has done for years) that the medium has been rendered culturally irrelevant as a result of the format switch of the station in the early 2000s that is an easy target for hack stand-up comedians throughout this fine country. The music video, as an art form, has lacked any kind of significance since about 2002, placing the medium in the same category as fax machines, pay phones, and the Seattle Mariners. Prior to MTV's complete abandonment of the staple element of its brand since the early 1980s, however, there were several technical achievements in music video production that elevated the medium, at its height, to a level of certifiable artistic pursuit that in many cases exceeded the quality of the songwriting itself. This post celebrates those videos during the heyday of their cultural significance, beginning with perhaps the finest example of how a music video could transform a pop music hit into a cultural phenomenon.
Michael Jackson
"Thriller"
From Thriller, Epic Records, 1982
Director: John Landis
Michael Jackson's Thriller featured several memorable music videos with "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," but it was his decision to develop this long-form video with its own self-sustained narrative (and the most-mimicked dance sequence in the history of popular music) that stands the test of time as perhaps the first big push in what a music video could be. No longer did we need to have a rock band performing in an abandoned warehouse, or (perhaps more popular in the early 80s) crazy-looking artists simply crooning into a camera as their shellacked hairstyles bobbed up and down on cable-ready television sets.
A-Ha
"Take on Me"
From Hunting High and Low, Warner Bros., 1985
Director: Steve Barron
Embedding disabled for this video. Click link to watch on youtube.
There were actually two versions produced for this 1985 breakout hit, but it is Steve Barron's version that introduces animation in a uniquely stunning way for the period that was often poorly imitated (see: Paula Abdul's "Straight Up") but not duplicated until the early 2000s (as we'll see later). The story told in the video itself may have little (if anything) to do with the content of the song, and I'm still not certain where the evil biker gang fits in, but damn if the rotoscoped music clip hasn't penetrated deep into the fabric of our collective popular culture consciousness.
Peter Gabriel
"Sledgehammer"
From So, Geffen, 1986
Director: Steven R. Johnson
Peter Gabriel and Steven R. Johnson channeled their inner Tim Burton and produced this stop-motion masterpiece in the midst of some rather vapid hair band fare that populated much of the music video scene of the mid-1980s. I'm not sure if they intentionally filmed the stutter-step dance moves of Peter Gabriel or they put some of those mo-cap balls on me during my moves on the dance floor at prom. Either way, the video simultaneously oozes cool and inspires nausea.
Pearl Jam
"Jeremy"
From Ten, Epic Records, 1992
Director: Mark Pellington
Apparently, by 1992 we'd tired of zombies, Dr. Katz-style sketchy animation and mouths that morph into clay bullhorns to scare children with music videos, so Eddie Vedder and Mark Pellington turned the camera on the legion of angst-y teens created by the new grunge movement. What resulted remains, to this day, one of the most haunting psychological portraits in the medium that brilliantly captures the raw emotion of just one of many of the instant classics that found their way onto Ten. The controversy created by "Jeremy" kick-started the confrontational career of the grunge era's last great legacy on today's music scene.
The Beastie Boys
"Sabotage"
From Ill Communication, Grand Royal Records, 1994
Director: Spike Jonze
From the "Police Squad!" homage in the video's opening seconds to the grainy video effects driving home that 1970s vibe to the stone-faced selling of the parody by the Beasties, "Sabotage" has classic satiric video written all over it. Throughout the years, the group has produced some hilarious videos with varying degrees of success. This is their "Citizen Kane," folks.
Weezer
"Buddy Holly"
From Weezer (The Blue Album), Geffen, 1994
Director: Spike Jonze
Perhaps it's a little vanilla to list two Spike Jonze videos back-to-back, from the same year nonetheless, but you can't include a list of great music video concept ideas and leave out the Fonz. I mean, let's leave aside the technical accomplishment of the video, which was mind-blowing back in 1994 (this is before Lucas went back in and changed the Gredo/Han Solo thing, remember? Putting Rivers and the boys on the set of "Happy Days" convincingly simply for a music video made me feel, as a seven year-old snot-nosed kid, as though I were the Indians and Spike Jonze the Spaniard had just made fire jump from his hands right in front of me). Joanie loves Chachi, but I love this video (cue laugh track).
Jamiroquai
"Virtual Insanity"
From Traveling Without Moving, Sony Soho Square, 1996
Director: Jonathan Glazer
You have to give English acid jazz band Jamiroquai props for a few things in this video. The first would be totally pulling off that plush Abraham Lincoln imitation cranial wear. The second would be capturing the essence of their album title in a nice, neat four minute video package. Finally, actually making something called "acid jazz" relevant in a way that didn't involve illegal drugs, a soundproof garage, and a complete DVD set of the Battlestar Galactica series.
Korn
"Freak on a Leash"
From Follow the Leader, Immortal/Epic, 1999
Director: Todd McFarlane
So, clearly Korn went a different direction with the animation than A-Ha did some fifteen years prior. Props to them for having the stones to hire acclaimed comic book artist McFarlane, who apparently laid the groundwork for the film "Eight Crazy Nights" with the character models. I'll admit, I wasn't a huge Korn fan, but I was a big supporter of any one who had a chance to knock off certain boy bands from the number one spot on Total Request Live, which I watched every afternoon when I got home from school (I still love you Carson! Even though you're only on at 2:30 AM and I honestly couldn't care less about your 2,345,763rd interview with Fred Durst). That's a nice profile of your fan base, too, Korn. Do I need to bench 250 just to get a pre-order of your new CD?
Fatboy Slim
"Weapon of Choice"
From Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, Skint/Astralwerks, 2000
Director: Spike Jonze
I imagine the pitch for this video went a little something like this:
Fatboy: For this video, I just want a guy dancing in a lobby. He's wearing an old timer suit, with slacks that rest just in the sub-lingual area. Midway through his foxtrot, gravity gives way, and he starts dancing on the ceiling.
Label: Hmm. I like it, but in order for it to be fully enjoyable during an acid trip, we're going to need the perfect man to play your dancer.
Fatboy: Christopher Walken just got done shooting "Catch Me if You Can." He should be available.
Label: Here's a blank check. Make this damn video.
The rest is history.
Gorillaz
"Clint Eastwood"
From Gorillaz, Parlophone, 2000
Director: Jamie Hewlett
This video taught us that it could be possible for pop stars to develop a massive following in spite of being not strictly human. It is a theory that continues to be tested today with the success of Lady Gaga.
The White Stripes
"Fell in Love with a Girl"
From White Blood Cells, XL, 2002
Director: Michael Gondry
What more should we have expected from the brilliant mind that gave us "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and the slightly-less intelligent same mind that gave us "The Green Hornet"? The White Stripes always had a knack for producing fiendishly cool music videos, and the length of their first single that exploded off White Blood Cells in 2002 gave them the outlet necessary to unleash this dizzying feat of childhood engineering over the top of what is essentially a straightforward old-time rock and roll love song. When I tried to recreate it in my room, all I ended up with was something that looked like a house and four swallowed red bricks.
Johnny Cash (Nine Inch Nails cover)
"Hurt"
From America IV: The Man Comes Around, American Recordings/Universal Music Group, 2003
Director: Mark Romanek
Perhaps the best praise for Johnny Cash's final music video should come straight from the lips of the original songwriter, Trent Reznor, in an interview with Alternative Press in September 2004:
"I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure."
Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Can't Stop"
From By the Way, Warner Bros., 2003
Director: Mark Romanek
Embedding disabled by request. Click link to watch video on youtube.
RHCP has been known for some rather interesting visual interpretations of their hits ("Scar Tissue," "Otherside," and the trippy Crazy Taxi-looking "Californication"), but this accompanying short for the third single off an extremely underrated album in their oeuvre is perhaps the most arresting. Where can I snag a fluorescent backpack, Anthony?
Yellowcard
"Ocean Avenue"
From Ocean Avenue, Capitol, 2004
Director: Marc Webb
Okay, so it's a tad too derivative of both "Run Lola Run" and "Groundhog Day," but if you can make the complicated premises of those two films work in less than four minutes over a standard pop song, you've got to be doing something right, correct? Doesn't the lead singer look like a guy you stuffed in a locker in seventh grade? Oh, no, that's right. That was me.
Beck
"Girl"
From Guero, Interscope, 2005
Director: Motion Theory
Beck may have hit his songwriting peak with "Odelay" in 1996, but his best music video came almost a decade later. Taking a page (see what I did there!) out of MAD magazine, the video features some interesting city planning choices. An otherwise forgettable love pop-py love song becomes a type of real Escher-ian nightmare.
Vampire Weekend
"Oxford Comma"
From Vampire Weekend, XL/DGC, 2008
Director: Richard Ayoade
I'm not a huge fan of the avant-garde, or the one-take camera trickery, but for some reason in this video the two fuse together to create an enjoyable interpretation of a single I preferred to "A-Punk," which ultimately rocketed this New York indie band to fame in the summer of 2008. It could be the clear Strokes influence on the guitar riff or the use of the Futura font (also employed by Kubrick, Wes Anderson, and the animated series "Doug"). Whatever the reason, "Oxford Comma" seems to have the artistic creativity, inspiration and style that endears it to the video shorts of yesteryear. And yes, the punctuation decision in that last sentence was very consciously-made.
Obviously, there are many other great videos that visually or conceptually elevated the form. Let me know what some of your favorites are below!
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