The Music Video Mini-List

[BenoitRouilly]

Yes to all— the SNL one is a good question I hadn’t thought of, but in this case it’s a filmed Lonely Island single/video, so eligible; Parodies are def eligible; PF Video predates movie, so eligible; long-ass music videos are fine, so long as they’re covering one song— my understanding is that the SR nine hour video is just one (presumably drone-looped) song, right? If so, eligible

Thank you. That's 4 more for my top25.
Apparently Sigur Ros's song is remix of one song, they played with a generative music software, for a "Slow TV" event, so it is one song. And I like this concept. It is actually twice 9h long on the longest day of the year, driving on the circular road around Iceland! (I can't say I've listen to it from back to back yet...)

[flyonthewall2983]

Anyone interested in MTV-style music videos of the era when their format was dedicated to videos (1981–1992) absolutely should not miss the oral history book I Want My MTV. It not only contains many incredible stories, anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes observations and shit-talking but it also made me rethink a few basic things I'd assumed when watching the videos in that era. For example that the musicians starring in them were excited to be making the videos and thought they looked cool in them—often the opposite was untrue.

I second this recommendation. It's been awhile since I read it so I may have to check up on this again soon but I remember it being very good. The most fascinating stuff to me was all the corporate wheeling and dealing going on leading up to the launch date. An anecdote I found particularly amusing was about the quality of Ted Turner's weed. Reading about David Fincher's ascendance within the music business in the 80's (I think someone calls him the "Spielberg of MTV" at one point) before he ever made a film was interesting too.

I had a weird jealous thing going on as a very small kid about MTV playing in the house, because it often meant my sisters weren't playing with me. Music wasn't a big deal to me by the time I was 13, and by then I was really watching the network more for it's original content as opposed to the videos. I remember when Chris Rock was hosting the VMAs it was appointment television, and even being charmed by the Today-on-pep pills energy of Total Request Live. It tapered off post-9/11 when I got deeper into the music I was discovering online that wasn't a blip on their radar, and was not at all surprised to see their downfall in pop culture.

I'm almost positive I cannot come up with a list of 25 videos that impressed me without showing my strong musical bias, and perhaps overlooking stuff I might find visually interesting but bothersome to the ears. And that's more often the case anyway. Madonna made some hot videos for example but that's fine. On the flip side I doubt I would have ever been interested to see members of my favorite classic rock bands in bondage gear.

I can think of a few more recent examples of videos that did move me quite well, but by artists I do greatly admire. "Perfect Life" by Steven Wilson made me weep within half of it's running time at first seeing it and hearing the song for the first time as well. I could probably make a list of his videos that are all fascinating and beautiful to watch just as visual pieces, because of his collaborations with people like the director of this video and Jess Cope, who has done several animated works as well.

What's the rule on videos that use liberally from other films? This one by David Gilmour uses Maya Deren's work and this is entirely edited from Koyaanisqatsi, but works fantastically well against Kevin Gilbert's cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".

[domino harvey]

As with the fan vids knives and Colin discussed, they would be eligible so long as they met the other metrics

[knives]

Yeah, I figured that would have to count given stuff like Mongoloid.

[zedz]

As far as I know, I'm going to be sticking with actual music videos (i.e. short films commissioned / created by the artist / label at the time to promote a record), because I think there's more than enough that I love. And I suspect I'll be coming down heavily on the side of experimental / technically adventurous work rather than, say, narrative ones. (Though in terms of narrative videos, my pick is probably Spike Jonze's video for The Chemical Brothers' 'Elektrobank'.)
Elektrobank

I've already accumulated a bunch of complicated single-take videos I'm tempted to include, so here's A Brief History of One-Shot Videos. Add your favourites!

The earliest one I'm aware of (in terms of something that has complex choreography) is Split Enz's 'Message to My Girl' from 1983:
Message to My Girl

I love the simple, brilliant twist Bailter Space gave the idea in their video for 'Splat' (1995):
Splat

And, of course, as with most music video concepts, Michel Gondry is the person who got the most mileage out of the idea. Here are three startling elaborations on the single-shot video:
- Palindrome
- Timeloop
- I don't know what the fuck this is
Sugar Water - Cibo Matto
Come Into My World - Kylie Minogue
Knives Out - Radiohead

[domino harvey]

I've already accumulated a bunch of complicated single-take videos I'm tempted to include, so here's A Brief History of One-Shot Videos. Add your favourites!

My favorite from an awed perspective of how many dancers had to meet their marks in a single moving take on a public block is Kiesza’s Hideaway— it’ll be on my list

[soundchaser]

It's not the flashiest single-take video out there, but I'll be voting for HAIM's Want You Back (dir. Jake Schrier), which is perfect in its simplicity and, frankly, unbeatable in its cool factor.

EDIT: Probably also on my list: Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush's Don't Give Up (a rare Godley & Creme video I enjoy). It's all about circles -- emotional, vocal, and physical (the sun in the background).

[zedz]

I think the earliest video I'll be voting for (1978), and the creepiest, will be 'Hello Skinny' by The Residents:
Hello Skinny

[swo17]

I've got you beat by 12 years!

Toni Basil - "Breakaway" (Bruce Conner, 1966) (NSFW)

[domino harvey]

Speaking of fan vids, I love and will be voting for the video for Passion Pit’s Carried Away, which is structured like a series of clips from a wacky romantic comedy that get weirder and weirder. Very obviously indebted to Gondry, but the world could use more music videos taking him as an influence, not less. The conceptual reality of the ending has to be especially terrifying for all of us on this forum!

[Gregory]

"Eyes Without a Face" by Billy Idol

"All the Things She Said" by Simple Minds

There's seemingly just a lot of random stuff going on in both of these that has little if anything to do with the actual songs. They are more like tests for 80s video effects than artistic representations of the lyrics. But the Idol video has just a touch of perversity in it, with his arm being tightly strapped as if being prepared for a shot, a group of hooded figures popping up for no apparent reason, and a woman on the receiving end of a massive explosion of fluid.

One of the interesting things admitted in I Want My MTV was how intentionally the network enforced standards and practices preferentially. The bigger an artist was, the more they could get away with, while almost anything very sexually suggestive or even vaguely reminiscent of drug use would be off limits to any artists who were small potatoes. This allowed those who were already major stars to make the most daring videos, propelling their stardom even higher. Madonna steadily pushed this freedom to its limits and in 1990 this reached a point at which MTV had no idea how to air her latest video (for "Justify My Love").

"Eyes without a Face" was directed by David Mallet, who'd done "White Wedding" a couple of years before. There are some interesting stories about both videos in the book. In WW, when Idol puts the barbed-wire on the finger of his girlfriend (who played the bride), they didn't have any fake blood around to use, so when her finger is shown being cut by the ring, that was real.

[The Narrator Returns]

I've already accumulated a bunch of complicated single-take videos I'm tempted to include, so here's A Brief History of One-Shot Videos. Add your favourites!

And, of course, as with most music video concepts, Michel Gondry is the person who got the most mileage out of the idea. Here are three startling elaborations on the single-shot video:
- Palindrome
- Timeloop
- I don't know what the fuck this is
Sugar Water - Cibo Matto
Come Into My World - Kylie Minogue
Knives Out - Radiohead

Another Gondry one'r (and a video that's very likely to be in my top three for this poll) is his video for Massive Attack's "Protection". which accentuates the song's melancholy, low-key vibe while still being so insanely complicated that I have no idea how Gondry pulled most of it off.

And this may be skirting the line of the "no live performances" rule (it's only his vocals that are live, the backing drop is from the album), but the video for Bruce Springsteen's "Brilliant Disguise" gets maximum emotional effect from its relatively unshowy one-take gambit.

[domino harvey]

Speaking of MTV’s standards, rewatching 90s videos a few weeks ago, the most shocking video by far was one I’d seen a million times when it came out, Fiona Apple’s Criminal. Watching now, it looks somehow more unseemly than actual porn, and you can see its saturated representations of so-called “heroin chic” and grimy household fetishism echoed in things like the Cobra Snake and countless international fashion and art mag shoots decades on

[The Narrator Returns]

Any fans here of 20th Century Women should check out Mike Mills' video for Air's "All I Need", which is a good four-and-a-half minute summation of Mills' talent for expanding small stories into larger ones.

[colinr0380]

At least we know that the couple in Carried Away are not going to truly break up, as otherwise the subtitles would be hideous, gaudy yellow coloured! That Fiona Apple Criminal music video is definitely all those things domino says about it and more (its the guy's feet in the tub that always get me!), and its directed by Mark Romanek! (When are we getting a good Blu-ray edition of his 1985 film Static? Hint, hint!)

I was debating putting Sugar Water on my spotlight list but had an idea that zedz might talk about it! There are so many fantastic Chemical Brothers videos, and I'll be using my spotlight for one of them and to talk about dom&nic, the directing duo behind it. I also very much second soundchaser's recommendation of Don't Give Up. I was thinking about that whilst on my train home from work this afternoon!

If we are starting this a little early, the first 'fan video' that I would like to highlight is the one for Four Tet's Two Thousand and Seventeen which repurposes footage from two separate drives around the same streets of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles from 1940 and crosscuts between the two driving sequences to the shifts in the song. Its difficult to know why I find this so powerful - maybe it is the beautiful diagonals of going uphill and then down again; maybe it is just seeing mundane daily life from almost eighty years ago. And maybe there was a tear shed at the kids waving from the back of that truck immediately followed by the big wave to camera from the guy on the sidewalk. Or maybe it came from seeing the two women crossing the street near the beginning of the footage almost mirrored by the two women walking (a far distance apart) down the long straight section near to the big public building at the bottom of the hill.

[Feego]

Another interesting twist on the one-take concept is R.E.M.'s Imitation of Life, which is actually just the same 20 second shot being played forward and backward repeatedly while zooming in on different details and characters throughout. This is one that, in addition to being technically impressive, I have found quite moving on repeat viewings for the way it demonstrates that a single moment in time is made up of so many disparate events.

[domino harvey]

Two great conceptual videos (with the concept spoiler tagged for those who want to figure it out live):

Jungle Cherry

Spoiler

Though you can trace a throughline all the way back to Give a Girl a Break, presenting an entire video choreographed in reverse so that it is played out "correctly" backwards is an impressive feat of choreographic planning, and that the video doesn't draw attention to the gimmick is what makes it rise above it as a genuinely compelling bit of dance. That said, as is already obvious from my comments here and elsewhere, I place a high value on videos that find new or interesting ways to use dance, as music videos are really where the energy and gusto of the classical Hollywood musical has gone

Snakadaktal Fall Underneath

Spoiler

Using approximately ten seconds total of original footage to visually convey the concept of looping (each shot is assigned to a loop, and anytime the loop changes, we get a different repeating image) is a great idea, and while I think the execution is not quite as rigorous as it might have been (one could see someone like Hollis Frampton taking to the intuitive reveal of the construction and following it down with a stricter logic), I think points for trying are still a real factor here

[soundchaser]

Another interesting twist on the one-take concept is R.E.M.'s Imitation of Life, which is actually just the same 20 second shot being played forward and backward repeatedly while zooming in on different details and characters throughout. This is one that, in addition to being technically impressive, I have found quite moving on repeat viewings for the way it demonstrates that a single moment in time is made up of so many disparate events.

You beat me to it! This is almost certainly taking my top slot, and I urge everyone to see it. As far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't be amiss on a list of Wonders of the World for its sheer technical bravura. No prize for guessing how many VMAs it won...

[zedz]

I've got you beat by 12 years!

Toni Basil - "Breakaway" (Bruce Conner, 1966) (NSFW)

Great film, but it doesn't meet my criteria for "music video" (or else my list would be full of Len Lye and Oskar Fischinger films!)

But Bruce Conner's video for 'Mea Culpa' does, and might make my list:
Mea Culpa

Can't seem to find his clip for 'America Is Waiting' on YouTube - can anybody track it down?

[swo17]

I've got you beat by 12 years!

Toni Basil - "Breakaway" (Bruce Conner, 1966) (NSFW)

Great film, but it doesn't meet my criteria for "music video" (or else my list would be full of Len Lye and Oskar Fischinger films!)

Just because it wasn't formally commissioned as a music video by the artist? (Because no such thing existed at the time?)

I hadn't actually considered them before but now that you mention Fischinger, I think his Studies plainly meet domino's definition. I wouldn't say the same of just any old short that happens to be accompanied by a score, but these were animations each designed to showcase a single, previously existing song.

[domino harvey]

Along those lines, there are probably some Norman McLaren films that fit too, but I think we should all keep in mind the spirit of the thing

[mfunk9786]

Here's a high resolution link for the best video Spike Jonze ever made, Björk's "Triumph of a Heart"

[zedz]

Another interesting twist on the one-take concept is R.E.M.'s Imitation of Life, which is actually just the same 20 second shot being played forward and backward repeatedly while zooming in on different details and characters throughout. This is one that, in addition to being technically impressive, I have found quite moving on repeat viewings for the way it demonstrates that a single moment in time is made up of so many disparate events.

That's a great video (which I'd never seen before) - though it looks to me like a lot of it is digitally assembled rather than being a genuine single take.

[zedz]

I've got you beat by 12 years!

Toni Basil - "Breakaway" (Bruce Conner, 1966) (NSFW)

Great film, but it doesn't meet my criteria for "music video" (or else my list would be full of Len Lye and Oskar Fischinger films!)

Just because it wasn't formally commissioned as a music video by the artist? (Because no such thing existed at the time?)

I hadn't actually considered them before but now that you mention Fischinger, I think his Studies plainly meet domino's definition. I wouldn't say the same of just any old short that happens to be accompanied by a score, but these were animations each designed to showcase a single, previously existing song.

There were proper music videos in the mid sixties (e.g. the films the Beatles shot for 'Paperback Writer' or 'Strawberry Fields Forever'), though most of them weren't very good!

[zedz]

Two great conceptual videos (with the concept spoiler tagged for those who want to figure it out live):

Snakadaktal Fall Underneath

I loved this video. I take your point about the execution, but it still had a rhythmic power that got the central idea across in a visceral way.