Fight The Power

Extended, uncensored version of Public Enemy's great song.

Sympathy for the Devil

The Rolling Stones performing in their film "Rock n Roll Circus."

Freeze Frame

In the pre-Cambrian soup of music videos, the J. Geils Band used parachutes, paint, simple animation, some silent movie clips and basic video tricks to capture the energy of a fun R&B song.

Here it Goes Again

OK Go's athletic choreography makes this the probably the most popular straight-to-YouTube video.

Planet Caravan (Pantera)

Pantera's cover of the Black Sabbath song. The excellent imagery is from an innovative animation by Karl Sims called "Panspermia." While Sims himself does not believe in panspermia as a theory of life's origins, he uses it as a rich theme for the use of fractal geometry to simulate living organisms.

Money for Nothing

In it's time, the flat-surface animation against the corrosive guitar were so original and riveting, this video became a classic on people's first-viewings. What's to talk about that you don't already know?...

Theme: The Avengers

The Avengers was wry, intelligent, slick, stylish and exceedingly British. The show also inspired two very charming videos.

Don't Get Me Wrong
This Pretenders tune may have gone well with any imagery, but it works unusually well here -- the underlying sexual tension from the Avengers suits the lyrics quite well.




The Mayor of Simpleton
XTC riff on the Avengers in the style of a title sequence. This too is very appropriate as the lyrics confess stupidity with great cleverness: "...I don't know how many pounds make up a ton of all the Nobel prizes that I've never won..." For all it's affectations, it is clear Andy, Colin, Dave and a beautiful model are playing with props and horsing around.

Lucas with the Lid Off

This remarkable (if underrated) video was shot in one take on a figure-eight set. Mirrors, screens and mini-sets provide countless visual slights-of-hand. Directed by (of course) Michel Gondry.

Ana Ng

A love song to a stranger on the other side of world, a video set at an architecturally beautiful industrial site, cold war iconography used only as visual punctuation marks, text populating the screen like jumbled thoughts -- all these come together into a music video wonderfully conceived, filmed and edited. This is one of the best of They Might Be Giants.

Know Your Chicken

Cibo Mato tell a tale of domestic maturation/anarchy in the iconography of sitcoms. One of a kind.

Walk This Way (Run DMC and Aerosmith)

Brilliant at every level of conception. Rappers doing hard rock. Aerosmith reviving their career for good. This video predicts its own legend. It literally bridged the divide of Rap and Rock back when Casey Kasem was introducing us to the idea of "cross-over hit."

Electronic Behavior Control System

Video activists and culture-jammers, EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network) designed many angry collages from broadcast tele-visuals. While they have done numerous excellent pieces, this is probably their most provocative. They are one of the musical acts profiled in the documentary, "Sonic Outlaws."

Our House

Madness' classic. This video mixes performance with Monty-Python-like gadding. Somehow it captures a true sentiment without being trite. Pure fun.

The Act of Being Polite

The Residents wrote this for their "Commercial Album." The album is a collection of 40 1-minute songs. The video for "The Act of Being Polite" is now featured at the Museum of Modern Art.

Express Yourself

Madonna hit with stunning production values -- drawing from art deco and other early 20th Century art techniques. Gorgeous.

Sharkey's Day

One of the first video to use computer animation. Laurie Anderson seemed to anticipate the primitive nature of the graphics and used that primitivism to full effect. The chunky visuals (along with the misty ones) emphasize the satirical (yet sincere) nature of the song. Laurie Anderson confesses she still doesn't know who Sharkey is.

How Soon is Now

The Smith's anthem of angst with visuals from cheap video and over-saturated 8mm. It all works.

Fell in Love with a Girl

This song is a favorite with White Stripes fans from Detroit. For the video, Michel Gondry pixelated video in Photoshop and used those images to create thousands of actual Lego sculptures. The kinetics of the animation and the low-res-look of the Legos create an energy that any child of plastic blocks would appreciate.

Back on the Chain Gang

One of the best songs of the 80's. Amazing vocal performance from Chrissy Hynde. Heartbreaking lyrics. Matter-of-fact visuals juxtaposed against the extremes of freedom and imprisonment -- all in stone-blue colors. One of the greats.

Weapon of Choice

Fatboy Slim only appears in a reflected wall painting (allegedly Photoshopped into the video). The star is Christopher Walken doing (most of) the dancing. Ignore the wire work, just enjoy the dancing and the beautiful photography. All this is courtesy of Sipke Jonze.

Twilight Zone

This is the first music video that brought people's attention to the narrative power of the form. Done as a film noir, this Golden Earring video has plot twists, a great time-lapse image and a surprise ending worthy of Philip K. Dick. The panning shot of the stage at the final chorus shows great choreography, lighting, set design and thematic fidelity.

Shock the Monkey

When this appeared, it may have been the most sophisticated music video yet -- archetypal imagery amplified by excellent lighting and acting by Peter Gabriel. The visuals juxtapose a traditional businessman with a tribal shaman. The tension between the two images made obvious a spiritual contradiction representative of a part of late 20th Century.

It's Oh So Quiet

Spike Jonze choreographs wonderful visuals in the style of an MGM musical. The sweltering heat on the shoot seems only to amplify the outstanding performances. For all the amazing videos Bjork has made, this is arguably one of her best.

I am the Walrus

Say what you will about the film "Magical Mystery Tour" -- this segment anticipates a number of techniques that would become standard in 80's New Wave. The song is both prankish and expository of Lennon's collage-soul. The visuals predate Duran Duran by 15 years. In it's time, this segment was experimental film and it proved quite influential.

Come Dancing

The Kinks reminisce about the big band era. This kind of nostalgia might be dangerous for any other rock band (it can so easily decompose into sentimentality). The Kinks' gift is being able to take such emotionally touchy material and make it immediate. In this video, Ray Davies casts a kid as himself... and casts himself as a wag. (And an excellent vocal performance on his part.) Look as the desaturated colors which reckon old photographs. Also keep in mind: The time he was singing about was as far ago as this video is to us now.

Punk Rock Girl

DIY music video meets zombie movie. It's the Dead Milkmen. Just enjoy pure X factor.

Space Oddity (1969)

David Bowie was probably the first to recognize the Beatles' videos as an art form. This very early version of "Space Oddity" shows elements that would become commonplace for the MTV era: stark lighting with white backgrounds, very wide angle shots, optical effects, abrupt changes of picture quality and subject. (Some of these techniques were likely influenced by the film "2001: A Space Odyssey.") David Bowie may remain the most influential artist in music video and this very early example shows why.

Let Forever Be

Magic hobbyist Michel Gondry directs this Chemical Brothers video with a conceit -- use modern digital techniques and staging to replicate the cheesy video effects of 30 years ago. The result is a hypnotic and psychedelic story about a fragmented young woman who is late for work. (The fake beard only serves to enhance the effect.)