100videos

#4: "Close to the Edit," Art of Noise

Wed, 21 May 2008 15:56:35 GMT

Rank: 4
Artist: Art of Noise
Title: Close to the Edit
Director: Zbigniew Rybczynski
Year: 1984

If "Subterranean Homesick Blues" [q.v.] is where the art of music video began, then "Close to the Edit" is where it exploded. In the earliest days of MTV, videos were mostly limited to performance clips of one sort or another, without much variation beyond stage dressing. Early attempts at innovation centered around making clips more cinematic—highly admirable, but still keeping within familiar parameters. Director Zbigniew Rybczynski, however, came along and demonstrated how far the art form truly could be taken, and how wide the playing field truly was (and to everyone's surprise, it was a lot wider than they'd thought it was). Yes, the early-to-mid 80's was a time of enormous creativity and vision in the music video field, and there are any number of clips that demonstrate that (e.g. Herbie Hancock's "Rockit," much of Michael Jackson's early work). The reason "Close to the Edit" occupies this slot, though, is how I react to it now. Four things strike me about it as I watch it today: 1) It has aged amazingly well. This is the rare video of the period that they could release tomorrow without missing a beat; it's so fresh and cutting-edge, in fact, that MTV would occasionally screen it during "Amp," their hip, hypermodern late-night techno show of the late 90's, and it blended in as pretty as you please. 2) Even after becoming jaded by years of dark and creepy Tool and Nine Inch Nails video freak-outs, it still manages to shock. The members of Art of Noise, notably Anne Dudley, didn't care for the concept, thinking the idea of destroying classical instruments to illustrate the breaking down of musical tradition was trite and obvious, but they quickly changed their minds once they saw the final product. No matter how urbane I've become, something about watching three men grind a violin into the dust with their sneakers makes me recoil a bit to this day. And don't even get me started on that unnerving girl dolled up as a New Wave club floozie.... 3) The choice of setting is flawless: an abandoned train track somewhere above the streets of Brooklyn, if memory serves. (FYI: As of a few years ago, reports confirmed that the burned husk of that piano is still there.) 4) Watch the editing. I'd never noticed until recently just how tightly this thing is cut. All the movements, all the steps and the swings of the hammers and strokes of the chain saws land on the beats of the music, but it look closely: it took a snotload of work on Rybczynski's part to get it that way. He swings between regular and fast motion with reckless abandon; at times he seems to be cutting it on a frame-by-frame basis, which succeeds in sending the whole enterprise another few notches up on the "unnerving" scale. From here on out, there would be no limitations, no boundaries, and no end to what music video could become, but this, one of the first, is to this day one of the best.

#5: "Trouble," Coldplay

Fri, 09 May 2008 16:24:29 GMT

Rank: 5
Artist: Coldplay
Title: Trouble
Director: Tim Hope
Year: 2001

Here it is: the most heartbreakingly beautiful video ever made. I've mentioned director Tim Hope in this journal before, when I called him "something of a one trick pony, but oh, what a trick it is." This was the point at which everything fell together: the song was right, the mood was right, the visuals were right, the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. The problem with computer-based animation and composition (of the 2-D variety) is that you run the risk of sterility, of having your finished work seem distant and cold. Granted, this can work in your favor, depending, but if the music you're working with is gray and moody, you're left with a disconnect that can be rather off-putting. Not so with "Trouble." Going through the clip again while trying to pick out a single frame to use for a screenshot (which wasn't easy, believe you me), I was struck by how alive this video is. It's certainly surreal—not just overt stuff like the woman watering the flower patch in the middle of her living room floor, but also things on the design level, like the cockeyed shape of birds and animals. But instead of just making a surreal video, Hope created a surreal world, and just happened to set the video in its environment. Everything works together to shape the universe on the screen, down to the smallest details: the insects among the flowers, the rows of houses in the background, the pollen that flutters anywhere and everywhere. There is so, so much going on here, but it never seems cluttered or overdone; instead, it comes off as a recognition of how many layers there are in any world, even ours. There are moments so breathtaking I almost literally want to stop breathing, like that view across the plains toward the millhouse atop that absurd mountain. It's all so beautiful that when it all starts to crumble before our eyes no less breathtakingly (watch that shot of the flock of birds raining fire in silhouette as they fly past the mountains), we can't bear to see it go. Most importantly, even though I'm not a Coldplay fan by any stretch, I can't imagine a better song to fit these visuals, or a better video to fit that song. (For the record, this is actually the second video filmed for "Trouble," but the only one released in the U.S.) Tim Hope has only made a handful of videos since, including ones for "My Culture" by 1 Giant Leap [q.v.] and "Bad Day" by R.E.M., but every one of them in its own way has startled and amazed me. Here's hoping we hear from him again soon.

#6: "Push It," Garbage

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:21:52 GMT

Rank: 6
Artist: Garbage
Title: Push It
Director: Andrea Giacobbe
Year: 1998

Many, many moons ago, Rolling Stone published a music video review that began with the line, "Every now and then, something comes on MTV that makes you sit up and say, 'What the hell is that?'" The review and the line were written about something else entirely—"Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe," if memory serves—but I've always associated it with "Push It," one of the most imaginative, engrossing, and bat-whack bizarre visual onslaughts ever inflicted on the video-watching public. Director Andrea Giacobbe has a bag of tricks roughly the size of Bulgaria, and here he pulls out all the stops; it's the sort of video where, when the director lobs in the kitchen sink, he's just getting started. Even the look of the thing is weird, as he starts with several different types of old film stock, flips willy-nilly from color to black and white to sepia to hand-tinting, and tweaks and tinkers with just about every frame in digital post-production. But in the weirdness department, the look of the clip ain't got nothin' on the content. There's a vague attempt at narrative, at least at the beginning: we see Shirley Manson and her beau, a fellow who's been scribbled out (don't ask, just work with me here), shopping at a surrealist's Safeway until they're set upon by three commando nuns who blow Mr. Scribble-Guy up with their Crucifix o' Doom. From their, we meet Shirley's next boyfriend, a guy with a light bulb for a head, at their comfortable suburban home, where they're interrupted by three gray-skinned kids in business suits with dollar signs tattooed on their foreheads, who lead him away with a butterfly net. Now, if my preceding skeletal plot synopsis is making you think you're not taking enough drugs, you have no idea. After some business with the offspring of these two couplings, Giacobbe starts flinging one-off images at you as fast as he can come up with them, and any one of them is the most bizarre thing you've ever seen, at least until the next one comes up. Fish tanks, reindeer, SWAT teams, Japanese businessmen foot-fetishistic naval officers, the most twisted horsey-ride game EVER—it all comes flying at you, as if the director is saying, "Yeah, and here's all the stuff we didn't use," and you're left wondering if any of this has anything to do with the half-story that came before, and if it does, or even if it doesn't, what's that narrative really about anyway, and...and.... There's so much that you can't really absorb it all unless you watch it again, and again, and yet again. The thing is, it's all so imaginative, so well-filmed, so masterfully composed as to bring a galaxy of elements together under the same circus tent as if they'd belonged together all along, that you actually want to watch it again, and again, and yet again. And I do. To this day, I do.

#7: "Losing My Religion," R.E.M.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:50:23 GMT

Rank: 7
Artist: R.E.M.
Title: Losing My Religion
Director: Tarsem
Year: 1991

The other obvious choice in my top 10—so obvious and taken for granted that it's almost beyond commentary. I recall how everyone was struck at the time by how the thing looked, the art direction and editing and so on (even if they didn't phrase it as such), and how everyone had their own interpretation of what exactly it was all about (my own pet analysis: flight as a metaphor for enlightenment, from Christianity and the Age of Reason to the Communist Revolution to Eastern philosophy to knowledge itself). But watching it again now for this project after all this time, it finally dawned on me just how important this video was: Tarsem, who made few videos after this one and became an international critics' piñata for directing The Cell years later, had managed to do more with the media form since its heyday in the mid-80s. It was pretty much the point at which critics started using the words "music video" and "art" in the same sentence. More than that, after years of nothing but cookie-cutter hair-metal stage performance clips (and the occasional Madonna innovation), "Losing My Religion" marked the moment when the pendulum finally, finally swung back in favor of concept. Tarsem and R.E.M. had pretty much kicked the door open; in their wake came the Spike Jonzes and Samuel Bayers and Mark Romaneks of the world, as well as MTV's decision to start listing director names on their video info crawls, quite possibly the most important thing the network ever did to preserve and promote the art form. There's a reason we take it for granted now: for many years after, this was Music Video, its shape and style and scope and vision. I cannot name any one video that changed the art form itself this radically, and it did it quietly, with four band members in a plain room with a piece of paper taped to the wall at the last minute, and a doubting Thomas in Renaissance regalia, and a team of blacksmiths, and a book with wings. That's not much, when you spell it out like that, but in the end, it was why I was able to do this list in the first place.

#8: "Jeremy," Pearl Jam

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:00:56 GMT

Rank: 8
Artist: Pearl Jam
Title: Jeremy
Director: Mark Pellington
Year: 1992

*tap*tap* Hey, does this thing still work? (And is anyone still reading?) I'm so sorry there's been such a long lag time, but first the holidays threw me off, and then a very busy January, and then a whole lot of inertia. It's all the more frustrating knowing that there's only eight more of these to go. Whad'ya say we plow forward through this last bit, eh?

When I originally assembled this list ages ago, I made a deliberate effort to highlight videos that weren't necessarily going to turn up on the major media lists; in other words, I didn't want reader reaction to be, "Oh, gee, 'Thriller' at number 1. I'm so, um, surprised, or something." That said, there are some videos that are best-of list clichés for a damn good reason: they really are that good. Frankly, I couldn't even conceive of putting forth such a list that didn't include "Jeremy." It's one of those videos that I started hearing about well before I saw it, and yet even knowing what I was about to see, it was still a kick to the gut that still resonates 16 years later. It's simply perfection, from concept to cinematography to art direction to editing—especially the editing—right down to (and this is something I don't think I've ever said about a lip-sync video shoot) an amazing performance by Eddie Vedder. I am, however, breaking with a small behind-the-scenes tradition: every time I've posted one of these things, I've searched for the highest-quality copy of the clip in question on YouTube, in terms of both sound and image. There is, indeed, a gorgeous, pristine version posted by the folks at Sony, but I'm not using that one, because someone was good enough to post the unedited version, aired outside the U.S. but not seen by most Americans. It's mostly the same, with two crucial differences. One, the quick flash of the classroom full of kids giving the Nazi salute is lingered on for several seconds in a long pan, ending with a shirtless Jeremy in the back. And two, where the American ending went to static-filled TV fade-out, the complete version shows him placing the barrel of a handgun in his mouth, his eyes clamping shut as he pulls the trigger. Small differences, but if you thought the video was disturbing and deeply unsettling before, you don't know just how disturbing it can get. As I said, 16 years after the fact, it still makes me lose sleep.

#9: "El Scorcho," Weezer

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:22:47 GMT

Rank: 9
Artist: Weezer
Title: El Scorcho
Director: Mark Romanek
Year: 1996

[NOTE: The YouTube clip above is the version that aired on MTV. The director's cut has been posted by Universal Music Group, which sadly does not allow embedding; you can find that preferred version at this link.]

There's a rule of thumb that film critic Roger Ebert mentions frequently in his reviews: It's not what the movie is about, it's how it's about it. Remind me to thank him for that, because I find that the only way I can talk about why I think "El Scorcho" is one of the best videos ever made is to quote Ebert, replacing "movie" with "video." There is no inherent reason why it should be so brilliant. The basic setup is your old been-there, done-that, band-playing-together-in-a-room-recording-studio-or-what-have-you bit. There is one bit of "concept" involved—how many videos do you know of that are all about the lighting?—but even that isn't something to get totally jazzed over. Within these mundane walls, however, Mark Romanek wields some major directorial genius. What we have here is a goofy, wonky song by a goofy, wonky album; were they to play it live in a studio or rehearsal space, it would be a goofy, wonky performance. Fair enough. What Romanek does is to turn expections on their ear, by taking that goofiness as seriously as possible. He moves what should be a casual living room setting to the middle of a vast rehearsal/performance space. He has the band goof around as expected, but to do so completely deadpan. (My favorite moment is the most bored drumbeat in the history of rock and roll, just after the 2:40 mark.) And then he films the whole thing with some of the most loving and meticulous cinematography I've ever seen in a music video. It's shot like a 35mm widescreen documentary, as if they were capturing what is predicted to be an important moment in musical history—a moment that involved a guy sticking his tongue through a piece of paper with a cartoon face scrawled on it. And let's not forget the lighting thing, which turns out to be even more radical than it sounds on paper. Romanek hadn't entered the world of feature films at that point, not yet, but with "El Scorcho," you can tell that not only did he so, so want to, but that, without a doubt, he absolutely should.

#10: "Bastards of Young," The Replacements

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:35:17 GMT

Rank: 10
Artist: The Replacements
Title: Bastards of Young
Director: unknown
Year: 1986

At long, long last, we reach the top 10 of this sprawling list-thing with the most poignant argument against the existence of music videos ever made. Swell. The term "anti-video" is one that gets bandied about in critical circles quite a bit, and almost always incorrectly. It tends to get attached to clips like Cake's "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" and blink182's "Rock Show," which thumb their noses at conventional direction, narrative and visuals. But that doesn't make them anti-videos; they may be iconoclastic, but in the end they're "just" videos that call for an expansion of the definition of what a video is, rather than anything designed to attack the art of music video itself. (And videos that are parodies of videos don't even enter the question.) To the best of my knowledge, the only band ever to truly indulge in honest-to-God anti-videos was the Replacements, and they never did it better than they did with "Bastards of Young." Those who oppose music video as an art form argue that it robs music lovers of the opportunity to form their own associations with the songs used. Music, they say, is very personal and experiential, and a song can strike powerful attachments with our memories and emotions; by splashing someone else's narrative across the screen, the folks at MTV are forcing a particular association on the viewer, stuck there for all time. The only visuals that should be involved are the album cover and the room the listener is in. And that's exactly what the Replacements give us: a single shot over some guy's shoulder of the stereo playing the album. Period. That's all. In the middle of MTV's usual visual onslaught, it's a reminder of what music was like before MTV ever existed, and a middle finger aimed at the very networks that put it into rotation. As for us, we're forced to accept the song on the band's own terms as a piece of music, not a soundtrack. Yes, at the end there's a bit of post-punk property damage to keep it from drifting into Warholian pretension, but even that comes off as, "We're just another rock and roll band. Don't take us seriously, either." And now, two decades later, I'm sitting in this chair, having devoted a year to my music video obsession, and "Bastards of Young" is making me feel sheepish and ashamed for ever doing so. F***ing brilliant.

#11: "Dear God," XTC

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:57:33 GMT

Rank: 11
Artist: XTC
Title: Dear God
Director: Nick Brandt
Year: 1987

The delays between posts keep getting longer and longer, and I apologize for that. I have to admit, though, that for a while the foot-dragging was for a very specific reason: "Dear God" had completely vanished from YouTube, and I refused to go on without it. (In the end, I found a copy elsewhere and uploaded it myself. It was either that, or link to the only other YouTube copy, which for reasons unknown had been subtitled.) The wait, however, may have been a blessing in disguise, because it's given me a chance to process why I adore this clip so much. I've never seen anything like it, but it's not immediately obvious why it's so unique. I mean, yes, the concept is brilliant, and yes, the swooping crane shots are second to none, and yes, that ancient, grappling tree in the middle of a field may be the greatest setting ever used on a video, but there's something more, a left-of-center vibe that I couldn't quite place. Then it dawned on me: it's the editing. The vast majority of music videos fall in one of two categories, editing-wise. In most cases, the cutting lands somewhere in the frenetic-to-spastic continuum. Those that don't usually are single-shot videos, either as rtistic statements or as bravura demonstrations of directorial skill. Director Nick Brandt, on the other hand, does neither on "Dear God." His editing style here is more cinematic, and slow to the point of luxury. The first two shots alone take nearly a full minute, and further shots take nearly as long (or even longer, in the case of the first bit after night falls). This gives us a chance to ponder the images of people in the trees, representing the Protestant ideal that Andy Partridge is rejecting. It's a contemplative, philosophical song, and by lingering Brandt gives us the chance to ponder the same questions the song poses. Until, of course, the drumbeat begins to pound, Andy begins to shout God down, and the hatchets begin to fly. "Dear God" was only a B-side, and not even included on Skylarking, the album it supported, but it was on the strength of both the song and this video (a multiple VMA nominee) that it became XTC's biggest hit, and quite possibly the classiest moment MTV had experienced that decade. Continue this list without it? Not on your life.

#12: "Street Spirit," Radiohead

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:43:33 GMT

Rank: 12
Artist: Radiohead
Title: Street Spirit
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Year: 1996

Not to make excuses, but I have a reason why this one was so delayed: for probably the last time in this list, I don't know what to say. Part of the problem is that the clip itself is an embarrassment of riches, and part of it is that Jonathan Glazer is one of a minority of directors of whom you can say, "There's no one else like him," and not be able to explain why. In the end, it all comes down to that nebulous concept of "mood": easy to say, hard to pin down. If a director gets the mood right, he can come away with a transcendent work of art; if he gets it wrong, you want to stab his eyes out with something pointy. (Go and YouTube search for the Keef-directed clip for Kate Bush's "Army Dreamers" for an example of a royally screwed-up attempt. I still have a hit out on this Keef guy.) In the case of "Street Spirit," I think I can count on one hand the number of videos that can even remotely compare in terms of mood evocation, shaping the images into deep breaths of sad longing just as the band did with the music. And he pulls it off on all levels. Cinematography? Stark black-and-white. Lighting? Sharp contrast. Setting? An aging trailer park, of the chrome-and-rounded-corners era, in the dead of some god-forsaken night, lightning approaching. Special effects? As simple as could be, all slow-motion and superimposition—perhaps ordinary and gimmicky anywhere else, but when combined with that black and white, harsh flare and deep shadow, it comes out ethereal and haunting. Choice of images? Ahh, here's where Glazer shines. It's almost as if he wanted to prove that the old clichés could still work: horses, falling bodies, night insects, blood, snarling dogs, all done before, and yet all made as fresh as new. And heavens, those dancers, captured as if they've leapt from the pages of a Lois Greenfield coffee table book, making me catch my breath every time. I don't know why Radiohead has such a knack of finding just the right directors every time, but they do. For a band with a career's worth of exceptional videos, this one is their best.

#13: "Subterranean Homesick Blues," Bob Dylan

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:07:34 GMT

Rank: 13
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Subterranean Homesick Blues
Director: D.A. Pennebaker
Year: 1965

Try to look surprised, folks. I've heard some parties identify "Subterranean Homesick Blues" as the first music video ever, which it wasn't—the films prepared for Scopitone TV jukeboxes date back to 1960, and there were plenty of theatrical shorts made even earlier that would certainly qualify. (I've even heard arguments placing Disney's Fantasia at the head of the line, a claim that's not entirely without basis.) And of course, it wasn't really intended as a "music video" at all; it was filmed in the alley behind London's Savoy Hotel as a segment for Pennebaker's documentary Dont Look Back [sic], and was used as the trailer for its 1967 release. Yet in an odd way, the "first music video ever" claims have it right, in that this was the first clip to demonstrated the music video attitude: cheeky, self-parodying, stripped-down, and edgier that most people remember, the stuff that would someday make MTV (in)famous. Moreover, it's arguable the most iconic video ever filmed. Think about it: it came out at a time when there was no distribution resource at all for music videos, and yet, I can't think of a video that has been copied, parodied, paid homage to, or otherwise referenced as much as this one. The concept (imagined by Dylan himself) of a stack of cue cards hitting (more or less) the bullet points of the lyrics—with or without Allen Ginsburg and Bob Neuwirth skulking about in the background—is easy to take for granted now, and even easier to have its brilliance overlooked. It is so, so simple, and yet funny, pointed, instantly recognizable, and infinitely adaptable, as has been proven by parodists and admirers ranging from INXS (in their almost-made-this-list clip for "Need You Tonight/Mediate") to Weird Al Yankovic to Les Claypool to the Flaming Lips to Tim Robbins (in Bob Roberts) to the ad men at Maxell. I think I realized just how ingrained in our collective cultural memory "Subterranean Homesick Blues" really is when I saw a commercial for an online dating service in Knoxville, Tennessee that was filmed in an alley, with a folkish song playing, and a woman holding up one cue card after another. I thought, My God, it's more than four decades later, and the Dr. Phil crowd still knows it on sight. Truly one for the ages, and deservedly so.

#14: "Come Into My World," Kylie Minogue

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:14:45 GMT

Rank: 14
Artist: Kylie Minogue
Title: Come Into My World
Director: Michel Gondry
Year: 2002

It is no small measure of Michel Gondry's genius that he got me to watch a Kylie Minogue video more than once. One of Gondry's greatest assets is the fact that he was a rock drummer before he was a video director (his first clips were for his own band, Oui-Oui). Because he has a good ear for music in general and rhythm in particular, he's able to pick out musical abstractions and interpret them in concrete visual forms. Sometimes this talent is quite overt, as in his clips for the Chemical Brothers' "Star Guitar," the White Stripes' "The Hardest Button to Button" and Daft Punk's "Around the World" [q.v.], but it often manifests itself in more subtle ways. For example, when he listened to "Come Into My World," he noticed that it conformed to a consistent cycle: the chorus always turned up at regular, rigid intervals, regardless of whether the intervening space was filled with a verse, or an instrumental, or whatever. So, since the song basically loops back upon itself, so does the video. Gondry set up a motion-control camera in the middle of a French intersection, set up to follow the more-or-less simple circular path that Kylie would walk, past a meter maid, a poster hanger, an angry girlfriend throwing her beau's stuff out the window, a girl jumping across concrete posts, and so on. A full circuit only takes a minute, though, and it's at the top of lap #2 that he throws us a curve by cuing up lap #1 again, and overlapping the two, so that at the same time she walks past the door she came out of at the beginning, we see her coming out exactly as she had in the first place. This alone would be pretty cool—the moment when Kylie[minus 1 minute] drops her purse and Kylie[now] picks it up would alone be enough to get it on this list—but Gondry decided to go gonzo with the plan and double everyone: two meter maid, two poster hangers, etc. But lap #2 only lasts a minute more, and as she begins on lap #3 the director overlaps the scene from the beginning again, leaving with three Kylies (and three meter maids, and...), all at roughly one-minute intervals. by the fourth lap, the streets are getting horribly crowded; probably the most amazing thing about the video is the fact that there's never a time when two bodies try to occupy the same space at the same time. (Of course, the two days of rehearsal and the countless weeks of post-production helped a lot.) It's all classic Gondry how-the-hell-did-he-do-that fare, and I've never gotten tired of it. Just wait 'til you see what happens when she swings around the pole the second, then the third, then the fourth time, and you'll be addicted, too.

#15: "Stinkfist," Tool

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 01:41:44 GMT

Rank: 15
Artist: Tool
Title: Stinkfist
Director: Adam Jones
Year: 1996

Yes, I know that this entry is long overdue. Part of that's because I've been absurdly busy, but part of it's also because I keep thinking about the One That Got Away. I mentioned in the introductory entry to this project that I was hoping to track down a copy of the Brothers Quay-directed clip for "Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)" by Michael Penn; sadly, after much research, I've come to the conclusion that nobody has it. (The closest I've come is two teensy little QuickTime files kept here, if you'd care to squint at what you're missing.) The Quays' kitchen-sink avant-WTF stop-motion animation style was all the rage in the mid-90's, and when combined with the quirky, moody acoustic sound of Penn's single, it made for truly compelling viewing that leaves me heartbroken that I can't include it. But just as director Jan Svankmeier's weird animation and puppetry influenced the Brothers Quay, the Brothers themselves kick-started a thousand imitators, most notably Tool guitarist Adam Jones, who directed all of his band's videos. Jones pulled off the difficult task of crafting an entire video look for the band based around the dark and the strange without a single band member in sight, and did so amazingly well. Earlier Tool videos like the animation-based "Prison Sex" wore their Quayish leanings on their sleeves, but "Stinkfist" set out for new live-action territory with all disturbing darkness intact. The director started with ordinary people and recognizable artifacts from our world—a telephone, a TV, tables and chairs—but pushed them forcibly into the surreal by covering everything, living or not, with a silver-blue powder that rendered it all anonymous and unsettling. (The powder technique had been used prior to that, but never on human beings; the producers found out later that it was in fact rather toxic.) He then used these images to create a world like ours, only turned on its head: iron nails for meals, visual static for entertainment, our secret fears and neuroses turned tangible as grotesque amputees, creatures and machines. The "metaphoric" knob has been cranked up to 10, the "dark" knob to 11, and the "creepy" knob up to somewhere about 37. Frankly? It'd give the Brothers Quay the heebie-jeebies.

#16: "The Scientist," Coldplay

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:19:02 GMT

Rank: 16
Artist: Coldplay
Title: The Scientist
Director: Jamie Thraves
Year: 2002

What interesting timing: just yesterday, while I was pondering what to write in today's post, I happened upon a sidebar in the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly all about backward videos, presenting some thoughts and sentiments similar to mine. The thing most on my mind about "The Scientist" is this: Gimmicks are wonderful things (and I'm a sucker for 'em), but in the end they're just gimmicks. Take the concept of taping in reverse, with the artist lip-synching everything backward so that it all matches up in the end. Spike Jonze broke this ground with his clip for the Pharcyde's "Drop" [q.v.], which was a fun, engrossing and well-made little piece of video. That said, though, there's not really anything beyond that retrograde conceit, beyond hey-wow-that's-really-cool. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that—"Drop" appears on this list for a very good reason—but at some point, someone's going to come along and say, "And?" In this case, the "And?" came from Jamie Thraves, who answered his own question this way: What if a backward video could also sustain a narrative? That would mean we'd be starting at the end of the story and working back in time, right? Well, what story would you tell that way? The sly part is that he doesn't let on to the viewer that there's a narrative at all, or at least not at first. We get the usual kicky, splashy stuff like singer Chris Martin "falling" into an upright position, and a basketball game with weird inverse physics (I think there's a bylaw that requires a basketball to appear in any backward clip). But there's not nearly as much of it as you'd think, because Thraves is less interested at showing off the technique than putting it to work. As we watch, the video evolves from quirky to lyrical (I love the autumn leaves fluttering to heaven around him), then, surprisingly, from lyrical to mysterious, when we spy the body of a young woman lying in the field. And it's at this point that we realize that all we've seen leads to/from this one point in time, in that startling shot of the girl rising from the ground, amid a galaxy of broken glass, and mysterious shifts inexorably into tragic—all the more so when we see their smiles at the end of the clip, and know that their joy and this perfect autumn day are about to fall apart. "I'm going back to the start," sings Martin, because in light of what we know now, the start is a far better place to be. Stunning. (Plus, it must be noted, Martin lip-synchs in reverse better than anyone.)

#17: "One (Jammin' Version)," Metallica

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:28:32 GMT

Rank: 17
Artist: Metallica
Title: One (Jammin' Version)
Directors: Michael Salomon & Bill Pope
Year: 1989

(My apologies for the long delay....)

One of the most depressing moments I've ever experienced as a music video fanatic came in 1989, when MTV announced the results of a phone-in poll they had recently conducted. The question was, "Which do you prefer: concept videos, or performance videos?" And performance videos won, dag blast it. It wasn't just that my beloved concepts got voted down; the other problem—the big one— was that this took place deep in the middle of the hair-metal craze, when seemingly every video was a concert thing, and every video looked Exactly The Same. The focus was entirely on stage antics: guitar tossing, synchronized hair shaking, stage diving, pyrotechnic hoohah, and enough spandex to shrink-wrap Yugoslavia. The knowledge that MTV's viewers preferred this over what David Fincher and company were doing at the time frankly made me ill. In the middle of all this, however, there was a bit of a stir over the fact that Metallica was breaking their career-long no-videos rule with a clip for their single "One," a video that, yes, was performance-based. But "One" couldn't have been more different from what the Poisonously Warranted Slaughter-Wingers were doing, simply because the directors, Michael Salomon and Bill Pope chose to focus on the band's formidable musical talent, rather than showy posturing that the Marty Callners of the world were making. To this end, they took the band off the stage in put them in a rehearsal space, an empty warehouse, which hadn't been much done before. They shot in high-contrast black-and-white, while simultaneously realizing that "cinematography" means more than "point camera at subject and press green button." And most importantly, they composed their shots according to what would best convey that these are musicians, and gifted ones at that. This meant focusing on guitar and on drums, often to the point of cropping out faces (and when faces are shown, we see sweat and intense concentration instead of lip-licking and Pepsodent smiles). By editing these scenes together with longer shots that show the band wailing away without so much as a thought about the camera, we are led to feel less like an audience and more like, well, their guests. The band released three different versions of the video, including the most famous one, which incorporated scenes from the antiwar film Johnny Got His Gun, the inspiration for the song. But it's the "Jammin' Version" that may be the quintessential performance video, the one that set the standard for the next decade. (And make sure you catch the brief interview at the end—it seems I'm not alone on the hair metal thing.)

#18: "Hurt," Johnny Cash

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:24:54 GMT

Rank: 18
Artist: Johnny Cash
Title: Hurt
Director: Mark Romanek
Year: 2002

The first time around, I must confess, I didn't watch it. "Hurt," the clip that would be Johnny Cash's last, had been picked up by VH1 on heavy rotation when it first came out, but I always flipped away—the man's voice had faded to a whisper of its former glory, and it was difficult to listen to. I didn't know at the time why it had gone into rotation in the first place. I didn't know that Cash had agreed to work with Mark Romanek on the advice of his producer and good friend Rick Rubin, who said that he "trusts this guy completely." I didn't know that Romanek had arrived at Cash's home with no idea of what his video would contain, and only a few days to prepare and film. And I didn't know that between Cash's eternal directness and candor and Romanek's gifted eye, they would create a work that dares to examine the singer's age, his failing health, his very mortality, by showing us both the vibrant young man we all remember and the old man with frail voice and shaking hands he had become. No, it wasn't until almost a year later, after Cash had passed away on September 12, 2003, when the TV stations began playing the clip again in tribute, that I was able to watch it in its entirety. I don't think I've ever walked away from a music video as thunderstruck as I was after "Hurt," a relentless, unflinching reprisal of an enormous legacy, solidified into just a few minutes of video. Most of us hope to receive a eulogy with even a fraction of its power. Very, very few of us ever will.

#19: "From Your Mouth," God Lives Underwater

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:31:23 GMT

Rank: 19
Artist: God Lives Underwater
Title: From Your Mouth
Director: Roman Coppola
Year: 1998

When it comes to concepts behind music videos, I don't normally recommend staunch literalism. I mean, the basis for your video shouldn't be the title alone—otherwise, the clip for "Sledgehammer" would've consisted of five minutes of guys smashing stuff. I am, however, willing to make exceptions, especially if Roman Coppola is running the show. The song is called "From Your Mouth," and...well, I'm sure you can draw some conclusions before I even start talking. Like Spike Jonze's work on "Weapon of Choice" [q.v.], this video lives and dies by its casting; I doubt this would have worked with anyone else on the screen. The young man in question is Hirofumi Nakajima, who at the time was the record-holder at the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York. His presence is absolutely essential to the success of this clip, not only because of his ability to consume large quantities of food quickly (he's seated in front of a banquet of everything from sardines to watermelon to ice cream to, yes, hot dogs), but to do so very smoothly, one bite following another in close succession, so that you hardly notice that the footage is being played backward. Oh, did I mention? The clip is in reverse, so that each bite he takes, he seems to untake, thus reconstructing the banana, the broccoli, and so on, nibble by nibble, seemingly making the food materialize from, yes, his mouth. In short, we're basically watching this skinny kid pull a full four-course dinner out of his maw in a single long uninterrupted shot. (Unconfirmed rumor has it that this was his sixth take, no less.) Some people get hideously squicked by it, but there's no reason why they should. Personally, I find it hysterical, and well-constructed besides, especially when the camera pans back at the end for a surprising bit of visual closure. It's a good thing I had lunch BEFORE I typed this....

#20: "Ava Adore," The Smashing Pumpkins

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 19:39:25 GMT

Rank: 20
Artist: Smashing Pumpkins
Title: Ava Adore
Director: Dom & Nic
Year: 1998

At long, long last, we reach the top 20. And yet I am faced with a quandary: I must somehow deal with the fact that I've placed a video in the top 20 on the basis of fifteen seconds of footage; furthermore, those 15 seconds are the direct result of a single small directorial choice by Dominic Hawley and Nick Goffey, a.k.a. Dom & Nic. The concept behind the clip for "Ava Adore" is old and time-tested: the camera pans sideways in an uninterrupted take from one room to another, from one scene to anothers, until these rooms and scenes in some way add up to their own narrative. As I said, not the most original idea ever—it's been used by everyone from Elton John to the Monkees to the parties responsible for the opening credits to A Different World—and not something I'd normally be in a tizzy over. Granted, the conceit is handled impeccably here, with art direction owing more than a little to Federico Fellini in its decadence and (yes, I'll say it) freakiness, which for once fits in nicely with Billy Corgan's Nosferatu-meets-Oscar-Wilde stage persona. That alone would put this video in the running for this list, maybe even putting it as high as 50 or so. But then there's that directorial decision and those 15 seconds I mentioned earlier, and I cannot overstate how gobsmacked this left me when I first saw it. The rooms, you see, aren't all in a single row, but in two rows facing each other, as if they wanted to conserve space for some reason. This means that the camera, upon reaching the end of row 1, must either cut or turn around to face row 2. Assuming we don't want to cut, the easy solution is to build a suitably spectacular wraparound set at the end, and use that as the pivot point for the turn. The stroke of genius is that they don't do that. Instead, they let the camera swing around 180° the other way, back the way we came. So at the pivotal moment (pun only somewhat intended), we see the current room, then the room we just left, the room before that, the dolly track that holds the camera (!!), the film crew, the stage lighting, all the rooms we haven't even been to yet....and then suddenly we're back to Billy as if nothing had happened. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, indeed. When dealing with a surrealistic video like "Ava Adore," we depend on the suspension of disbelief to appreciate the art. With that one decision and that one turn, Dom & Nic take that suspension and stick a pitchfork in it. A brief moment, a small detail, but one that makes every difference in the world.

#21: "Closer," Nine Inch Nails

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:30:42 GMT

Rank: 21
Artist: Nine Inch Nails
Title: Closer
Director: Mark Romanek
Year: 1994

This shouldn't have worked. There are plenty of reasons why: Oh, here's another shock-value attention getter. Oh, here's another Mark Romanek-sponsored game of Name That Homage ("let's see, that shot's from Joel Peter Witkin, that shot's from....") But Romanek has made a career of taking unworkable ideas and making something extraordinary out of them. What sets "Closer" so many miles above most of the other self-consciously cringe-inducing epater les bourgeois-type clips (and don't worry, I promise I'll never use French again) is the director's understanding that for shock imagery to have any lasting effect, it must all add up to something. Anton Corbijn understood that as well when making "Heart-Shaped Box" [q.v.], a video with a similar impact, but here, Romanek goes pig's-head-and-cow's-shoulders above the bar. He has a gifted eye for images that will startle and unsettle, but not repel; in this veritable freak show, he manages to utilize the obscene, the blasphemous, the profane, the scatological, the taboo, the kinky, the sadistic, the grotesque, the bizarre and the just plain icky, and do so without pushing the whole enterprise over the line to the unwatchable. There again, we come back to the idea of the cohesive whole. His decision to bathe everything in sepia-tone was a brilliant one: it not only ties things together that would otherwise be difficult to connect, but it removes the whole film from our time and space, leaving us disoriented. Combined with expert Cuisinart editing, the use of century-old technology and printed materials, and the inch of dust and cobwebs that covers the entire video, we are left with the sense of old secrets, of old primal fears, of back rooms in abandoned houses filled with things we were never meant to see. Over a decade later, "Closer" still knocks the wind out of me.

(Note: The linked video is the complete unedited director's cut, the one MTV wouldn't touch with a ten-foot cattle prod. If you've not seen it, this is your chance to catch the full frontal nudity, the gynecological illustrations, and the crucified monkey that were hiding behind those "SCENE MISSING" placards. No, you don't want to watch this at work, thank you.)

#22: "Weapon of Choice," Fatboy Slim

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:47:45 GMT

Rank: 22
Artist: Fatboy Slim
Title: Weapon of Choice
Director: Spike Jonze
Year: 2001

One of the things I find interesting about the Internet, and the democratization of the media that comes with it, is the shift in the concept of "buzz." Nowadays, if a music video (like, say, OK Go's "Here It Goes Again") catches good buzz, it does so by being instantly linked to, e-mailed and otherwise spread around the world to whomever wants to see it, and a bunch of people who don't. But back in the glory days of MTV, buzz surrounding a music video meant one-on-one conversations along the lines of, "Have you seen that 'Need You Tonight / Mediate' video yet?" And if your answer was "no," your only hope was to watch MTV for hours on end in hopes of catching it before it fell out of rotation. As MTV's commitment to music waned, it became harder and harder to individual clips to generate that kind of word-of-mouth excitement, which puts "Weapon of Choice" in the interesting position of being among the last true buzz-generating videos of the Old Guard. The great thing is, the buzz was completely earned by merit. The concept of the video, and what made it so bizarre and yet so wonderfully watchable, could be passed on to your friends in three words: Christopher Walken dancing. Walken is actually an old song-and-dance man from way back, but not many people knew that until this video came out. In the end, the casting is what makes "Weapon of Choice" so perfect; what would have been a nice-but-so-what clip with anyone else becomes a deft and giddy shish-kebabbing of our preconceived notions of Walken, Fatboy Slim, techno and music videos themselves all at once. And because this is Spike Jonze, he has enough respect for Slim, Walken, the song and the viewer to lavish enough attention to make it cinematically dazzling, right up to and beyond the moment when Walken's dancing leaves the real and takes literal flight. Come to think of it, "Weapon of Choice" earned its buzz for the same reasons "Here It Goes Again" did: There aren't many videos that are nearly as fun.

#23: "Lucas With the Lid Off," Lucas

Thu, 31 May 2007 02:30:12 GMT

Rank: 23
Artist: Lucas
Title: Lucas With the Lid Off
Director: Michel Gondry
Year: 1994

I think my Michel Gondry fetish started right here. I remember hearing about the clip for "Lucas With the Lid Off" years before I first saw it, and when I finally did, I needed a backhoe to get my jaw off the floor. Plenty of people have made videos on how to make a video (Phil Collins used behind-the-scenes footage and explanatory interviews so often, I thought he was being paid off by Panasonic), but no one has ever done as thorough a deconstruction as Gondry has here. He started with as straightforward a concept as he could: the video would be about a rent party, an old jazz-age trick for raising rent money by hauling a piano up to the flat and charging folks admission—perfect for the swing-flavored song. He then constructed sets for every shot he wanted to use on the same soundstage. From there, he placed a black frame to represent where the camera was to go for each scene, and thus what the viewer is to see. (If you look closely, you can see that the frames are numbered in shot order, with some frames bearing multiple numbers for multiple shots.) All well and good, except for the mind-melting bit: he doesn't cut between the shots. Instead, he has the camera swing from frame to frame, line up for a few precious seconds, and then move on to the next frame. One shot, one camera, one continuous take. And since Scene X and Scene X+1 may feature the same performer, even though the set for Scene X is nowhere near the set for X+1 ("wait, how the hell did he get over there?!"), Gondry dumps out his bag of tricks like a suitcase, using mirrors, embedded video monitors, wonky camera angles, even building the same set multiple times to capture multiple angles. Oh, and lots of mad dashing from set to set by Lucas, who very seriously barked his shin on one take on a piece of furniture. Worth it, though. Ohhh, so, so worth it.

#24: "Rabbit in Your Headlights," U.N.K.L.E., featuring Thom Yorke

Tue, 22 May 2007 17:42:33 GMT

Rank: 24
Artist: U.N.K.L.E., featuring Thom Yorke
Title: Rabbit in Your Headlights
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Year: 1995

Every now and again, MTV goes the whole nine yards and, not satisfied with demanding a new cut for a controversial video, simply up and bans the clip outright. It doesn't happen all that often (even though Madonna's managed to pull it off twice), but when it does, there's usually a pretty clear-cut reason for it. "Rabbit in Your Headlights," though, got blackballed for being, and I quote, "too disturbing"—a hell of an accusation, especially coming from the network that gave Chris Cunningham a career (and thought that The Idiot Box with Alex Winter was worthwhile programming). That said, it does start off difficult to watch, and only gets worse as it goes. The first time "It" happens we wince, the second time we cringe, and by the fourth or fifth iteration we're shielding our eyes and wondering, "Is there a purpose for all this?" I assure you: there is, indeed, a purpose for all this, and it's nothing short of magical—magical enough to warrant such a high spot on this list. If you've not seen it before, my advice is to just stay the course and watch, and wait for the moment near the end, when the madman stops raving. Watch his face as whatever answers he was seeking come to him in a single rush, the car comes speeding behind him, he throws his arms wide, and....

#25: "Mad World," Gary Jules & Michael Anderson

Mon, 14 May 2007 15:56:11 GMT

Rank: 25
Artist: Gary Jules & Michael Andrews
Title: Mad World
Director: Michel Gondry
Year: 2004

Human emotional response is complicated. Take, for instance, Michel Gondry's video for "Mad World (the second clip for that song; don't even bother with the first). The concept isn't dazzlingly new: a group of schoolchildren, viewed from above, arrange themselves into various shapes and images, Busby Berkeley-style. And the shapes they form themselves into—a face, a bird, a flag, a car—aren't exactly momentous or provocative. So why on earth is this video so utterly moving? In this case, I think it's all about the context. Gondry does something that may seem small, but makes all the difference: he lets the camera and its single unedited shot track away from the scene below, and lets us see the cars passing, the basketball game across the street, the city skyline, and finally, Gary (and at the end, Michael at his piano) standing alone on the school rooftop. No, not alone: next to us, as we listen to him sing about youth, alienation and loneliness. All of a sudden, we're not anonymous observers of a pat display of choreography any more. We're now standing on a rooftop, watching children playing below us, a group that knows themselves so well that their whole is greater than the sum of their parts. A group that we are not part of, and maybe never were. We watch these people run in circles, and think, it's a very, very mad world. And every time I watch, I fight tears.

#26: "Burning Down the House," Talking Heads

Fri, 11 May 2007 17:20:27 GMT

Rank: 26
Artist: Talking Heads
Title: Burning Down the House
Director: David Byrne
Year: 1983

I was fully prepared to do this post days ago, except for one problem: I had no clue of what to say. I wanted to talk about how influential this video was, but I doubt it influenced many people at all. I wanted to talk about how it has aged much more gracefully than the other early "classic" Talking Heads video, the Toni Basil co-directed, local-access-cable-quality "Once in a Lifetime," but there's no mistaking "Burning Down the House" as being from any time other than 1983. I wanted to talk about its evocative-for-the-time imagery and its innovative use of film projections, but then I couldn't quite express what was so innovative about it. Then I started asking myself why I'd included it in the list at all, let alone in the top 30. And then I watched it again, and discovered that, nearly a quarter of a century after the fact, there is still no doubt in my mind of its worthiness. So I think I'm forced to punt on this one, and say that David Byrne has pulled off a work of small, peculiar, inarticulable genius. You be the judge.

#27: "Pretty Good Year," Tori Amos

Tue, 08 May 2007 17:13:28 GMT

Rank: 27
Artist: Tori Amos
Title: Pretty Good Year
Director: Cindy Palmano & Sam Riley
Year: 1994

The Tori Amos fans who are reading this are likely raising their eyebrows at me right now, but bear with me. When Tori first presented herself as a solo artist with Little Earthquakes in 1992, her visual look was handled from top to bottom by Cindy Palmano, who did the graphics for the CD and related EPs, as well as the four videos from that album. Palmano has a very distinctive style: sparse, fragile, open, with a Zen-like, almost fetishistic treatment of everyday objects. The style works marvelously in print, and often works just as well with video—the four spots from the album ranged from the excellent ("Silent All These Years") to the not ("China")—but those early clips had the flaw of being a bit too sparse, to the point of seeming detached and distant. When Tori's second CD, Under the Pink, came into being, Palmano again did the graphic design, but only one video, "Pretty Good Year," and that was a collaboration with one-off director Sam Riley. Whatever Riley brought to the table, however, it worked: the video has a warmth and an intimacy that the earlier works, despite their smallness, lacked. The images are still recognizably Palmano's (a chair, strings of crystal beads, screensful of negative space), but we're inside that space now, welcomed in; even just the fact that that chair is in an actual room, rather than against an anonymous expanse of white, does wonders. Nothing much happens here, and it doesn't need to: the video, like the song (like Tori in that moment, even), is all light and air and Sunday morning. Yes, Tori fans, I know there's about six or seven titles you'd likely have picked first, but I'm standing by my choice, and I hope you'll approve.

#28: "I'm Afraid of Americans," David Bowie, featuring Trent Reznor

Mon, 07 May 2007 15:28:24 GMT

Rank: 28
Artist: David Bowie, featuring Trent Reznor
Title: I'm Afraid of Americans
Director: Dom & Nic
Year: 1997

When it comes to making music videos, it's rather easy to achieve "shocking": throw some taboo images up on the screen, and watch everyone squirm. More difficult is "disturbing," which requires taking those same shocking images and actually putting them to use; instead of just tossing them around, you must stitch them together to create a whole package that leaves the viewer uneasy. Hardest of all, though, is "unsettling": creating that feeling of unease without the shock images, leaving the viewer disturbed without quite knowing why. On the short list of directors who can pull this tightrope act off, I put Dom & Nic, a team that seemed poised for greatness in the late '90s after their attention-grabbing clips for the Chemical Brothers and Supergrass, but who faded from view without completely going away. Their knack from the unsettling is put to brilliant use on "I'm Afraid of Americans, a triumph of social commentary. In filming a critique of American gun culture, centered around David Bowie's paranoia manifested as hallucinations of violence, it would have been a snap to do "shocking" or "disturbing"—just show the violence, the guns, the before and the after. What Dom & Nic do, though, is more subversive: they leave in the context, but take away the guns, replacing them with two fingers outstretched, thumb cocked back, like a child's game of Cops and Robbers. There's no reason why it should be frightening, but it is, without a drop of blood spilled. And in so doing, Bowie's paranoia becomes ours, and when we see the funeral procession (with Reznor relishing his role as only he can), we don't need to be told that it's for us.