The Music Video Mini-List

[colinr0380]

More rioting anyone? Here's the 'young adult' take on the idea with The City by Madeon. I like the fun and paintballing games taken to extremes, but still get wonderfully pulled up short and a little choked up every time by the image of all the bodies lying on the ground at the end as being simultaneously an image both of exhausted happiness after play but also a premonition of more violent consequence filled conflicts to come in adult life.

The other great Madeon video is the Pop Culture mash up one.

[BenoitRouilly]

Following that is Gosh by Jamie_xx just for throwing a barrage of strangely mind bending themes at an audience that are as matter of fact as a replica of the Eiffel Tower being constructed somewhere in China (and acting as some kind of metaphysical antenna that requires albino people to power it?)
__

Coldplay (the stunning chalked floors of Strawberry Swing)

Gosh is directed by Romain Gavras (son of Costa-Gavras) and member of the Kourtrajmé (collective with Vincent Cassel, Matthieu Kassovitz, Kim Chapiron, and Ladj Ly of recent Cannes fame with Les Misérables). Romain Gavras directed Notre jour viendra (2010) about 2 redhead guys who feel persecuted because of the colour of their hair. So I'm less surprised to see this music video with albinos, which is amazing visually.

Strawberry Swing is stunning but I wonder how much of it is real chalk, and how much is post-production. Because chalk is messy and the erased parts are too clean. The shifting of large patterns is too identical (flawlessly) and doesn't look redrawn with each frame. Plus I see the 2 wires shaking the cape.

[colinr0380]

Oh yes I bet it is CGI, but its nice that they keep the pretence up of it being all done on a single street! Rather than seeing it as reality being augmented by CGI maybe things have now shifted to the opposite perspective and that is the job of reality these days, to add an augmenting layer of gritty verisimilitude to the flights of fancy instead.

[BenoitRouilly]

Yes, the actor himself is not CGI, and filmed from an aerial view.
It makes me think of Blu a street artist who doesn't use chalk but paint, but the concept is the same : off topic Combo

[BenoitRouilly]

Another artist who likes to create great music videos is Stromae, from Belgium, who started of as a YouTube songwriter, doing "music lessons" online, and got a breakthrough with the world renown Alors on danse at age 24. The music is excellent, but we're only looking at the videos here.

STROMAE – Papaoutai (2013) / Adam Nael
"Papaoutai" is an honomatopoeia sounding like "Daddy where you at?". Stromae plays the "Ken doll" daddy, and I'm not sure wether it's him or a manequin sometimes... His wife is his costume designer who comes up with these crazy patterns. In this idealized 1950ies suburbia sandbox dance neighbour couples with matching outfit, to reinforce the ideal relationship between father and son, or mother and daughter that the title as a cry out loud lacks.

STROMAE – Formidable (2013) [English subtitled video]
This one was a viral video that was taken at face value upon designed leakage in the press. We see a drunken Stromae in Brussels, singing his yet unreleased song (at the time) which is the complaint of a hobo talking to various nearby pedestrians. Filmed with hidden camera in undercover conditions. Even the cops were not in on it. The subtitle of the video is "ceci n'estpas une leçon / this is not a lesson" which refers to his online lessons, but has a double meaning as well (not being a moral lesson).

STROMAE – Ta Fête (2014) / Leven Van Baelen [English subtitled video]
Stromae is the grand organizer of a strange game of roman proportions : a modern day gladiator is thrown into an arena of concrete where a maze builds itself. The player must defeat adversaries at each corner until the boss. But the exit is far from a exhilerating ending.

Among others...

[Lowry_Sam]

Before plugging some more oldies, I was curious if viral “worst song/video ever” tracks would qualify (for their entertainment value, their bad quality only serves to promote them)? or could we do a separate list so I don’t have to use up slots for these?

So bad they’re good:

Zlad! Elektronik - Supersonic

The Black Satans The Satan Of Hell

Gnesa Wilder

Vennu Mallesh It’s My Life

Jan Terri Ave Maria

D4NNY Goodbye

Henrietta and Myrna Go Tell It On The Mountain

Altune Durant I See You In My Dreams

IceJJFish On The Floor

Youth Outreach Rappin’ For Jesus

Perhaps these “WTF” videos should also be included here (although Windowlicker & Rubber Johnny might be included here - if the latter is in fact a musical video, I thought it was an art installation type thing): [All Very NSFW]

Christeene African Mayonnaise


Odd Future feat. Hodgy, Domo Genesis & Tyler, The Creator Rella

Persia w/ Pla$tic Daddie$ Google Google Apps Apps

[thirtyframesasecond]

Gosh is directed by Romain Gavras (son of Costa-Gavras) and member of the Kourtrajmé (collective with Vincent Cassel, Matthieu Kassovitz, Kim Chapiron, and Ladj Ly of recent Cannes fame with Les Misérables). Romain Gavras directed Notre jour viendra (2010) about 2 redhead guys who feel persecuted because of the colour of their hair. So I'm less surprised to see this music video with albinos, which is amazing visually.

Strawberry Swing is stunning but I wonder how much of it is real chalk, and how much is post-production. Because chalk is messy and the erased parts are too clean. The shifting of large patterns is too identical (flawlessly) and doesn't look redrawn with each frame. Plus I see the 2 wires shaking the cape.

Romain Gavras did the video to No Church in the Wild too iirc (as well as M.I.A.'s Bad Girls) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJt7gNi3Nr4

Jean-Baptiste Mondino's beautiful b&w videos have been mentioned before - The Boys of Summer etc. - but I love the video for Tom Waits' Downtown Train.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLtZKkCIVmI

[brundlefly]

Gosh is directed by Romain Gavras (son of Costa-Gavras) and member of the Kourtrajmé (collective with Vincent Cassel, Matthieu Kassovitz, Kim Chapiron, and Ladj Ly of recent Cannes fame with Les Misérables). Romain Gavras directed Notre jour viendra (2010) about 2 redhead guys who feel persecuted because of the colour of their hair. So I'm less surprised to see this music video with albinos, which is amazing visually.

Romain Gavras did the video to No Church in the Wild too iirc (as well as M.I.A.'s Bad Girls) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJt7gNi3Nr4

And the same year as Notre jour viendra, he did the ginger genocide in M.I.A.'s Punishment Park-inspired "Born Free." (NSFW)

And Romanek later did a full on Janet Jackson video with her take on Got Til It's Gone

So lovely, and a great excuse to dig out The Velvet Rope.

[flyonthewall2983]

One of the first things I thought of seeing this thread come up, is how often videos for instrumental tracks can be often a mixed bag. Since nobody is singing one would immediately assume there isn't much to hold onto in a narrative sense. That's not entirely bad but it can often lead to gimmicks like in "Last Train Home" by the Pat Metheny Group, hammering the train theme home a little too thick and not leaving you with much an impression except the bad mullets and the nice tune that it is.

On the other hand, one can take a much more dramatic and cinematic approach as done for this incredibly moving short film for Max Richter's "On The Nature of Daylight", as it follows Elisabeth Moss walking through a city, having a slow emotional breakdown. Another example, just as moving, but without very much in terms of performance, is the recent video for Pink Floyd's "Marooned", which juxtaposes some incredible NASA footage, with the ruins of Pripyat. The atmosphere of Rick Wright's keyboards and Gilmour's guitars set among the cosmos, but driven down once the drums kick in, make for as much an emotional through-line given the pre-Chernobyl footage shown against as it is today.

I recently found this, a cover of Beethoven's "Toccata" by the band Sky, who were popular in England for a little bit, mainly known for rock interpretations of classical pieces. This illustrates a much more elusive example of this type of video, where it just shows the musicians playing. It's simple but very effective here, as the camera gives equal time to each instrument and performance and shows the band having a good time playing it.

[BenoitRouilly]

I don't know who his director of photography is but Romain Gavras's cinematography is really beautiful!

Two Kpop music videos, why not, among the most creative videos, as this South Korean industry has progressively matched in production value the quality of their music videos with the USA, since around 2007, because the "Hallyu" (South Korean Wave) is shining throughout Asia in particular and the rest of the world. Two different styles.

악동뮤지션 AKDONG MUSICIAN - 200 % (2014)
Akdong Musician (or AKMU) is a young sibling duo, coming from Mongolia, who conquered the industry by winning a TV show contest à la The Voice, in 2013, at the age of 17 yold for the boy, Chan-hyuk, and 14 for the girl, Su-hyun. Chan-hyuk, the song-writer, did his mandatory military service in 2017 for two years and was discharged in 2019. This music video looks very commercial, all cute and soft, appropriate to their target audience in Korea, but ends in a very simple and very clever, origami-assisted twist.

ORANGE CARAMEL – Catallena (2014)
For all the fans of sushi! (not a Japanese video though) This is a really funny video that plays on many levels of the industry and society by showcasing a trio of lovely mermaids in a sushi shop, sold under climfilm as consumers products. Not only is it a pamphlet on the consumption of mermaids, but also on the condition of women in the industry. Watch for the evolution of their selling prices. Highlights : the sushi-themed costume design, and the human-sized sushi sets. Funnily enough, the lyrics tell a totally different story disregarded by the video.

And the #1 of my list, keeping with the sushi theme, but no longer South Korean :

SHRIFT – Lost in a moment (2006) / director : Dennis Wheatley
The simplest, effortless idea, the most effective, contemplative result!

To read after discovering by yourself the contraptionShow

Dennis Wheatley & Stefan McClean, the composers, sit at the bar of a sushi conveyor belt restaurant in Tokyo. See if you can spot them British lads... By simply sitting a camera on one plate of the conveyor train, we can see unfolding the landscape of this restaurant, from this peculiar vantage point, always on the move. A smooth tracking around the room, in circular motion. First looking in at the work of sushi makers. Then looking out at the unsuspecting customers (very polite for not stealing the camera). It's like a candid camera spying on these Japanese customers. And I like the continuity of this loop, like a Möbius strip, observing the totallity of the restaurant in one slow swoop, which matches perfectly the rhyhtm of the song. One take. One contemplative plan-sequence.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Gavras's video for Stress by Justice is great too. On the Kpop front (I may just be lazily lumping it in here) but no video has ever made me laugh as much as Gangnam Style!!!

[BenoitRouilly]

I intentionally omitted PSY (Gangnam Style) because he's the tentpole upstaging the whole Kpop genre. But you're right, he's worth mentionning for his blockbusting feat. He was the first YT video to 1 billion views, and the most viewed for some time (not any longer though). I would cite a lesser known video but equally hilarious : PSY - New Face (2017) Featuring SON Na-eun from girl group A pink. Drinking game : count how many dabs there are...

And the fourth highlight is Wide Open by the Chemical Brothers with vocals by Beck. This is the current renaissance of Chemical Brothers music videos - I like the more overtly pro-robot uprising toned Free Yourself too, but Wide Open dares to present a single shot dance piece with the dancer (played by Sonoya Mizuno just after she was in Ex Machina) disappearing as her body parts get CGI-replaced over time. Watch out for the mirror image, making the dance we are watching seem almost like it is a mind's eye pre-visualisation of a fully fleshed out performance to come!

This is becoming one of my favourite! I like the well integrated CGI, yet not flashy. Watch for the moment a new member of her body switches to CGI, in a close up putting the rest of the body off screen. I wonder if it was choreographed on a chromakey background, and the whole room added in post prod. And if the steadycam had a motion control to reproduce the motion in 3D CGI...

[colinr0380]

I loved that Combo mural video Benoit! And all of these recent videos are new to me, so I'm very grateful for the posts!

We're upgrading from walking and hopping now to all out running with On My Heart from School of Seven Bells' last album, about seems to be about being stalked by bad memories of a previous relationship until coming to peace with it. And David Bowie is on the run from Trent Reznor in I'm Afraid of Americans (which was directed by Dominic Hawley and Nick Goffey, aka dom&nic, who also directed a lot of Chemical Brothers videos, including Block Rockin' Beats, Hey Boy Hey Girl, The Test and Wide Open).

[dustybooks]

I've been looking forward to participating in this thread but very recently got a new position at work and I've had trouble making time to contribute, though I have been reading along and watching as many of the videos mentioned as I could, and a lot of my favorites have been addressed.

R.E.M.'s body of visual work was formative for me growing up, and I don't think my favorite of their clips has come up yet -- Low was directed by longtime band associate (and former art professor for Michael Stipe, I believe) James Herbert. His older clips from the band such as the lengthy "Left of Reckoning" tend to be quite an acquired taste, built from a lot of stop-start, pause and zooming work with film. This one is quite different, using paintings from the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens to construct a beguiling, seductive series of images timed very well with the unusually tense (for this album) song. I've always marveled at how well this was put together, I think with actors standing in very believably for figures in the various works.

[colinr0380]

Three more filmmakers better known for their features doing music videos, all of which I was introduced to by other forum members over the years:

Eric Rohmer directs Bois ton café, in which a rather capricious lady cannot keep her clothes on and aggravates her partner over a perfect cup of coffee
David Lynch tackles the existential despair of I Touch A Red Button by Interpol
Gaspar Noé strafes the camera and explores every angle of his protagonist and their environment in Si Mince by Arielle

And while it counts more as a 'fan video' I suppose, I have always enjoyed the Adam Buxton music video of The Hours that was created for the Adam & Joe radio show!

[zedz]

I’ve been trying to go through this thread and watch every video that’s been recommended and which I haven’t already seen, or wanted to see again. Here are the results so far, ranked

TOP OF THE POPS – The best finds, and ones that are now in contention for my own list.

Criminal – Fiona Apple: Content-wise, I don’t see it as especially transgressive, but that snuff-video spotlighting gives it such a sleazy vibe. Like a lot of great videos, it’s an unexpected but excellent match for the song.

O Superman – Laurie Anderson: I rewatched this epochal music video (probably the first one I saw that really stopped me in my tracks as a pre-teen), and it remains really powerful. The filming couldn’t be simpler, likewise the effects, but the strength comes from the casually iconic imagery Anderson conjures up (the silhouetted fist, the light in her mouth) and the way the visuals give even tighter focus to the music and lyrics.

Honey - Erykah Badu: A delightful concept (browsing a record store where famous album covers come alive to perform the song) that’s even more delightful in execution. I was sold as soon as I saw Ms Badu doing Maggot Brain.

Happiness – Goldfrapp: A deftly contrived fake one-shot video, with a throughline of a manically hopping man and a neighbourhood that includes multiple Alison Goldfrapps playing dress up. A perfect visual match for the bouncy music.

Oh Baby – LCD Soundsystem: Music video is a form perfectly suited to a number of things, such as formal experimentation, dance, inventive montage, travelling shots. It’s a form that’s really poorly suited to narrative, and for me most music videos that attempt to convey a complete narrative are simplistic or rote. Some music videos succeed by presenting a fragment of a narrative that’s more proportionate to the scale of the form, or by combining the narrative with something the form excels at (e.g. ‘Elektrobank’ focusing on a dance), or including the narrative as an excuse for some interesting formal experiment. This micro-Primer is an exceedingly rare instance of a music video presenting an engaging, complex and moving narrative with a beginning, middle and end, within the confines of the form, and without sidelining the song. Unlike most videos with these ambitions, there’s no need to add a short film intro or coda, to intrude with dialogue, or to employ explanatory text. Bravo!

This Is America – Childish Gambino: This bipolar tour-de-force is still as powerful as when it was released.

Cirrus – Bonobo: Delightful screwing with period footage for rhythmic and, ultimately, kaleidoscopic, effect. A terrific digital collage.

Dangerous – Big Data: Another way to make the narrative approach work is to structure your video as a comedy skit. This pitch for killer trainers is horrifyingly funny and works well on both levels.

Atlas – Battles: A really simple visual idea (band performing in a cramped mirror room within a void) that serves as a superb visualization of the music.

Ta Douleur – Camille: Perfect execution of a simple, weird idea (ununravelling). And it’s a great song!


COUNTDOWN – Great videos you should all see, but which probably won’t make my list.

Carried Away – Passion Pit: Plenty of clever ideas, especially the war of words at the end.

Imitation of Life – R.E.M.: This is really an impressive feat of filmmaking and I’m tempted to include for chutzpah alone, but I find this such a boring song I just can’t do it. I know we’re supposed to be voting for the video and not the song, but the song’s an intrinsic part of what makes any given video great, and if the song’s mediocre I’ll pass it over in favour of one where both soundtrack and visuals work for me. Kind of related to this, there are some fine videos where the music doesn’t really fit, or is beside the point, and those ones feel to me like they’ve failed their brief in some fundamental way, however pretty the pictures might be.

Fall Underneath – Snakadaktal: Rewatched this to see if I wanted to include it, and it’s a little less impressive on a second watch, like the interesting concept wasn’t quite executed precisely enough, or wasn’t developed a little further, or something (which I think is close to what domino originally said).

Open Your Heart – Mia Del Todd: Another fine Gondry video that I don’t need for my list. Simple, colourful, casually ambitious and a great match for the music. Utterly charming.

The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) – Missy Elliott: A cool video, and great collateral for Elliott’s brand. It’s generic, but with enough style and wit to stand out.

Try – Michael Penn: Nifty technical exercise, but not distinctive enough in the one-shot stakes to ring my bell.

Look What the Cat Drug In (Long Way Down) – Michael Penn: A good Quay Brothers film (and you can never have too many of those), but for me this was one of those instances where the film just happened to be playing at the same time as the music, and they didn’t do much for one another.

California Tuffy – The Geraldine Fibbers: Live anarchic fun with puppets.

Boasty – Wiley ft. everybody: Here’s how to give a generic template enough of a twist to turn it into slick entertainment. The ‘imposter’ gag is cute, but doesn’t really go anywhere, and most of the energy comes from the neat transitions between lively travelling shots, giving a sense of constant movement. “Just a fun video” indeed!

DVNO – Justice: A nifty bit of typographical trainspotting, co-opting lots of vintage animated logos (or ones that should have been).

D.A.N.C.E. – Justice: More of the same, with animated t-shirts. A very nice idea, but I feel like they didn’t do enough with it.

Elastic Heart – Sia: Stark, nicely imagined symbolic dance duel. Reminded me that I hadn’t mentioned the serious fun of ‘The Girl You Lost to Cocaine’, a fancy dress video from before Sia started dressing up as other people, with a cool practical effect at the end.
The Girl You Lost to Cocaine

Shape – Glasser: Weak on narrative, but strong on its exploration of visual ideas (which is a good thing). The old school CGI is cool, but I don’t understand in what universe this qualifies as ‘horror.’ The Bjork-lite music is the weak link here.

Celoso – Lele Pons: A very stylish video, with great use of colour in its serial fancy dress structure.

Down on my Luck – Vic Mensa: Fun rewind concept, well executed.

Smack My Bitch Up – The Prodigy: Better than any Gaspar Noe film to date, for sure.


RADIO WITH PICTURES - Good stuff, but not good enough, or not up my twisted alley.

All I Need – Air: A music video that really wants to be an earnest short film, so it’s basically an earnest short film with some music playing meaninglessly in the background.

Dry Town – Gillian Welch: Cute puppet animation.

The Spoils – Massive Attack: This is an interesting concept that I found rather dull in execution.

Freedom – George Michael: This video is the epitome of shallow MTV glitz. I don’t have any interest in that stuff, but this is at least well-executed enough to remain alluring (and it’s a great song, which helps).

Bedtime Story – Madonna: This is just another species of generic: pretentious pseudo-“arthouse” twaddle that’s had money vomited all over it. Skulls! Dervishes! Shots nicked from The Colour of Pomegranates! Teal! Orange! Would make Matthew Barney blush. (And this is one of the few Madonna singles I like.)

Excalibur – William Sheller: Glitzy, derivative “epic”. Impressive use of limited production values, I guess, but ‘epic’ is something music videos don’t do well, and I hated the song.

Bastards of Young – The Replacements: And at the opposite end of the spectrum, this ultra-minimalist video is some kind of sarcastic genius. Not much of a film, but an excellent statement.

Vindaloo – Fat Les: A fun parody, but since I’m not voting for the video it’s parodying, I’m certainly not voting for this.

Numb – U2: A decent enough collage, but it’s no Rhythm

Candy – Cameo: A good example of well-used digital effects of their day now being hopelessly eclipsed by technological advances. Still has some visual energy, but it’s more interesting as an accidental technical document.

Steam – Peter Gabriel: Like the Cameo video, the technology involved here is hopelessly out of date, but the cheesy effects are saved from redundancy by the gusto with which they’re applied and attacked. It’s really hit and miss, with the opening recreation of a Tex Avery short unfortunately the high point.

Good Life – Kanye West: The So Me crew (see the interesting Justice videos above) hit the big time, but there’s nothing new here, with their aesthetic applied to a bog standard music video like frosting.

Mary Don’t You Weep – Prince: Too tastefully PSA-serious for my tastes.

Every Little Thing – Homeshake: Nice dancing, shame about the dull tune.

Never Catch Me – Flying Lotus ft. Kendrick Lamar: Funeral plus incongruous dance. It’s an interesting idea, but for me they didn’t pull it off. Too glossy, maybe.


120 MINUTES (I won’t get back)

Perfect Life – Steven Wilson: I found the video pretty twee, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this is the song Tindersticks were parodying with ‘My Sister’. The problem is, the wicked parody came twenty years before the straight version.

Brilliant Disguise – Bruce Springsteen: Sometimes a boring videos is just a boring video.

Ain’t Nobody (Remix) – Rufus & Chaka Khan: This just seemed to me like hundreds of other videos from the period that I’d seen and almost immediately forgotten. If I had seen this one before, it didn’t register – but why would it?

As – George Michael: First up, I dislike this mediocre cover of a great, great song. The video has an interesting concept, but it doesn’t do anything interesting with it, so it never rises above a hollow “Behold the New Technology!” gimmick. Once the premise is established, we just get more of the same, and the digital clones don’t even interact in any meaningful way. Oh for a single moment that had the bravura panache of four Kylies ducking and diving around one another and a lamppost.

Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars: This video seemed a completely banal, boilerplate example of the form. Maybe it counts as retro now, but it’s another clip I’ve seen hundreds of times before.

212 – Azealia Banks: Ditto, in black and white and close-up.

King Kunta – Kendrick Lamar: Tritto. A rap video with the star and his buds driving around the ‘hood in a car, sometimes in slow motion. Great song, but what am I missing that makes this any kind of contender for a great video?

Désenchantée – Mylène Farmer: Turning your silly little pop song into a cast-of-thousands feelgood Holocaust epic might be ambitiously bonkers in some hands, but to me this was just self-seriously grotesque. Horrible.

Beyond My Control – Mylène Farmer: Maybe I just struck Farmer on a bad day (or year, given the pompous scale of the former video), but no: here’s a vapid aftershave ad involving wolves and dozens of smoke machines.

California – Mylène Farmer: Even with Abel Ferrara and Giancarlo Esposito in tow to give it a bit of bite, this is more bland music with lashings of pretension. Ever been watching La Double Vie de Véronique and wondered, “would this be a lot better if the main characters were whores?” Well, no. No it wouldn’t.

Fuck You – Cee Lo Green: This makes ‘Sign ‘o’ the Times’ look cutting edge.

Overpowered – Face Tomorrow: Abominable 3rd rate version of a 3rd rate Radiohead power ballad, (barely) accompanied by Greenaway outtakes. I know the man is well past his prime, but I never knew he was this desperate for a paycheck.

The Child – Alex Gopher: An ingenious word world, very basically animated, is saddled with a lame narrative, and stock dialogue that intrudes on the song. Not much of a music video, and the filmmakers’ thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

Bring It Down – The Redskins: Apart from the overlaid text, this is a bog-standard shouty indie video from the mid-80s.

Miss Atomic Bomb – The Killers: Is the bad animation supposed to distract us from how bad the song is?

Can’t Deny My Love – Brandon Flowers: Is the bad costume drama supposed to distract us from how bad the song is?

Walking on Broken Glass – Annie Lennox: According to my maths, Nothing x Celebrities still = Nothing.

Amanaemonesia – Chairlift: Decent dancing + bad animation + karaoke subtitles. Huh? For some reason, this reminded me of the existence of Portishead’s weirdly evocative ‘All Mine’, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
All Mine

[BenoitRouilly]

R.E.M.'s body of visual work was formative for me growing up, and I don't think my favorite of their clips has come up yet -- Low was directed by longtime band associate (and former art professor for Michael Stipe, I believe) James Herbert. His older clips from the band such as the lengthy "Left of Reckoning" tend to be quite an acquired taste, built from a lot of stop-start, pause and zooming work with film. This one is quite different, using paintings from the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens to construct a beguiling, seductive series of images timed very well with the unusually tense (for this album) song. I've always marveled at how well this was put together, I think with actors standing in very believably for figures in the various works.

It looks like a Sokurov (circa Mother & Son, 1997; or more exactly Hubert Robert, a Fortunate Life, 1999), it moves like a Brothers Quays miniature, and the characters are like cut out from a real painting like in Derek Jarman's Carravaggio, 1986, or a Greenaway. It got my vote!

[colinr0380]

A Robot Chicken-esque homage to John Carpenter's version of The Thing with Zombie Zombie's Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free (which I think I was introduced to on the BFI's website!). I particularly like that, in the tradition of the best Carpenter scores, at a certain point it is difficult to tell whether the score is accompanying the onscreen events, or is invoking them in some kind of unholy ritualistic fashion!

[bottled spider]

Ashley MacIsaac - Bitch (nsfw)

[thirtyframesasecond]

I do feel a bit crushed that zedz panned all my choices!

Johan Renck, who directed the Chernobyl series and was Stakka Bo if people are a fan of one hit wonders (Here We Go!) has made two videos I really like

Pass This On by The Knife - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKhjaGRhIYU

Daniel by Bat For Lashes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yEjT_pIkhU

The What's A Girl To Do video is better - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATVtZP_NSLg (Dougal Wilson directed this - also did Tribulations by LCD Soundsystem - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e51W--w2Fk)

[Gregory]

The Feelies - Away. RIP Jonathan Demme (and Maxwell's), and long live the Feelies

[BenoitRouilly]

Another French music video from the 80ies :

RITA MITSOUKO – Le petit train (1988) / dir. : Jean Achache
Catherine Ringer & Fred Chichin, a French duo of the 80ies. This video was an homage to Bollywood musicals, especially this film : Mother India (1957), and this musical number in particular. The concept of the neverending revolving set (as well as the end montage) is an homage to the Zootrope.

[colinr0380]

I have been on a bit of a nostalgia trip recently and that led me back to the UK's answer to the Jackson 5, Five Star! This really did feel at the time like the alternate universe version of what would have happened if Michael Jackson was a girl and had never broken up with the Jackson 5, and instead they had all gone through his changes of fashion along with him. It is fascinating to see the group go from youthful braces-on naive pop in All Fall Down (with its beautiful 80s-style squiggle drawings) and Find The Time (which takes the squiggle thing to the entire city of London, and is probably the most 80s thing that I have ever seen!) through to trying to follow Jacko into his 'Dangerous' phase (with just as little success in seeming 'edgy' and 'grown up' by walking down prostitute laden alleys dressed in dark leathers) in Another Weekend (I like the transition from that dirty alley that instead of becoming an enticingly seedy 30s Smooth Criminal speakeasy-style club here is just a filmed stage performance that I'd like to imagine was filmed in a local Butlins to its crowd of tweens!)

I think this is probably because I was so enamoured of them as a kid (this is probably why kids from later eras like Steps or Miley Cyrus I suppose!) but despite some of the charming cheesiness and amusement about just what ridiculous outfit that the boys would be in for this video, and the somewhat limited choreography to the dance moves that only become more apparent in watching a lot of the music videos in a bunch, they'll always have a place in my affections! I think that my favourite era of 5 Star (as with Michael Jackson) was probably the mid-point when it was all just about holding together and it was easy to buy into the fantasy: the dual car-breakdown videos of Strong As Steel and Can't Wait Another Minute, both of which feature cars of carefree youths out in the middle of nowhere, which could immediately lead into the inevitable 1980s slasher horror film opening! And the techno-fears of what the 8 bit era was doing to the kids in System Addict was quite amusing!

But the best videos are probably The Slightest Touch in which the rest of the band have fun playing around with the lead singer whilst she is attached to a treadmill powered plasma ball, as an Einstein-type watches on with a cup of tea and barely concealed lust; and the great children's book high adventure stylings of Rain or Shine.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Sure you haven't missed their best video of all? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvGZynmi1y4

[ando]

A few more gems from the 80s:

Genius of Love (Tom Tom Club) - Animated in the style of a child's colorful drawings, this video alternates between literal interpretations of the lyrics and more imaginative associations. Like the song, it's delightfully upbeat yet occasionally tacky. And it constantly moves, never holding a static image, with objects and characters squiggling in and out of existence or shape-shifting into something else.

Don't You Want Me (The Human League) - A mysterious brunette. A blonde. A murder. A film set. The video eerily anticipates Mulholland Drive while exploring the obsessive relationship of the song. Is the guy exercising his revenge fantasy through the violence of the scripted film? What's real and what's fake? It all culminates with the camera pulling back on the real crew's reflection.

Slave to the Rhythm (Grace Jones) (NSFW) - Composed entirely of recycled clips from previous Jones videos and even commercials in which she appeared, this is perhaps the best distillation of her warped and perverse aesthetic. When Ian McShane's (!) opening narration announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Grace Jones," that's exactly what you're getting -- five minutes of high fashion, kinky sex, and flights of surrealism as only the defiant Miss Jones can deliver.

Love all these. Slave To The Rhythm deserved a better production, imo. Perhaps a composite of all (or some combo of) the mixes on the album. The single release is the least interesting mix on it!