Slant Magazine

20. Björk, "Declare Independence" (Michel Gondry)
Michel Gondry's videos come in two subtly distinct flavors: strictly arithmetical but nevertheless breathtaking in their mind-boggling execution (think "The Hardest Button to Button") and arithmetical but inextricably bound to the human condition via narrative or allegory. Björk's "Declare Independence" falls into the latter category, the singer's kaleidoscopic rage coloring the threads of a giant bass guitar via a megaphone while soldiers with the flags of Greenland and the Faroe Islands emblazoned on their shoulders declare their independence via rainbow-colored graffiti. SC

19. Madonna, "American Life (Director's Cut)" (Jonas Akerlund)
When announcing her decision not to release director Jonas Akerlund's original cut of the "American Life" video, Madonna claimed that she did not "want to risk offending anyone who might misinterpret" its meaning. It seemed like spin control back in 2003, but that statement reads today like a damning indictment of the reactionary groupthink that gripped the nation in the early days of the Iraq War. It isn’t like either the video’s message about viewing war as a form of popular entertainment or its striking, loaded images leave much room for misinterpretation. Prescient? Yes. Relevant? Surely. Subtle? Not so much. JK

18. D'Angelo, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" (Paul Hunter and Dominique Trenier)
Not unlike Fiona Apple's "Criminal," the video for "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" made its star an unwitting sex icon. It's also aesthetically liberating—an unabashed attempt to inverse MTV's erotic gaze, turning it on a ripped black man. The single, continuous shot travels up and down the contours of D'Angelo's body, doing for the artist what he does for his music: stripping it bare. PS

17. Kanye West, "Flashing Lights" (Spike Jonze and Kanye West)
"Flashing Lights" could be Spike Jonze's letter to Quentin Tarantino: "Hey, I can do that too." In a glorious, slow-motion tracking shot, a Jackie Brown-like buxom woman strips to her lingerie, bludgeons her captive to death with a shovel, and burns the evidence. His fetishized violence is also shot better than anything Tarantino has done. (Watch as a double bill with Beyoncé's "Diva," which puts everything into delirious post-feminist context.) PS

16. The Avalanches, "Frontier Psychiatrist" (Kuntz & Maguire)
The Avalanches's music is a dizzying cavalcade of obscure samples. Their videos are in a more blissfully retarded vein, with their "Frontier Psychiatrist" essentially reinventing Hee Haw for fans of '50s educational films, Sonny and Cher, The Gong Show, John Waters, Blake Edwards, and the Kuchar brothers, featuring a drum-playing granny, a chorus of ghosts, some donkey ass-slapping, music-playing skeletons, kazoo-wielding black cowboys, and people in chicken and monkey suits. The comically literal interpretation of the song deepens one's understanding of the Avalanches's approach, though mostly the clip is best appreciated as—to quote iAMtheWALRUS6 from YouTube—"the tweakest thing ever while stoned." EG

15. Röyksopp, "Remind Me" (H5)
The Norweigan duo's electronic music may err on the synthetic side, but at least they appreciate good design. The brilliantly schematic video for "Remind Me" diagrams a city's everyday workings, from the banal (a woman eats a burger) to the environmental (the meat manufacturing plant where it was made), a meticulously aestheticized Sim City unfolding before our eyes. PS

14. Beyoncé, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" (Jake Nava)
Sure, it's the decade's Ground Zero for YouTube imitations. But if on-point choreography and hotness were the only qualifying factors here, "Single Ladies" would only be running a close second to this among distaff trio production numbers. What makes Beyoncé's Three Leotards one for the ages is the fact that there's actually a fourth dancer running rings around everyone: the flawlessly pirouetting camera. "Single Ladies" is Max Ophüls funkily reincarnated. EH

13. Kelly Osbourne, "One Word" (Chris Applebaum)
This surprisingly good dance single didn't do much for Osbourne's singing career stateside, but in the elegantly shot black-and-white video she fulfills a precocious childhood fantasy of starring in Godard's Alphaville. As an undercover operative, Osbourne sashays fiercely through a narrow hallway and lies on a silk-covered bed, taunting the camera, "One lie tells a thousand stories/The greatest stories that were ever told." PS

12. Bat for Lashes, "What's a Girl to Do?" (Dougal Wilson)
Natasha Kahn convincingly apes a David Lynch film by way of Sleepaway Camp in "What's a Girl to Do," in which she rides her bike down an empty stretch of highway, where funny things go bump in the night, including BMX riders in bunny masks. PS

11. The White Stripes, "Fell In Love with a Girl" (Michel Gondry)
It isn't just that the animation in "Fell In Love with a Girl" makes for a jaw-dropping stunt (particularly impressive to those of us who were never able to get their LEGO constructions to turn out quite right), but it's that the use of LEGOs is an inspired choice of medium, in that their primary colors and sharp lines find a contemporary analogue for the De Stijl art movement that has been an influence on the White Stripes's image and aesthetic from the very beginning. It's a triumph of form-meets-function in every sense. JK