Much more often than not, I find that music videos take away so much from my initial enjoyment of a song. I assume that for everyone, hearing songs naturally conjure up some sort of mental image to go along with the music. And when a video comes out, it challenges that mental picture, usually for the worse. Right now, I remember the first time I saw the video for RHCP's "Californication," which I found and still today find horrible and not worthy of such a serious song. A music video that maked me like a song more?- The Shins' "Pink Bullets"; extremely well done. What are the best/worst music videos ever? Which ones changed your feelings about the song?

I can probably count the number of music videos I have seen in the last 7-8 years on two hands. Most of the videos I can come up with are from the 80's and early to mid 90's. Without thinking too hard, I came up with five.

Dire Straits - "Money for Nothing" This was like one of the first computer generated videos that everyone thought was crazy looking,

Dire Straits - "Walk of Life" This one was just a huge montage of sports highlites. Fun to watch.

Tool - "Sober" This was just kind of spooky, and the animation was pretty cool.

Blur - "Coffee & TV" This one is fun too. The whole premise of the milk carton looking for Graham Coxon was pretty funny.

Tom Petty...Heartbreakers - "Don't Come Around Here No More" This one was built on the Alice in Wonderland motif. The part where she's a cake and they cut into her is kind of, um, odd.

None of these make me think any different of the song. If a song has a crappy video, then it has a crappy video. I don't see how that could ruin the song for me. I'll try to come up with some more.

One of the worst by far was the video for "The Outsider" by A Perfect Circle. It didnt have anything to do with the song and consisted of these girls called The Bikini Bandits running around like idiots. Very depressing considering the high quality of Tool music videos.

Music Videos? What are those?

You're taking me back to the golden age of MTV when they played nothing but videos 24-7. Like PRG said, you're lucky to see a video nowadays. Once in a blue moon, I'll flip by VH-1 and they'll be playing a video. Usually it's either James Blunt (The most inescapable song of the year) or that Mary J. Blige/U2 version of "One", which I don't mind really. Neither are particularly interesting videos.

One of my favorite videos that comes to mind is the video for Radiohead's "Just", which is really a bizarre short film, with subtitled dialogue, about a mysterious man lying in the street. Try to download it if you've never seen it.

Sometimes simplicity is cool. Guns N' Roses put out a pretty funny video for "Garden of Eden", a punked out rocker from Use Your Illusion I. The video featured a static shot of the band through a fisheye lens while they song's lyrics scrolled by highlight by a bouncing ball.

My vote for funniest video ever without being intentionally funny is Guns N' Roses' "Estranged". Where else are you gonna see Slash playing a guitar solo with dolphins and W. Axl Rose in full beard/spandex shorts mode jumping off an oil tanker and being chased by a SWAT team? Totally hysterical.

As for videos that I've enjoyed in a non-funny way, my vote goes to Nirvana for "Heart-Shaped Box". Radiohead has some sweet videos too.

Oh, I thought of another one. I highly doubt anyone's seen this video. But there's a bar where I live that plays classic music videos on a big screen TV. My gf and I were in there one night and the video for Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" came on. We absolutely could not stop cracking up. I've always loved the song, but the video is so bizarre. The lead singer is dressed up like Julius Caesar (toga, etc.) and he's just walking around screaming the lyrics of the song at varous people and waving his finger at them. At one point, he goes up to a baby in a crib and starts yelling at it. It makes absolutely no sense, but it's funny as hell.

My favourite music video is Kool Moe Dee's I Go To Work!
Hilarious and brilliant!

Thanks to youtube, I've been watching a lot of videos recently.

This one from Yo La Tengo is particularly good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPjkP8yDEt0&search=yo%20la%20tengo

"Does anyone remember the foghat rule? Your fourth album should be double-live."



Bob and David are awesome.

quote:

Originally posted by keylimetrev:
Thanks to youtube, I've been watching a lot of videos recently.

This one from Yo La Tengo is particularly good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPjkP8yDEt0&search=yo%20la%20tengo

"Does anyone remember the foghat rule? Your fourth album should be double-live."



Bob and David are awesome.

I've seen that video a bunch of times and it was the first one that came to mind. Yo La Tengo have done a couple other good videos too.

I also like the "Just" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPdoRiWhwsw&search=radiohead%20just

The video for "Wrong Time Capsule" by Deerhoof is awesome.

Ooh, and Okkervil River's video for "For Real"!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: joji,

Never cared much for music videos, haven't seen one in years and years. But there was one by the Replacements that I kinda recall. Whatever the song for the video was, it was playing on a radio and the video was just a shot of the radio as it played the song. Or something like that. I often like the mystery of not always knowing what the artists look like, unless I see them live. Or unless they play live on a decent tv series like Austin City Limits.

quote:

Originally posted by joji:
Ooh, and Okkervil Rive's video for "For Real"!

YES! That is the only music video I've ever seen that I liked. And I love it.

One of my all-time favorites would be Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence." It's one of the first videos I remember from when I started watching MTV around 1990. Just David Gahan dressed up as a king carrying around a lawn chair to different scenic places. I wouldn't call myself a big Depeche Mode fan, but I love this song and I think the video may have something to do with that.

Best - Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood. My favorite part is when the gorillas do the thriller dance, and then later Murdoc dropkicks a gorilla. All in animation too.
Worst - Creed (My Sacrifice). Didn't have the slightest clue what was going on.

"There is" - Box Car Racer. Kinda corny, kinda unoriginal, but I like it. Not near best ever though.

"Parabol/Parabola" - Tool. Great visuals, fits well with the song.

"Mein teil" - Rammstein. I dont know which category it fits under, probably the latter. It is pretty much just the band playing the song, but they are all wearing fat suits with full makeup.

"One more time/Aerodynamic/Digital love/Harder, better, faster, stronger" - Daft Punk. I'd say they stand with Gorillaz as the best animated bands. The four songs are four parts of a pretty cool little story.

"The Bad Touch" - Bloodhound Gang. They're dressed like monkeys and they kidnap random people off the street. Enough said.

Easy! A video that got me hot as a teenager... and still gets me hot... is Billy Idol's "Cradle Of Love". That woman can play a tape at my house any time!!!!

On the serious side, Johnny Cash's video for "Hurt" is very powerful... made even more powerful by the fact that both he and June died shortly after the song came out.

Watching a music video is a different experience from listening to the song. Usually the best videos complement the songs, but also are entertaining on their own.

There was this one video by REM, 'Imitation of Life' which was really good. Basically it was five seconds of footage of this really large, really chaotic scene that kept playing backwards and forward, focusing on different parts of the scene.

Also 'Everlong' by Foo Fighters was a really good video.

And 'Paranoid Android' and 'Karma Police' by Radiohead.

Also..

'New Pollution' by Beck
Many videos by Tool
'Jeremy' by Pearl Jam

I was just thinking about how great some of the old Sonic Youth videos were from the 80's. I was too young to have seen them on MTV back then, but you can find them on www.youtube.com now. I'm specifically referring to "Shadow of a Doubt", "Teenage Riot", and "Providence" which are are some of my all time favorite Sonic Youth tracks.

My favorite videos:

Radiohead - Paranoid Android
Radiohead - There There
Korn - Freak on a leash
Coldplay - The scientist
Coldplay - Talk
Okkervil River - For real
Primus - My name is mud
Beastie Boys - Sabotage
Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #? (power out)
Kid Koala - Basin street blues

and I surely forgot some other videos....

And Interpol - Evil. Fantastic video.