Most music videos, especially modern ones, are pretty boring.
Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity is pretty impressive when you find out how they filmed it.
DANCING 🕺💃 WALKING 🚶🚷 REARRANGING FURNITURE 🪑🛋️ BABS IS 👵 SHOPPING 🛍️ I LET THE BIRD OUT OF THE CAGE 🦅🐓
Was the first one that came to mind for me.
Christopher Walken is so good in Weapon of Choice that he made me like the song https://yewtu.be/watch?v=wCDIYvFmgW8
Aha - Take On Me …such a mesmerizing video. A girl reading a comic is sucked into a world in between the two realities. Really cool artistically and you can’t help but wish you could see more of the story.
Heard the song so many times, never watched the music video
That was great :)
Ok Go, just about any of their videos are worth watching, even if you don’t care about their music
My personal vote is The One Moment.
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38 minutes later with NO CGI, this holds up as okie of the best references
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Dire Straits Money for Nothing was amazing at the time. Turn Down for What is amazing in its own way. Smashing Pumpkins Tonight, Tonight. Michael Jackson had a few good ones.
Fun fact: the Director of the “Turn Down For What” video ended up directing “Everything Everywhere All At Once”.
And the extremely underrated “Swiss Army Man” featuring a fart-propelled Harry Potter raft.
One of the Daniels directed “The Death of Dick Long”, which might be the best mystery movie I’ve ever seen. Go in blind mister and, hands down, you won’t be disappointed if you like mystery movies.
From Yesterday by 30 Seconds to Mars is like a whole short film and they went to China to film it. I remember it being a bit of a deal at the time.
Basically every OK Go music video, This Too Shall Pass is particularly impressive.
Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel is pretty impressive the amount of work that must’ve gone into it.
The face morphing at the end of Black and White by Michael Jackson was cutting edge special effects at the time and it holds up well today (better than the rap verse breakdown in the song itself…)
Haha. Last night my teen was watching the MJ halftime performance. She was SO offended that they cut the rap out of Black and White because “it’s the only part of the song that makes sense!”
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Labyrinth.
Sure, they call it a movie, but it’s really just an hour and a half long David Bowie video.
Same goes for Tron Legacy.
That cod piece. What the literal fuck was going on with 80s kids movies?
The totally unnecessary tiddies in neverending story come to mind.
I don’t think anyone has appreciated what Coldplay did with their MV for The Scientist. In which Chris Martin really had to learn to sing the song backwards for the MV.
Here’s what Director Jamie Thraves said on his interview with MTV way back on 2003
“I had this idea that I wanted to do a story that’s tragic but starts off happy and ends happy, and the video is about rewinding to that happy ending,”
Thraves needed to find a new way to tell a narrative story that moved forward even as the action moved backward.
“The original idea was a straight narrative without the lead singer in the video,” said Thraves. “But Chris wanted to be in the video and he was really excited to learn how to sing the song backward.”
“He got a tape of the song recorded backward and he listened to it over and over. He’s a very passionate guy, so he got really into it. What we learned later on is about the problems with phonetics, because you have to be very careful with the lip movement so that when you end on a sound your mouth is formed in the right way.”
I think this would be always the most impressive music video in my book, ALWAYS. The dedication Chris Martin put man, I cant even think how he learned all of that.
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Chris Martin really had to learn to sing the song backwards for the MV.
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That’s not even their most impressive one, imo:
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R.E.M. - Imitation of Life. The entire song happens in a few seconds, with all parts at the same time. The video keeps rewinding, each time showing one of the parts.
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Impressive, maybe!? Crazy? Absolutely! The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist
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I’m convinced Ok,Go is a music video band that made music to go with their videos.
Blockhead - The Music Scene is just incredible
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It’s Thom York stumbling through historical scenes of his life and career looking old and tired. It took me a hot minute to realize what I was watching but as soon as it hits you it’s inescapable and heartbreaking.
It’s not “impressive” in the same sense as take on me, Californication, or money for nothing… but in terms of really augmenting the music with a well conceived visual storytelling mechanic? Top notch.
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Turn Down For What?
Same directors as Everything everywhere all at Once.
