My 40 Favorite Music Videos of All Time

Did you really think we were going to start anywhere else?

According to an excellent 2010 Vanity Fair piece by Nancy Griffin, here’s a brief list of the “Thriller” music video’s accomplishments:

• It helped double the eponymous album’s sales, which eventually skyrocketed to over a million copies a week after the video was released.
• It juiced MTV’s viewership numbers tenfold every time they played the video, which, according to former exec Les Garland, was up to five times a day.
• It made such an impression on the A-listers who attended the premiere that director John Landis played it multiple times after being asked for an encore.
• The Vestron (!) physical release sold millions of copies in mere months, making it the biggest-selling home video at that time.
• The behind-the-scenes documentary, Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller, also sold north of 10 million VHS and Betamax copies after hitting store shelves.

It also nearly got Michael Jackson excommunicated from the Jehovah’s Witness organization after its leaders said the music video endorsed demonology (hence the disclaimer at the beginning).

Beyond those accolades, it set the early standard for what music videos could be. The makeup effects are still hugely entertaining, as is the extended dance break with choreography that’s been burned into our collective muscle memory over the years.

If there’s a definitive before and after inflection point when music videos became an art form, it’s “Thriller.”

Speaking of creative standard-setters, there’s Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”

Its pioneering combination of stop-motion animation, claymation, and other visual techniques was an expansion on other videos director Stephen R. Johnson had spearheaded in the past, most notably the Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere.” (more on Byrne and company later) But this slice of surrealist filmmaking is next-level, fitting for an artist who’d been known to push the stylistic envelope going back to his Genesis days. The video became so popular that Gabriel and Johnson tried to recapture some of the magic with the follow-up single “Big Time.”

The singer/songwriter later admitted how much the video helped boost the commercial appeal of “Sledgehammer.” As he said to Rolling Stone, “I think the song would have fared okay,’ cause it did seem to work well on the radio […] But I’m not sure that it would have been as big a hit, and I certainly don’t think the album would have been opened up to as many people without the video. Because I think it had a sense both of humor and of fun, neither of which were particularly associated with me.”

When done this well, sometimes eccentricity can be an iconoclast’s most fun quality.

I remember when I first saw this music video when I was a kid, I had so many questions.

How does she get pulled into the comic strip? Was it something in the coffee she was drinking? How does no one else in the diner see a damn hand–in black-and-white sketch form, no less—rise up out of a comic strip and beckon for her to join him? Why does she agree to this? Is she that lonely? Or reckless? What is the guy’s deal? What is their deal together?

Of course, the more times I saw the music video, the less all that mattered. This short film isn’t supposed to follow any sort of understandable logic. It’s a complete flight of fancy, replete with so many dazzling visuals it’s hard to pick one standout. There’s also a cinematic quality that builds an underrated amount of tension for a music video. When the waitress crumples up the comic strip, and the two main characters are being chased by the bad guys, you get sucked into the drama, no matter how many times you’ve seen it before.

Unfortunately, this track was a-ha’s only stateside hit, though they produced a ton of great synth-pop and new wave music over the years, including a spooky sequel to this video. If there’s any band on this list that warrants more investigation, it might be them.

Yes, there’s a Who Framed Roger Rabbit level of silliness here, but that’s a feature, not a bug.

The video features Paula Abdul dancing alongside an animated counterpart in MC Skat Cat, the results of rotoscoping animation done over Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers’ dance moves. The idea of Paula strutting alongside a cartoon apparently came from an old Gene Kelly film Anchors Aweigh, where the film legend executes a routine that includes Tom and Jerry. The music video oozes charm and fun, two qualities that shone through decades later when she recreated it on James Corden’s late-night TV show.

It’s worth noting that “Opposites Attract” also represents Paula Abdul at her peak as a solo artist (though she arguably became more famous later as an American Idol judge). At that point, she’d already had multiple hit singles off her debut album, Forever Your Girl, including “Straight Up” and “Cold Hearted.” This track nabbed her a Grammy for Best Music Video in 1990, cresting on a wave of commercial success and industry validation that she’d never quite top in the ensuing years.

Few music videos put a definitive spin on a song’s lyrics quite like Queen’s “I Want to Break Free.”

The 1984 video, directed by David Mallet, is a send-up of the popular British soap opera Coronation Street and features the band going through day’s mundanities in a set resembling a tacky suburban home. The idea supposedly came from drummer Roger Taylor, who proclaimed that Queen should do a music video in drag in part because “the Stones have done it.” In spirit, the style and choreography follow a great English tradition of comedy sketches featuring men dressed up as women for absurdity’s sake (see Monty Python).

Unfortunately, the reaction was totally polarized on either side of the Atlantic. British fans took it as the joke it was meant to be, peaking at No. 3 on the UK singles chart and cracking the Top 10 in several other European and Latin American markets. In the United States, Mercury’s “open display of transvestism” was the primary reason MTV chose to ban the video from its airwaves, severely limiting its reach for a mid-80s youth audience that was, by that point, was gobbling up its content in huge quantities.

There’s a whole separate conversation to be had about MTV’s checkered reputation when it comes to censorship. For now, let’s agree it was a miss at the time, and thanks to platforms like YouTube, it is even more satisfying to know this terrific music video eventually found its people.

This music video, the final (and most breathtaking) segment in the eponymous short film Jackson released as an accompaniment to the album of the same name, lies in its precise execution. Everything, from the militaristic choreography to the androgynous uniforms, was carefully assembled for maximum aesthetic and thematic impact. “The foggy, smoky street and the dark, black-and-white tone, that was all intentional,” Jackson said. “When you’ve done a lot of videos, it can be difficult to keep it fresh and new. You have to try something you’ve never done, in fear of looking like something you’ve already created.”

Originally, her record label didn’t want to commit the idea to film out of concern the concept didn’t have enough mainstream appeal. Of course, they were wrong and Jackson’s conviction was so incredibly right. From the industrial, dystopian setting to a dance routine that’s been routinely cited among the best ever, it’s hard to overstate just how far-reaching its pop culture influence has grown over the years. Many female pop stars, from Rihanna to Beyoncé, have liberally borrowed from or updated the music video’s version of cool for new generations.

Perhaps more than its multiple Grammy wins, it’s that level of reverence that makes this video exceptional.

An underrated aspect of music video culture is the aspirational imagery. These are pop stars that, beyond lip-syncing along to a hit song, must look the part. The latest fashions, exotic locations, attractive hangers-on—all in the name of selling some aspect of craving the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

“Rio,” the fourth and final single off Duran Duran’s eponymous LP, works overtime to create an alluring atmosphere drenched in crystal blues and striking, saturated pastels. Filmed over the course of three days in Antigua in May 1982, it’s a deliriously giddy mashup of the juvenile and the ultra-cool, as if the cast from Weekend at Bernie’s descended upon a tropical island Bond film set. There are cocktails poured into glasses perched upon fleshy navels, as well as even taller cocktails sipped underwater. And that’s before paint starts splattering onto unsuspecting sunbathers.

Is it the deepest music video ever created? Not by a long shot. But, like the band’s greatest hits, it’s an incredibly fun window into the excesses and materialism of the times. On that note, the yacht used in the video (named Eileen) was “rescued” by Panerai CEO Angelo Bonati and, according to reports, is once again seaworthy. If you make the right friends, perhaps a remake of this video could be in your future.

Sometimes the driving force behind a great music video is unrestrained anti-establishment energy.

Case in point for the Replacements’ mid-80s video for “Bastards of Young,” the most memorable cultural contribution from their first major label LP, Tim. The lyrics, which drip with alienation and disillusionment, are captured perfectly in the visual choices by Randy Skinner and Jeff Ayeroff’s larger concept. The slow zoom-out off the speaker, the out-of-focus hand cradling a cigarette, the violent, sudden ending—it’s never anything less than mesmerizing.

What’s arguably more interesting is the video’s commentary on the state of the art form and its biggest platform, MTV. Singer Paul Westerberg famously hated the latter, at one point devoting an entire song (”Seen Your Video”) to taking down bands who prioritized camera-ready performance gimmicks over their actual songs. “If we do a video, we want to do one that nobody would want to watch all the way through, much less twice,” he once said. The irony is that quite the opposite ended up happening. “Bastards of Young” earned regular rotation on the program 120 Minutes, which helped it become a cult classic.

Co-directed and choreographed by Toni Basil of “Mickey” fame, “Once in a Lifetime” is arguably the finest music video from a group that produced several of them.

I’ll emphasize the word “choreographed” because, amazingly, David Byrne’s iconic, often spastic dance moves in front of a blue screen aren’t wayward improvisations. Apparently, he and Basil studied footage of various religious rituals, some of which ended up projected behind Byrne in the final cut. “We watched the footage together, examined the movements, and discussed how to incorporate it into his performance,” Basil explained to Uncut. “Technically, I was the choreographer, but David kind of choreographed himself.”

Shot on a soundstage in Los Angeles with little more than a digital camera and a couple of lights, this low-budget masterpiece leaned into that aesthetic for maximum effect. “I used a real old-fashioned zoom lens to make [Byrne’s] jerky movements even more pronounced,” Basil said. “It’s about as low-tech as you could get and still be broadcastable.” Ultimately, it ended up being much more than that. The “Once in a Lifetime” video won multiple awards, was exhibited in the New York Museum Of Modern Art, and played on MTV for many years, despite debuting a full year before the channel came into existence.

To quote Byrne directly, the Talking Heads’ brilliant, unique brand of quirky fun remains the same as it ever was …

Forget the unforgettable atmospherics at play here—the lighting, the colors, the balletlike camera movements—let’s appreciate the degree of difficulty associated with learning this kind of classical choreography. It’s not your garden-variety shimmying from side to side, that’s for sure.

In interviews, Bush stated her reasoning behind crafting such an all-encompassing artistic statement stemmed from how few music videos took advantage of the opportunities dance could afford them. “[Dance] was being used quite trivially,” she said at the time. “It was being exploited: haphazard images, busy, lots of dances, without really the serious expression, and wonderful expression, that dance can give. So we felt how interesting it would be to make a very simple routine between two people, almost classic, and very simply filmed. So that’s what we tried, really, to do a serious piece of dance.”

Bush had to train for the better part of a year to get in the kind of physical shape you need to keep up with demanding choreography, and it shows. Her performance is so graceful and elegant that it’s absolutely spellbinding. Not to sound like an old crank, but today’s twerk-centric music videos could learn a thing or two about dance choreography from “Hill.”

Let’s bring this style back, please and thank you.

The music video may have been conceived in the 1980s, but the art form came into its own in the 1990s.

Bigger budgets, the rise of auteurs behind the camera, and increased music globalization led to an explosion in viewership. By the time the decade ended, 68 million households were tuning into MTV in the United States alone. That number swelled to 340 million households in 140 countries across 31 TV channels worldwide.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of exceptional material to choose from.

This post will take a stroll down memory lane and showcase my 10 favorite music videos from the 90s. If you want to throw it back even farther (and watch some dope video content), check out Part 1 in this series, which covered my favorites from the 80s.

Last thing: Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter if you haven’t already, and share this post if you (or someone you know) are a 90s kid in need of a nostalgia dopamine hit.

Onwards!

One of the decade’s finest artistic achievements in music videos is undoubtedly the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight.” The fourth single off their two-plus-hour opus Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the video’s heavy rotation on MTV beginning in May 1996 helped the song crack the Top 40 of Billboard’s Hot 100. It also walked away with a half-dozen honors at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards, snagging the statuettes for Art Direction, Special Effects, Cinematography, and Video of the Year.

Those accomplishments are more impressive, considering how niche the music video’s visuals seem now. The aesthetic, supposedly inspired by Georges Méliès’s 1902 silent film A Trip to the Moon, there’s a capriciousness that’s very of its moment. The central characters encounter hostile aliens, a less-hostile merman, singing sea creatures, and other like-minded adventurers aboard a zeppelin. Sometimes, I forget that I’m watching a Smashing Pumpkins music video instead of a slickly-produced Tim Burton short.

“Tonight, Tonight” is proof that making lo-fi look and feel high-brow requires incredible skill and creativity.

Of all the music videos that added to Madonna’s stature as one of the century’s pre-eminent pop stars, “Vogue” is arguably her most iconic (and controversial).

The visuals were shot on a Burbank soundstage over two intense mid-winter sessions early in 1990. The shoot, which coincided with rehearsals for Madonna’s wildly successful Blond Ambition World Tour in support of both Like a Prayer and her Dick Tracy soundtrack contributions, the latter of which included this song. The stunning black-and-white photography from Pascal Lebegue, the classical direction from David Fincher, recalling pre-World War II film star portraits, and the choreography by voguing legends Luis Camacho and Jose Gutierez are all sublime.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Madonna joint if it didn’t ruffle a few feathers. She refused to edit the video after objections from MTV brass over shots containing partial nudity. She also angered noted portrait photographer Horst P. Horst, who said his work was interpolated without consent or credit.

Detractors aside, this video is an ultra-stylish homage to Hollywood’s golden age.

Directed by Andy Morahan at the height of GnR’s fame, the “November Rain” music video is … a lot. The narrative deals with themes including suicide, depression, and the kind of relationship dysfunction that teeters on the edge of violence. Sadly, the latter played out in the tabloids in the ensuing years, with Axl Rose’s then-girlfriend and music video co-star Stephanie Seymour eventually suing him and subpoenaing his ex-wife on domestic abuse allegations.

All this is intercut with live performance footage shot at the Orpheum Theater. The video oozes excess out of its every pore. It features helicopter shots of Slash playing a guitar solo in front of an impossibly small church. This moment somehow works even though the instrument isn’t actually plugged into anything. Physical logic isn’t one of this short film’s strong suits.

At the time, it was one of the most expensive music videos ever made (about $3.3 million when adjusted for inflation). Unsurprisingly, it became the first-ever rock video to surpass a billion YouTube streams in 2018.

Speaking of dark subject matter, you have the decade’s most visceral music video by a longshot—Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.”

The video most of us know is based on the tragic true story of Jeremy Delle Wade, a then-15-year-old Texas sophomore who killed himself in front of 30 of his peers and a teacher. The video’s ending was initially supposed to be even more graphic, but MTV kiboshed that version. With Vedder’s crazed glances at the camera and eerie refrain of “Jeremy spoke in class today,” this version remains the apex of queasy entertainment in this format.

Interestingly, Vedder’s acquaintance, photographer Chris Cuffaro, shot an entirely different video in 1991 without Epic’s financial support (the label wasn’t interested in releasing the song as a single at that time). Though Epic eventually rejected it for mass distribution, it’s a fascinating double feature with the redo embedded here. You can watch the original on Cuffaro’s website.

When asked about the staying power of the “Jeremy” video, director Mark Pellington stated, “I think that video tapped into something that has always been around and will always be around. You’re always going to have peer pressure, you’re always going to have adolescent rage, you’re always going to have dysfunctional families.”

Let’s lighten the mood a bit now with arguably the most fun music video of the 90s: “Sabotage.”

Spike Jonze’s hilarious, purposely low-budget homage to cop shows of yesteryear (think the original Hawaii Five-O and Starsky and Hutch) is a blast from start to finish. The rap trio stages a chase through a skeevy motel, speeds through city intersections, and climbs building facades in Los Angeles. The approach, along with the inventive cinematography, adds a ton of kinetic energy to their antics.

“We’d done videos where the production people came up with these elaborate budgets, and it started to feel really awkward on the set,” Yauch told New York Magazine in 1999. “So we asked Spike to work with just a couple of people, so we could fit the whole production in one van. Then we just ran around L.A. without any permits and made everything up as we went along.” “Sabotage” was nominated for Video of the Year at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards but lost to Aerosmith “Cryin’” (puke). Despite that egregious oversight, its influence lives on.

“There would be no Anchorman, no Wes Anderson, no Lonely Island, and no channel called Adult Swim if this video did not exist,” wrote Amy Poehler in 2018’s *Beastie Boys Book.*

If you thought “Sabotage” was quirky and impossibly DIY, Jonze topped himself later that decade with his work on Fatboy Slim’s video for “Praise You.”

The footage was shot without permits in front of the Fox Bruin Theater in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. That’s a heavily made-up Jonze at the center of the flash mob, directing the fictitious “Torrance Community Dancers” through a series of corny dance moves that aren’t all that far-fetched if you’re like me, and you’ve seen one of these awkward impromptu routines break out in a public space.

The video for “Praise You” cost $800, which was a bit of a slap in the face to the expensive, glossy videos that flooded the MTV playlists back then. The idea for it was borne out of a jokey gift Jonze sent to Fatboy Slim after the duo couldn’t work together on the “Rockafeller Skank” video, which the world-renowned DJ reportedly hated anyway. The anti-establishment move to greenlight this odd little gem was a stroke of genius for both men. It walked away with Breakthrough Video honors at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, along with a couple of other pieces of hardware.

The look on Madonna’s face as the group strides up to the podium says it all.

PS: For a peek behind the scenes of “Praise You,” check out this interesting documentary on Vimeo.

I remember seeing this music video and thinking, for the first time in my life, “I’d watch a feature-length version of this story.” It’s an odd reaction to a short film that Daft Punk member Thomas Bangalter claimed had nothing going on beneath the surface. “There’s no story. It is just a man-dog walking with a ghetto blaster in New York,” he said in a 1997 interview. “The rest is not meant to say anything. People are trying to explain it: Is it about human tolerance? Integration? Urbanism? There’s really no message.”

The electronic music duo, who’ve historically been reticent about appearing in their own music videos, turned to Spike Jonze to work his magic and what a result it is. There’s a humanism here, especially in the video’s second half with the unrequited love subplot. The anthropomorphic dog character Charles (played by That Dog drummer and frequent Jonze collaborator Tony Maxwell) somehow becomes a proxy for anyone who’s felt like a fish out of water in a new city, struggling to forge human connections as the opportunities whiz by you in blurs.

You feel for Charles. Every time I watch the video, I want to know what happens to him when it ends. If he ever reconnects with Beatrice. If he ever finds happiness. This is the cinematic universe we really should be exploring more.

Imagine being Jamie Thraves in 1995. You’re a few years out of art school, and Radiohead approaches you to direct the music video for “Just,” the second US single off their sophomore album, The Bends. What do you do? Go the conventional route, mixing performance footage with an on-the-nose narrative that directly reflects the lyrics? Or do you run in the opposite direction and, maybe without realizing it at first, create a unique, incredibly compelling short film?

Thankfully, Thraves chose the latter. He told Rolling Stone that he based the video’s look on “[Alfred] Hitchcock movies and [Bernardo] Bertolucci’s movie The Conformist.” However, there’s also a touch of Italian and French classics like L’avventura and Last Year at Marienbad, where the lack of closure becomes the device that drives the story, despite being asked repeatedly in the years since Thraves has steadfastly refused to reveal the crucial detail that unlocks the story’s mystery.

“I haven’t told anyone in 25 years,” he explained. “To reveal the answer would kill the video. There’s a very real logical and simple answer though, a concept, however — no matter how good the idea is, it will always disappoint someone if revealed.” Sometimes, saying nothing is truly the best policy.

Directed by the great Hype Williams, whose stylistic preferences seem tailor-made for one of hip-hop’s most eccentric personalities, the video for “Gimme Some More” is exhilarating.

Shot entirely with a fisheye lens in fast motion, the visuals have an eerie, absurdist quality. Cartoonish settings, which include a hokey suburban front lawn and an Old West milieu where Busta does his best Yosemite Sam impersonation, ping pong from innocent-seeming to nightmarish and back again with such conviction, you never really know where it’s going next. With the New York native, you can never entirely be sure.

A quick note about the lack of representation on this portion of my favorite music videos list from hip-hop’s golden age: there’s no denying there are delightful entries in the canon that almost made the cut (see here and here). Ask me next week, and maybe I’ll feel compelled to change the rankings. Who knows, but right now, I wouldn’t know which of the other nine to cut.

Also, I’m not in any headspace to give Diddy face time in this post.

Bonus bit of trivia: A VHS tape of the music video came free with a purchase of the album E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event): The Final World Front, a cultural artifact I now kick myself for not owning.

Let’s close with one of this list’s most impressive technical achievements, “Virtual Insanity.” I couldn’t figure out how they pulled some of the visual trickery off the first time I saw it. Years later, while studying film production for my university degree, I could pinpoint the cuts and timing they used to execute the complex choreography in front of and behind the camera. But, like a good magic trick, your eyes still can’t quite believe what they’re seeing, even if you know how it’s done.

Besides giving Jamiroquai’s career a significant boost, this video also helped director Jonathan Glazer rise to prominence, paving the way for his entry into Hollywood’s upper echelon of filmmakers. The “Virtual Insanity” video deservedly walked away with four MTV Video Music Awards—Breakthrough Video, Best Special Effects, Best Cinematography, and Video of the Year. I won’t spoil the explanation of how exactly they did everything, but Glazer later confirmed that “no computer trickery was used.”

Props to him and the team who gifted us with this masterpiece.

At the dawn of the 2000s, music videos were in a fascinating transition period.

The meteoric rise in internet usage heralded a shift in production and direction techniques, embracing grittier, lo-fi aesthetics fueled by early digital camera adoption. Artists also pushed the envelope even harder, with more videos getting banned from TV airwaves for sexuality, nudity, and, in Robbie Williams’ case, Satanism.

Music video budgets also climbed into eye-watering territory, with directors like Hype Williams, Joseph Kahn, and even Fred Durst (lol) helming multi-million dollar shoots. I don’t know if you could categorically say that music video quality increased across the board, but it meant more visual ideas left a more lasting impression.

In this post, I’ll share my thoughts on my 10 favorite music videos from the 2000s. It’s part of an ongoing series where I highlight my 40 favorite music videos of all time. If you want to travel further back in time with me, check out my salutes to 80s and 90s videos.

Also, don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, and all that good stuff.

Let’s go:

It’s the most straightforward sales job in the world.

Christopher Walken, a trained dancer, strutting his stuff around an empty hotel. Oh, and at one point, he starts to fly around. Eventually, he sits back down. You don’t get a cleaner creative slam dunk than that.

Interestingly, Walken made the entire endeavor possible by kinda sorta volunteering for the gig.

“He met Spike before he became an actor and he trained as a dancer,” Fatboy Slim said in 2006. “He said to Spike, ‘I would love to get my dancing on film while I’m still young enough to do it.’ So Spike went outside and phoned me and said, ‘Mr. Walken tap-dancing in the video’ and I was like ‘Yes.’”

The rest is music video history. The final cut won the trio six MTV Video Music Awards in 2001 and was named as the greatest music video ever by VH1 the following year. Not bad for an idea that started off as a home movie.

Not many rappers had fun with the music video format quite like Ludacris.

From the Popeye forearms in “Get Back” to the semi-animated zaniness in “Stand Up,” the Southern rap legend has at least a half-dozen classic videos to his name. However, none jump off the screen quite like his work on “Rollout (My Business).” Different frame rates, playback speeds, aspect ratios, and compositions within the frame showcase a mastery of the form. There are also rap lyrics gyrating on the screen and Luda transforming into a baby somehow.

“Before the ‘big head’ post effect was there, we didn’t feel like we had a good enough video,” Ludacris told GQ in 2023. The creative team and his label, Def Jam, knew it was good but not great. It didn’t have that extra sizzle. So let that be a lesson to creators: You can save work in the editing process and craft something that, in the rapper’s words, “moved people’s imagination to a whole other place.”

You can’t discuss the theatrical side of music videos without spending at least a few minutes with one and only Lady Gaga.

After busting onto the pop scene with early hits like “Just Dance” and “Poker Face,” the visual accompaniments to her songs became a massive part of her appeal. It’s hard to conceive of now, but Gaga video premieres, whether on TV or online, felt like an event. I’d go so far as to say she was the last artist to work that angle so successfully. “Bad Romance” is arguably the most captivating of all her material to close out the decade.

It’s unapologetically strange and, at times, adorably hacky with its product placement (you get a nice medium shot of her branded Beats earbuds at 1:13), both of which add to its charm. It’s also a love letter to classic cinema, nibbling at the edge of everything from Alfred Hitchcock to Blade Runner to Alien. Part of what makes it so rewatchable is going back through and picking out the Easter Eggs one by one.

First off, everything in this screams late-2000s to me. The swoop haircut on the guy, the bad wigs she wears in multiple scenes, and the High School Musical level of earnestness that permeates the entire video. Is it possible that this song was one of (if not the) last moment where a Taylor Swift single could be enjoyed on the merits of the music alone, unencumbered by ex-boyfriend drama and other general cattiness?

Anyway, back to the video. It’s the epitome of the sum being greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a cute concept executed with enthusiasm and a light, deft touch. Most importantly, it captures a universal human experience and tells it through instantly recognizable visual storytelling. That’s the magic at the heart of its transcendence.

“I enjoyed doing [the ‘Hurt’ video] very much because I felt we were doing something worthwhile,” Cash said in an interview shortly before his passing—an observation that ranks up there in terms of grave understatements. Since its initial release, I’ve watched this video dozens of times, and despite that sense of familiarity, it still manages to be spellbinding every time.

The backstory, which Rick Rubin details on Lex Friedman’s podcast, only adds to the video’s mystique. You can feel the weight of Cash’s legacy, of a life’s worth of sadness and regret, imbuing the lyrics with a depth of feeling I’ve scarcely encountered elsewhere, in the Man in Black’s catalog or elsewhere.

That cut from him singing the line, “Everyone I know goes away/In the end,” to the picture hanging on the wall gets me every time. This one’s a true powerhouse.

Speaking of Rubin collabs, let’s talk about “99 Problems.”

Directed by Mark Romanek, it’s a gritty, energetic homage to Jay-Z’s roots. Many of the video’s scenes were filmed near his childhood home, The Marcy Houses in Bedford Stuyvesant. At the time, this record was also supposed to be Jay’s last, context that shaped the short film’s autobiographical nature and the lens through which various aspects of his life are viewed.

For example, watch how the tone shifts subtly and slowly, almost frame by frame, from a breezier, more community-oriented tone to one that’s much bleaker. Along the way, he doesn’t pull any punches with the visuals, grappling with police brutality, mass incarceration, and other realities he dealt with before becoming one of rap’s biggest stars. I suspect many of his contemporaries weren’t as fortunate.

Sometimes, you’ve got to tip your hat to gimmicks that work this well.

Shot in one day in a Paris suburb and directed by the legendary Michel Gondry, “Come Into My World” leans on a repetition technique that wasn’t necessarily new. In fact, Gondry had done another version of this idea for the Chemical Brothers’ “Star Guitar” music video, though not at this elaborate scale. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

By the time that fifth Kylie Minogue clone emerges right before the video ends, I realized that, despite not having watched it in its entirety in several years before this write-up, I hadn’t moved a muscle after clicking “Play.” I knew what was coming, I knew more or less how everything was pulled off technically, and yet I was mesmerized all over again.

If that’s not proof positive of Pitchfork calling this video “arguably the most rewatchable” of the decade, I don’t know what is.

An ode to Badu’s eclecticism as an artist, the “Honey” music video is slept on by too many of these “best of” lists I read before coming up with my own. Everything about the visuals, from the local record store setting to the quirky, often hilarious reimaging of classic album cover art, is a tribute to Badu’s influences and the far-reaching impact of black music on popular culture.

For those keeping score at home, some of the famous album covers she interpolates in the video include:

• Maggot Brain by Funkadelic
• Paid in Fullby Eric B. & Rakim
• 3 Feet High and Risingby De La Soul
• Illmaticby Nas
• Let It Beby the Beatles

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the nostalgia hit.

Picking just one favorite Missy Elliott music video was a challenging task. Her ability to create distinctive, often surreal images that perfectly complement her music is unmatched in the hip-hop lexicon. But, of all those timeless audiovisual marriages, “Get Ur Freak On” is the video that tops my list.

The retrofuturist vibes are impeccable, with an industrial jungle setting (if that makes any sense) that feeds off the bhangra-meets-sci-fi production from Timbaland. Also, in case there’s any notion that Elliott isn’t the master of her creative domain, here’s what the video’s director, Dave Myers, told Fortune in 2019:

“She reached out to take me to dinner and then took me to see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. We just vibed about perspectives of the world and weird stuff and developed a trust […] There are no limits with Missy. The crazier, the better.”

The last sentence could also describe her music’s appeal more generally.

Let’s cap this portion of my list off with a throwback to a time that seems like ancient history: When Eminem was routinely put on a pedestal as the best rapper alive.

Regardless of what you think of his late-period work (spoiler: I think it’s 90% mediocre), there’s no denying how evocative “Stan” is as a piece of writing. To that end, a literal interpretation of the lyrics could’ve gone south quickly, especially considering the first choice for the lead role was Macauley Culkin. Against tall artistic odds, co-directors Dr. Dre and Philip Atwell pull it off.

From the muted color palette to the exquisite lightning choices throughout, this music video gets under your skin as much, if not more than the song itself. It subtly echoes the stark aesthetics of 90s-era thrillers like Silence of the Lambs and Seven, ramping up the dread and apprehension as the narrative hurtles towards is shattering climax.

Which of these videos are your favorites? Which classic from the 2000s did I leave off the list that merits a spot? Sound off in the comments section.

Music videos didn’t wither on the vine as the world rushed headlong into the streaming era. Instead, they thrived like never before.

Sure, if you were around for MTV’s glory days before it descended into the seventh circle of reality TV hell, you could talk about how it’s not the same. The shared experience aspect has been lost in the culture. It used to be better.

I’ll respectfully plant my flag on the other side of that argument. Without platforms like YouTube opening music’s global floodgates, you wouldn’t have the diversity and opportunity many artists have today. A quick glance at the Billion View Club highlights dozens of names from countries like Portugal and South Korea that wouldn’t have thrived in a music video landscape confined solely to MTV.

It’s also fueled the music industry’s suffocating nostalgia complex, with names like Rick Astley and a-ha living on to delight new generations of fans. I doubt they’d still be getting festival invites if it weren’t for their popularity with the YouTube sect.

This post will dive into my favorite music videos released during the 2010s. If you missed the previous installments in this series, click the following links to see which videos are my favorites from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Also, be sure to subscribe so every new long-form post like this gets sent directly to your inbox without fail.

Onwards:

Released in May 2018 simultaneously with his performance of the song on Saturday Night Live, this video represents Donald Glover’s creative apex (sorry Atlanta fans). It garnered nearly 13 million streams in its first 24 hours online and has over 920 million to its name as of this writing. A cultural critique overflowing with social commentary and symbolism calling out violence against Black Americans, it doesn’t wait for you to sit and digest it comfortably.

Its frenetic pace barely lets you keep up with the on-screen action at all.

In lesser hands, this approach wouldn’t have worked so well. I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking how impressive a technical achievement it was. Shot in a massive hanger, with actors and set pieces bending to the complex camera maneuvers, it’s a lean, mean idea that’s executed with unforgettable flair. It doesn’t hurt that Glover has the kind of acting chops needed to hold it all together.

Speaking of bold statements about race …

For Beyoncé and director Melina Matsoukas, the “Formation” video was clearly seen as an opportunity to reclaim cultural narratives on behalf of Black communities in America. Some of the striking visuals to that effect include:

• Beyoncé sitting atop a police cruiser sinking into New Orleans floodwaters
• Beyoncé embodying the role of the mistress in a plantation household
• A young Black kid dancing in front of cops decked out in riot hear

“I wanted to show — this is Black people,” Matsoukas told the New Yorker. “We triumph, we suffer, we’re drowning, we’re being beaten, we’re dancing, we’re eating, and we’re still here.” Predictably, conservative groups in the US and Canada got all bent out of shape, seeing the imagery as too anti-police or, in the case of the former, anti-American.

Looking at it in hindsight, especially with Renaissance and Cowboy Carter now etched into the pop culture consciousness, it feels like the moment when Beyoncé’s music became about art, not chart success.

In researching this post, the term I kept seeing to describe the “Gangnam Style” video was “global phenomenon.” And you know what? I’m not going to try and wordsmith that sentiment. 5 billion YouTube views later, it’d be hard to quantify it as anything else. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the track that brought K-pop into the mainstream music conversation permanently.

It’s also incredibly campy, which makes it all the more likable. His outfits range from chic to vaguely ridiculous, his posing is hilariously deadpan, and his dancing is … well, it was a thing that we all imitated at one point and, if you were like me and in your prime clubgoing days at the time, felt pretty stupid doing in the moment. But hey, it was the Macarena of its day.

It doesn’t take itself seriously and, as a result, remains more charming than annoying. It also has the United Nations’ stamp of approval, so, really, there’s no denying its power.

Before Sia began descending into pop music mediocrity, she released some truly arresting material. Even though she’s scored massive hits with the likes of Sean Paul and Kendrick Lamar, her creative apex is still 2014’s “Chandelier.” Beyond the monstrous vocal performance and hypnotic, minimalist groove, the video’s aesthetic and choreography remain gripping to this day.

The dancer at the center of the action, moving and contorting wildly in a dilapidated apartment, is Maddie Ziegler, who was 11 years old at the time of filming. She told New York Magazine that the process “was really different and weird for me, because I usually don’t, you know, be a crazy person every time. It was so fun to do and it was really out of the box and it expanded me a lot […].”

The lyrics, an ode to Sia’s mental health struggles couched in party girl vernacular, add yet another compelling layer to the viewing experience.

When K. Dot dropped the video for “Humble,” I was a full-time hip-hop blogger. I mention this fact because it gave me a unique perspective on where the culture was at with the rapper as the anticipation built towards DAMN., the LP that, among its many accomplishments, won Lamar a Pulitzer Prize. Everyone I spoke to was excited but also nervous for Kendrick since the consensus at the time was topping To Pimp a Butterfly would be a near-impossible feat.

But, with “Humble,” the acclaimed emcee dispelled all notions that he’d take a step back. In the first 30 seconds alone, he assumes the role of hip-hop’s supreme leader, complete with a papal cope get-up, before taking a moment to shoot hundred-dollar bills at the camera while lying on a table of uncounted riches. As you may have guessed by now, the song isn’t actually about being humble. Pettiness and hubris are the name of the game here, and when this video dropped, it felt like the “best rapper alive” crown was Kendrick’s to lose.

Of all the exceptional music videos Jay-Z has released over the years, this one may be the slyest in its social commentary.

The point is not that a sitcom featuring this incredible cast would be amazing, whether they’d insist on parodying Friends or not. Instead, the critique lies in the fact that, no matter how good any of the cast members perceive the show to be, it’ll never measure up to the white ideals of what quality entertainment should be. The song’s title is a reference to the Best Picture Oscar winner of the same name, its victory overshadowed by Warren Beatty’s infamous snafu.

Hov’s lyrical stance—that hip-hop is stale and fake—is extended to other mainstream pop culture mediums through the video. It’s an important reminder about the racial divide that still exists in popular entertainment, regardless of the codeswitching and sacrifices that need to be made to capture the attention of the “right” audience (read: most accessible to advertisers).

Also, it’s so slickly produced and edited you forget you’re watching a damn music video about 30 seconds in.

As regular readers of this newsletter know, I particularly enjoy art that doesn’t telegraph its intentions or message. That doesn’t mean that only challenging, complex music or film or TV has a place in the culture, but rather, I have increasingly little interest in material that spoonfeeds you calculated emotional reactions and payoffs. This preference is a big reason why I adore the video for “Gosh.”

At first, you’re not exactly sure what you’re watching. A young man lying semi-comatose in a club, the same young man standing on a balcony, staring out into nothingness … big deal, right? But then, there’s a zoom-out shot that brings the entire narrative and theme into focus in just a few seconds. In those moments, you understand everything you need to know about the protagonist, the world he lives in, and the struggle he’s wrestling with. It’s a terrific example of show, don’t tell.

Directed by Romain Gavras, a music video vet with another bit of business coming up on this list, “Gosh” received widespread acclaim as one of the best vids of 2016, a well-earned title.

Part celebrity home video montage, part New York City tribute, and part Barbra Streisand parody (the impressions of her throughout this video tickle me to this day), the video is just as silly and infectious as the Duck Sauce hit single. The cameos in this one are excellent, too, ranging from Questlove and DJ Premier to Pharrell and Kanye West. Like “Gangnam Style,” the main reason it works so well is that it doesn’t take itself seriously at all.

It’s worth lingering on that last point for a second. My research for this series meant sifting through many write-ups and internet comments that snarkily pointed out how “deep” the song’s lyrics were or how repetitive the listening experience was. Overall, music video criticism tends to split the medium into a high and low art binary that undermines the pleasures of a track like “Barbra Streisand.”

I understand I’m the guy who said I enjoy art that obfuscates a few minutes ago, so maybe this will sound contradictory, but you can also enjoy media where the sole intent is to have a good time, regardless of how mindless it looks or sounds on the surface. More often than not, it doesn’t have to be more depth.

Here’s where the conversation gets a bit trickier.

M.I.A. has had an undeniably global impact on rap and pop music, building on her initial success in the mid-2000s with records like Arular. Into the 2010s, she maintained widespread appeal, a platform that she used to start potentially challenging conversations through her music. “Bad Girls,” she tackles the notion of free, feminist agency as only she can.

Directed by Gravas and photographed over a four-day stretch in Morocco, this video has eye-popping visuals galore. Car stunts that belong in a Fast & Furious film, dance choreography in a desert landscape that deliberately evokes Madonna and cinematography that would get nominated for an Oscar if it were embedded in a blockbuster action movie.

And yet, this is also M.I.A. we’re talking about. The anti-vax, anti-5G conspiracy theorist who isn’t shy about chipping away at the public goodwill attained through other philanthropic endeavors. Does that taint the strong-willed image this music video puts forward? Your mileage will vary, but as a standalone exercise in style, this one couldn’t not make the cut.

Last on the list of my favorite music videos of all time, but certainly not least, was David Bowie’s official goodbye to his fan base.

Released January 7, 2016, three days before his death was announced, the short film is even more affecting in hindsight. It was supposedly during the week of filming “Lazarus” that Bowie got the news his cancer was terminal and that doctors would be halting treatment. According to director Johan Renck, the initial visual concept was based on the biblical reference to Lazarus (I’ll let you Google those details if you’re unfamiliar), not a reference to his illness.

But, watching the video for the first time since its release, it’s impossible not to see it as Bowie grappling with the idea that his life is ending. His face wrapped in bandages, lying on a literal and figurative deathbed, floating his way into the afterlife. “Look up here, man, I’m in danger,” he sings at one point before proclaiming: “I’ve got nothing left to lose.” Looking gaunt and ready to cross over into the great beyond, the combination of the words and imagery still hit me like a ton of bricks.

I have to assume that both Renck and Bowie knew they’d made something special. Over time, it’s become much more—a statement that will live on as one of the latter’s most deeply felt artistic achievements.

Which of these 10 music videos is your favorite? Any music video from the 2010s that isn’t present on this rundown that you think merits a spot? Sound off in the comments.