The 100 Greatest Music Videos

Trevor Horn didn’t know that MTV was coming when he wrote “Video Killed the Radio Star” for his synth duo the Buggles in the late Seventies, but he knew the music industry was on the verge of a major change. “I’d read J.G. Ballard and had this vision of the future where record companies would have computers in the basement and manufacture artists,” he told The Guardian in 2018. “I’d heard Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine and video was coming. You could feel things changing.” That change came on August 1st, 1981, when MTV went on the airwaves at 12:01 a.m. The very first video the network played was “Video Killed the Radio Star,” a weirdly affecting sci-fi fever dream by Highlander director Russel Mulcahy that dramatized this changing of the pop-cultural guard. The choice amounted to the cable network brashly declaring its own importance before most anyone even knew it existed. But MTV was right. Within a couple of years, unglamorous groups like Toto and Kansas were on their way out, and fashion-forward acts like Duran Duran and Culture Club were ascendant. Horn himself played a big role in this process by producing hits for the likes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ABC, and Spandau Ballet. The Buggles dissolved in 1981 after releasing just two albums, but their place in pop music history is forever secure. They were prophets. —A.G.

Because who doesn’t love a star-studded origin story involving fame, drugs, guns, knives, bad behavior, moving up, and selling out? WFMU’s Best Show host Tom Scharpling directs this “trailer” for the ultimate biopic on Canada’s the New Pornographers, with his fellow host and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster as red-haired singer A.C. Newman, “the boy who had a dream … [and] became the man who challenged destiny.” He forms a band, they have a hit, success turns them all into coke-sniffing, money-grubbing monsters — you know the drill. Everyone from Donald Glover to John Oliver, Horatio Sanz, Ted Leo, Wyatt Cenac, and the mighty Julie Klausner drops by to recount “the rise and rise” of a cult power-pop band. It’s a brilliantly ridiculous clip, and a near-perfect piss-take on rock movie clichés. P.S. We really do hope the Paul Rudd–Bill Hader comedy Expectant Dads is coming to a theater near us soon. —D.F.

“This Video Is Dedicated to Touching,” says the title card at the start of Harry Styles’ ultimate fruit-orgy of a music video, filmed at the beach in Malibu right before the pandemic, starring a few friends and some erotically charged melons. By the time it debuted, to a world in lockdown, there was something poignant about seeing sensual party people lustily fondle fruit (and each other) in the sunshine, grinding on the rinds. And whatever the melons are into, he’s OK with it. Music videos have always celebrated the sexy-beach trope. Harry makes it feel brand new, crowning himself the consent king of the fructosexual future. —R.S.

A self-confessed “glam jazz obscurity,” the Blow Monkeys were London art-fops who became stars with this totally shameless master class in 1980s New Wave poseur brilliance. The gentleman crooner Dr. Robert preens and minces onstage, in a sleazy cocktail lounge, acting out all his fantasies of depraved vanity. He works his faux-Bowie and faux-Sinatra moves, all sneer and cheekbones, seducing the audience even though he’s just here to grab his cash and bolt. He even twirls a parasol to protect himself from hecklers throwing debris. But under the sleek surface, it’s a cerebral lament against Eighties homophobia. As Dr. Robert told the BBC, “‘Digging Your Scene’ was me tipping my hat to the club scene, and then specifically the gay scene within the club scene.” —R.S.

There are music videos that are indebted to their time — and then there’s the clip for this Tribe Called Quest song, both the raucous closer to their sophomore album The Low End Theory and a strong contender for one of the best posse cuts of all time. Directed by Jim Swaffield, the video features Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and a whole lotta friends (from De La Soul to Spike Lee) crowding a frame that mimics a retro PC mixing display, which controls everything from Phife’s wild hairstyles to Busta Rhymes’ long-sleeved top. It’s like a digital fun house, with special effects that couldn’t feel more Windows ’95 — which only adds to the goofy, retro charm. And whether they’re scowling for the camera or acting silly, the dream-team pack of rappers all look like they’re having the time of their lives. —M.C.

30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski is Wanda, an abused housewife who teams up with her best friend Mary Ann (Dumb and Dumber‘s Lauren Holly) to kill her husband, Earl (Dennis Franz). They poison his black-eyed peas, wrap his body in tarp, and toss him into the lake — celebrating with a party that includes a zombie Earl as a participant. Meanwhile, singer Natalie Maines belts out the track in a red bandana top that’s undoubtedly the most 2000s look ever, as she and her bandmates lend these women a helping hand. Written by Dennis Linde, the song was deemed controversial upon its release; its themes of domestic violence and murder caused radio stations to include a hotline number or refuse to play it altogether. The video may turn the concept into a bit of cartoon, but still manages to keep the ditty’s sting. “The Chicks do not advocate premeditated murder,” the band wrote in the album’s liner notes. “But do love getting even.”—A.M.

Sinéad O’Connor kept it simple with the video for her 1985 hit, written by Prince, about a love affair that’s left its narrator in tatters. There’s little more to this clip other than the Irish singer wandering past statues and brooding, along with a close-up of her face, singing against a black background — but you can’t underestimate the power of that last part. Tears stream down her cheeks as she appears to be lamenting her loss inches away from us; tapping into the then-recent loss of her mother, it’s as if the famously confrontational, brash O’Connor is refusing to let the audience look away from her pain, grief, and anger. And then she caps it off by staring directly into the camera before casting a look downward, unable to go on. It’s like watching a heart break in real time. —B.E.

The most joyous ode to vaginal lubrication ever put to video featured a political conservative’s concept of hell: Two strong, rich, confident, and massively influential black women openly embracing their sexuality. Director Colin Tilley’s clip for this Cardi B/Megan Thee Stallion joint juxtaposes this brash love of the “king cobra” (or “big Mack truck,” dealer’s choice) with a whimsical, pastel-covered innocence and exotic cats that earned the ire of everyone from members of Congress to Fox News pundits to … Carole Baskin? Score one for Cardi and Megan. Few videos dominated culture more in 2020, hitting all the water-cooler benchmarks: a Jenner or Kardashian cameo, countless think pieces on the video’s meaning, and pseudo-outrage of the self-proclaimed moral majority. —J.N.

“I just hope showbiz never becomes a dirty word,” Adam Ant told Rolling Stone in 1980. “I love it.” He was the greatest New Romantic swashbuckler of his era, a dandy highwayman who dressed up in pirate drag. His videos for “Prince Charming,” “Antmusic,” “Goody Two Shoes,” and the yes-it-really-happened “Ant Rap” declared war on everything safe and dull about the Eighties — but “Stand and Deliver” is his ultimate glam manifesto, with Adam robbing stagecoaches to proclaim, “I spend my cash on looking flash and grabbing your attention!” The aristocrat lady here: future British movie star Amanda Donohoe, Adam’s real-life muse. Like Adam, she knew ridicule is nothing to be scared of. —R.S.

By 1999, guitarist Graham Coxon’s drinking problem and creative grievances meant that he was increasingly distant from the rest of Blur. “Graham wasn’t happy and he didn’t always turn up,” the Britpop group’s bassist, Alex James, recalled in his memoir, Bit of a Blur. “It was frustrating because, when he did, everything he did was brilliant.” That intra-band drama found unexpectedly whimsical expression in the video that production duo Hammer & Tongs created for “Coffee & TV,” a single written and primarily sung by Coxon (and a top example of the brilliance James was talking about). Coxon plays the missing son of a sad suburban English family, first seen pictured on the side of a milk carton — a milk carton that promptly comes to life and becomes the video’s happy little protagonist. Milky bops along his merry way, hitches a ride into the big city, falls in love with a carton of strawberry milk, experiences wrenching grief, and finally finds Coxon right where he belongs: in a room jamming on “Coffee & TV” with the other guys from Blur. (Spoiler alert: Coxon goes on to chug Milky, who is later resurrected and reunited with his true love in beverage-container heaven.) —S.V.L.

In a post-“WAP” and “Montero” world, it might be difficult to remember just how skilled Madonna once was at stirring up controversy with a new music video. She managed to outdo herself with the erotic reverie of 1990’s “Justify My Love,” which was so spicy that MTV actually banned it — and thus guaranteed its immortality. Filmed in noirish black and white, the clip (directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino) depicts the pop star experiencing a sexual awakening through a series of encounters, including a three-way with a passionate same-sex kiss. There are also brief glimpses of gay life and kinkiness in shots of a trio of gay men cuddling on a couch and a bare-chested femme domme practicing BDSM on her male partner. Those are considerably less taboo topics 30-plus years later, and this clip — and the woman at the center of it — deserves at least a little credit for pushing them in that direction.—J.F.

What’s that, Billy? What was 2012 like? Well, sit on your grandpa’s knee and listen. See, there was a South Korean singer-rapper who released a manic, whirlwind video with explosions, goofy-yet-contagious choreography, and horses. Yes, horses. The whole world embraced this clip that transcended “video” into “global phenomenon,” with seemingly every TV show and commercial either emulating or parodying its equus-themed strutting. We also said “sexy laaaady” a lot. For a minute, Billy, the dying monoculture was revived to celebrate the shlubby guy in the tacky suit — so much so, in fact, that the video became the first video to hit 1 billion views on YouTube. Here, let me show you the horse dance. —J.N.

Shot weeks before Biggie’s death in March 1997, the “Hypnotize” video took the rapper out of the streets of Brooklyn and into much warmer climes: specifically, “Florida Keys, 5:47 pm,” as the title card announces. (It was actually shot in Santa Monica.) The video is a Michael Bay-ified version of the high-life aesthetic Puff Daddy’s Bad Boy Records became known for: all strewn-about cash, champagne, expensive suits as Puff and Biggie speed-race both a boat (while being chased by a pack of helicopters) and a convertible luxury sedan, backward (while being chased by a pack of motorcycles). The best part, though, is much simpler: Biggie grinning like a kid, showing the boyish charm that was his not-so-secret weapon. The rapper never got to see the final cut. “I showed him about a minute and a half in the early rounds, and he was really excited,” director Paul Hunter told Spin in 2017. “He smiled like a kid: this big, warm smile.” —C.H.

Yes, the “Black Hole Sun” video is surreal, and disturbing, and helped introduce Soundgarden to a whole new, non-grunge-fanatic audience. But this clip, directed by Devo’s Jerry Casale, arguably one-ups the things-fall-apart factor from its predecessor, while simultaneously capturing the vibe of this stellar Down on the Upside track to a T. It’s no coincidence that Chris Cornell bears a strong resemblance here to Alex the Droog from A Clockwork Orange, as he’s forced to watch scenes of serenity interspersed with snippets of sex and violence. And viewers familiar with the Seventies cinéma du conspiracy theory classic The Parallax View will pick up on the similarity between that film’s brainwashing sequence and what’s going on here. Then the band begin blowing the place apart — first figuratively, then literally — and what starts as a double homage turns into some nuclear-grade catharsis. —D.F.

In the late Eighties, David Bowie, Madonna, Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, and many other A-list artists not only licensed their music to commercials but actually appeared in the ads as well. Neil Young was so sickened by the phenomenon that he spoofed it on the title track to his 1988 LP, This Note’s for You. “Ain’t singin’ for Pepsi,” he snarled. “Ain’t singin’ for Coke/I don’t sing for nobody/Makes me look like a joke.” He took things a step further when he made a video for the song that viciously mocked Clapton’s Michelob ad, Calvin Klein’s Obsession commercial, Bud Light’s Spuds MacKenzie’s spots, and the infamous Jackson Pepsi commercial where his hair caught on fire. Initially, MTV refused to air it under the specious grounds that it would open them up to “copyright infringement.” “You spineless twerps,” Young write them in an open letter. “You refuse to play ‘This Note’s for You’ because you’re afraid to offend your sponsors. What does the ‘M’ in MTV stand for: music or money?” MTV ultimately backed down and not only aired the video but awarded Young Video of the Year at the 1989 VMAs. —A.G.

Before “Eat It” hit the MTV airwaves, “Weird Al” Yankovic seemed like he’d go down in history as a fringe novelty artist who gave the world clever parody songs like “My Bologna” and “I Love Rocky Road” before vanishing into obscurity. But the brilliant “Eat it” video showed he was operating on a level of genius and obsession that nobody had ever seen before. It’s a shot-for-shot spoof of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video where the gang members fight with forks instead of knives, and a rather large one gets stuck in a manhole. He even tracked down some of the same dancers from the original and told them to spoof their old moves. Amazingly, Jackson was fine with the parody, and some love from MTV helped the song reach Number 12 on the Hot 100. It was the start of a long run of genuine hits for Yankovic. “‘Eat It’ basically changed me from an unknown into a guy that got recognized at Burger King,” Yankovic later told Rolling Stone. —A.G.

Azealia Banks’ “212” dropped like a bomb on music in 2011, and its spare, black-and-white music video only strengthened the case for Banks as a bona fide star — as soon as she spat, “I’ma ruin you, cunt” to the camera, you knew you weren’t going to forget her. It’s hard to see past the in-your-face bravado here, but it really is all the small details that make the clip such a memorable artifact: the Mickey Mouse sweater, the quick cuts through a Harlem bodega, the Yung Rapunzel’s confrontational rapping into the ear of a bespectacled (and amused) Jacques Greene. In the years since, Banks has not always lived up to what this promised, but the dream of “what could have been” for her — and what may still be possible — carries on every time you see that extreme close-up of her, destroying haters one bar at a time. —C.S.

O Bee Girl, where is thy sting? The morose, bespectacled girl in a black-and-yellow costume, wandering around in search of someone who really gets her, may well be the most Nineties image of the Nineties. But playing off Blind Melon’s debut album cover — which featured drummer Glenn Graham’s 10-year-old sister dressed up as a bee — and in contrast to the far more darker videos of the era, director Samuel Bayer matches the hippie lilt of the band’s music by providing a movingly gleeful, one-of-us ending, as the young misfit finds her people and frolics with them in a paradisiacal, Shire-like green field. Singer Shannon Hoon would later bemoan the fact that the image would become so associated with the group, yet it suits the song’s tone to a T. And Heather DeLoach, who played the buzzing kid in the clip? She stills refers to herself as “the Bee Girl.” —B.H.

“Anaconda” was a massive moment for Nicki Minaj — and the video, directed by Colin Tilley, would only make the song’s bawdy lyrical content that much more explicit. (If nothing else, it proves that the sample of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” wasn’t a coincidence.) The rapper channels everyone from Josephine Baker to Jane Fonda, pivoting from twerking in a resort to conducting an asserobics course. After a messy cooking class, she surprised fans with a Drake cameo as her Young Money ally gleefully receives a lap dance from Minaj. A power move in more ways than can be counted, the “Anaconda” video has racked up a billion views, which made Minaj the first female rapper to do so. —B.S.

“Once in a Lifetime” is one of the most uniquely incredible songs in the history of pop — so it’s only fitting the video is its own distinctly weird trip into the subconscious. Co-director Toni Basil (who’d score a smash hit with “Mickey” the next year) shot it on videotape, on next-to-no budget. She and David Byrne visited the film and video archive at UCLA, where, as Basil told Uncut in 2007, “they had a huge library of preachers, evangelists, people in trances, African tribes, Japanese religious sects.” Some of the footage ended up in the video, while Byrne — wearing a suit, a bow tie, and a layer of flop-sweat — channeled the anxiety of a man in peak midlife crisis. The video helped establish Byrne as one of the most distinct stars of the Eighties, blessed with his own brand of oddball charisma. There’s a strange logic to his herky-jerky movements, even a little bit of funk, as if somewhere, deep down, he realizes the secret to life is always flowing just below our perception. —C.H.

Incredibly little happens in the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video, the three-and-a-half-minute clip that launched the stickiest music-related meme in the history of the internet. Rick Astley dances and lip-syncs in a few different settings; a bartender and some bystanders pick up on the vibe and start showing off their own strangely acrobatic moves. But there’s a reason why no other clip has swarmed the web to this extent — or spawned its own bait-and-switch link prank: The video that accompanied Astley’s dance-pop smash is an unstoppable juggernaut of care-free late-Eighties charm. Astley’s immaculate red pompadour; his parade of audacious outfits, from an ill-advised baby-blue-and-denim ensemble to a now-iconic tan trenchcoat; and of course his legendarily dorky shimmy — all of it adds up to a series of images that’s impossible not to smile at. The clip’s director Simon West, who went on to helm Con Air and Tomb Raider, has said that the video “haunts [him] like a bad poltergeist,” but for the rest of us, each time we get Rickrolled becomes a welcome moment of zen. (As if on cue, “Never Gonna Give You Up” reached 1 billion views on YouTube in July 2021.) —H.S.

If a couple of plastic androids getting freaky on the factory floor isn’t your idea of a good time, this one might not be for you. You wouldn’t be alone — plenty of people found director Chris Cunningham’s slick, sticky robot fantasy to be every bit as creepy as the nightmares he conjured up for Aphex Twin around the same time (see number 47 on this list). That was a plus for Björk, who was drawn to Cunningham’s flair for disturbing imagery: “Most video directors have one trick that they use all the time,” she’s been quoted as saying. “Then there are people who build a whole world around them. Chris is like that.” Looked at another way, “All Is Full of Love” is a surprisingly sweet sci-fi fable in which human feelings manage to survive even the most alienated future. Either way, it’s the perfect expression of the uncanny beauty of Björk’s Homogenic, and a key exhibit in the case for her as one of the great oddball auteurs of the music-video age, across her work with many directors. — S.V.L.

Like his idol Jonathan Demme, Paul Thomas Anderson knows that sometimes, all you need is the right musician in the right setting to make a visual spectacle. He’d explored that simple concept on past music videos for Fiona Apple and Joanna Newsom before taking it to new heights with this 13-minute short film that places the Haim sisters in the studio and says, “Do your thing.” The camera movement and lighting are a bit more complex than Demme’s “The Perfect Kiss,” but not by much, and they don’t need to be — Haim remain one of the most engaging live acts of their generation, and the studio walls can hardly contain their energy and dynamism. —C.S.

No video has ever summed up heavy metal’s anti-authoritarian spirit better than this clip, which complemented Twisted Sister’s fist-pumping ode to fed-up-ness with a barrage of pure visual slapstick. Aggro dad Mark Metcalf (Animal House’s ROTC maniac Doug Neidermeyer) bursts into the room of his guitar-playing son and bellows, “What do you wanna do with your life?!?” The kid magically transforms into the band’s glam-kabuki frontman, Dee Snider, who proceeds to subject the offending patriarch to a hilariously over-the-top sequence of bodily harm. He falls out a window, gets dragged down the stairs, and gets knocked around by a slamming door. The song’s tone was angry, but as Snider explained during a 1985 PMRC hearing after the track was included on Tipper Gore’s infamous “Filthy 15,” actual violence was the last thing he wanted the clip to portray. “The video ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ was simply meant to be a cartoon with human actors playing variations on the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote theme,” he said. “Each stunt was selected from my extensive personal collection of cartoons.” —H.S.

Despite everything that Weezer have achieved over the past three decades, the first image that comes to mind when many people think of them is Fonzie and the Happy Days gang dancing to “Buddy Holly” at Arnold’s Drive-In. That’s because the 1994 Spike Jonze–directed video for the song left an indelible impression after countless plays on MTV in 1994 (not to mention the fact that it was included on a Windows 95 CD-ROM the following year that went out to a decent chunk of the population). And even though bringing Weezer back in time to the Happy Days universe seems like an enormous technical feat, the clip was actually filmed in a single day on a Hollywood soundstage that re-created the Arnold’s set, complete with a cameo by Al Molinaro reprising his Arnold character from the show. The hard part was combing through the enormous Happy Days archives to find little bits to intersperse into the video. “My editor and I went through hundreds of episodes,” Jonze told Spin in 2003, “pretty much every one that had anything in Arnold’s. When we found the footage of Fonzie dancing, it was like a gold mine.” —A.G.