10. Dr. Dre f/ Snoop Dogg – “Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang”
(Dir. Andre Young, 1993)
In late 1992, Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he shall forever be known by me) unleashed the “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” video, and before you could say “one, two, three an’ to the four,” rap was forever changed. “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” invited kids previously terrified by Gangsta Rap to the after-party for the first time, where they could just chill till the next episode. It wasn’t good time-y, but good times were certainly had—who wouldn’t want to chill with Dre and Snoop for a barbeque, go cruising down Crenshaw in a drop-top and spray the snotty girl at the party with some shook up St. Ides? But Dre saves the best shot for last, as an obviously inebriated Snoop Dogg gets dropped off and stumbles back to his house, the newly risen sun shining bright into the camera, and you know it’s just a matter of hours before they get up and do it all over again.
09. Daft Punk – “Around the World”
(Dir. Michel Gondry, 1997)
In a genre strewn with videos that sought to recreate Microsoft Screen Savers, Daft Punk’s decision to hire prominent music video directors for the singles of their seminal Homework album was sort of a revolution in and of itself. Following up Spike Jonze’s dog-with-a-boombox treatment of “Da Funk,” the two French robots tapped Michel Gondry. His idea? A cornucopia of Halloween costumes, each signifying one of the five elements of the song: drum machine (mummies), vocoder (robots), guitar (skeletons), bass (those weird tall guys with small heads), and synth (what Gondry termed “disco girls”), all dancing in front of the blinking disco lights set up by Gondry’s brother—a long-time collaborator. Gondry calls it one of his favorite videos that he has done. It’s also one of dance music’s most epochal.
08. Jay-Z – “99 Problems”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 2004)
There’s so much wound into such a brief space here that it practically has to be cut down frame by frame to be analyzed. The most startling and memorable—the costumed dancer in the tunnel, the man holding the urn among the coffins—are further underscored by the jarring contrast between the jumpy, canted action shots and the smooth close-ups on people’s faces. The rest of the world might take umbrage at the New-York-is-all universality of human experience on display, but the only reason that Spike Lee-style NY-centricity fits at all is because it unquestionably suits Jay-Z. If Public Enemy was the ideal soundtrack for the colorful but angry “Do the Right Thing,” then Black Album-era Jay-Z is the music that could match The 25th Hour—dark, fuming, fearless, and held back only by its inability to single out a clear enemy from a crowd of people whose problems all seem too numerous to count.
07. Bjork – “All Is Full of Love”
(Dir. Chris Cunningham, 1999)
Its sound, its process, its arrangements, everything about Homogenic suggests its music should be cold and detached, emotionally devoid. And yet … and yet, as we’ve all surely come to experience, it is without question one of the most affecting albums you or I may ever hear. So for all that is made of the truly incredible and fruitful collaborative relationship between Bjork and Michel Gondry, it is Chris Cunningham, with his clip for “All Is Full of Love,” who visually perfectly captures Homogenic’s deceptive essence. With robots borne straight from Asimov’s own waking dreams, Cunningham, using little more than shadows and shades of whites and blacks and silvers, crafts an authentic and pure sensuality where none should conceivably exist. What results is one of the most visually stunning and deeply affecting music videos you or I may ever see.
06. The Replacements – “Bastards of Young”
(Dir. Unknown, 1985)
To a certain mindset, this is the Best Video Of All Time: One simple shot of an speaker, slowly pulling out to show the rest of the stereo and a bit of a rundown living room. Eventually someone comes in, sits down and smokes a cigarette, but the camera stays where it was—we barely see the guy. The sheer perversity of the video’s lethargy in the face of the power of the music, its refusal to engage in the fledgling tropes of the medium, is still compelling today. Although it was created out of a disdain for MTV that seems woefully old fashioned now, it was also one of the first clips to show us that you didn’t have to stick to the band playing, or even to anything involving the song, to make for riveting viewing.
05. Radiohead – “Just”
(Dir. Jamie Thraves, 1995)
To this day, some 11 years after it first appeared, you can go to any Radiohead message board, chat room or forum in the known universe, and somewhere, likely on the first page, will be that one question that has vexed so many—“What does the guy say at the end of the ‘Just’ video?” It is our generation’s version of “I buried Paul,” but for all director Jamie Thraves or anyone in the band has ever revealed, he may as well be saying “cranberry sauce” too. Whenever he’s been asked what few words compel the video’s hero to disconnect from the surrounding world and plop himself down on the pavement, Thom Yorke insists he’ll never tell. Most likely Yorke doesn’t know the phrase himself, as the ensuing decade has seen Radiohead striving with their music to solve just that kind of riddle themselves.
04. A-Ha – “Take on Me”
(Dir. Steve Barron, 1985)
Iconic. It’s really the only sure way to describe the video for “Take on Me,” one of the earliest examples of how an MTV clip propelled a song from being nothing to enumerating everything. It’s also the first time I ever saw a video that depicted an actual story, or at least that curtailed montage techniques together to form some kind of narrative, albeit one of a fantastically Swedish bent. From the eyebrows-appealingly-raised initiation to the Pinocchio hammering-on-the-door-of-life finale, it also marks the debut of a love affair brought from contemplation to consummation in three minutes and 45 seconds time. The life-into-animation-into-life analogy and windswept 80’s pencil drawings may have aged, but the neo-classical sentiments enshrined in “Take on Me” remain as a virtual bible of the video age.
03. Joy Divison – “Atmosphere”
(Dir. Anton Corbijn, 1988)
It’s a funeral of mourning and slapstick. Children or midgets dressed in Druid robes conduct the ceremony on a beach, and waddle around carrying a church steeple and iconic photographs of St. Ian Curtis. The first impression is that director Anton Corbjin made a tasteless tribute to Joy Division’s late singer and drifter of Britain’s post-industrial wasteland. Yet, the band’s brooding, hymnal melodies and tribal, danse macabre rhythms still takes hold of the viewer, and the visuals soon make sense. Corbjin lets the music flow with the gritty, decayed black and white cinematography, and he only displays the band and Curtis in still photographs, as if Joy Division is just a fading memory. Corbijn beautifully captures the moment when you lose a loved one, and you walk outside to see everything around you in stinging detail. Unforgettable.
02. Johnny Cash – “Hurt”
(Dir. Mark Romanek, 2003)
“You stay the hell away from me, you hear?” Even before American Recordings proved it beyond all doubt, JC’ was a man with two careers in parallel: one bringing the poignancy, the other novelty tunes like “One Piece at a Time,” and that one where he does an impression of a guy being hung. So how better to close his career than by dovetailing the two: a novelty cover version paired with a video featuring poignancy laid on so thick as to crush your heart through sheer persistence. Cash as Jesus, Cash as the pouting rebel, Cash the American, Cash as America personified, Cash the husband, Cash the man in black, Cash the guy who sold records in their droves, Cash the lonely, scared, dying old man. It’s hard to imagine there could have been a better way to close the piano lid on his career.
01. U.N.K.L.E. f/ Thom Yorke – “Rabbit in Your Headlights”
(Dir. Jonathan Glazer, 1998)
The first time I saw “Rabbit in Your Headlights” was during the full light of day, with friends, only paying half attention—I believe we laughed as the decrepit, muttering vagrant walking through an underpass was creamed by passing cars only to stumble to his feet again. The second time I saw the video it was late and I was alone; as it started I settled in for some prime comedy. But this time, actually watching the man’s progress, it wasn’t funny. It was sad and powerful and strangely damning; like Philip K. Dick’s invented religion of Mercerism, it’s hard to escape the impression that the muttering man is suffering for our catharsis. And then there’s the end of the video, the part no-one forgets. As with the rest of “Rabbit in Your Headlights” it’s utterly cryptic and undeniably powerful, stretching towards transcendence in a beautifully shot shower of broken glass and metal like some kind of weird apotheosis. It’s almost impossible to say what it means, but it’s equally hard to find someone who can watch it, really watch it, and remain unmoved.
