Slant Magazine

10. Gotye featuring Kimbra, "Somebody That I Used to Know" (Director: Natasha Pincus). A passionate pas de deux in which Gotye and Kimbra passionately hurl misgivings at each other for what they once had is accompanied by an equally remarkable video, a work of lovely simplicity that expresses the coming together of two lovers as a literally prismatic tug of war. As naked as their emotions, Gotye and Kimbra suck each other in with their embittered recollections of happiness and sadness before one of them, sadly but wisely, chooses to move on. EG

9. Youth Lagoon, "Montana" (Director: Tyler T. Williams). In which director Tyler T. Williams channels Terrence Malick to depict a depleted man-child escaping (however poorly) the shadow of childhood tragedy. A familiar, heavy hand with the Americana, yes, but gorgeous all the same. KL

8. Lana Del Rey, "Video Games" (Director: Lana Del Rey). This is a song about sacrifice, the things a girl will do for the love of a boy, and Lana Del Rey uses its dreamy video not just to sell her brand of Hollywood sadcore, but to provocatively ruminate on the Dream Factory's callous exploitation of aspiring starlets, even expert self-promoters like herself and the hot mess that is Paz de la Huerta. No wonder David Lynch fell in love with Del Rey. EG

7. Manchester Orchestra, "Simple Math" (Director: Daniels). The only video on this list that breaks my heart, a poignant, almost Gondrian conceptualization of a man's life flashing before his eyes that articulates its ideas of love, anger, regret, and disappointment sans the quirkiness that typifies Gondry's signature surrealism. After swerving his van to avoid a deer, a man spirals toward death, remembering his contentious relationship to his father, even the deer he once shot and whose head he awkwardly gifted to a girl who didn't return his affections. Through its appropriately blunt use symbols, of objects fusing different planes of reality into one, this Daniels-directed clip sadly, almost disturbingly equates dying to dreaming. EG

6. Rihanna, "We Found Love" (Director: Melina Matsoukas). Calvin Harris's Ibiza beats are enhanced by a series of striking, hazily filtered Technicolor images of his Barbadian muse and her fictional boy toy frolicking in a bathtub, popping pills, smoking rainbows, and vomiting streamers. Melina Matsoukas's video projects (literally and figuratively) the fleeting rush of both young love and drugs—and the often fatal cocktail that's produced when the two are combined. SC

5. R.E.M., "ÜBerlin" (Director: Sam Taylor-Wood). An unsurprising omission from Pitchfork's embarrassing "Top Music Videos [That Caught Our Eye]" and NME's more respectable but equally single-minded "50 Best Music Videos of 2011 [w/ Hot Girls, Read: Not Lady Gaga, in Them]," R.E.M.'s "ÜBerlin" easily wrestles the Best Dancing By Yourself Video of 2011 prize from Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend." Starring Aaron Johnson and helmed by the actor's Nowhere Boy director, Sam-Taylor Wood, the video perfectly captures the optimistic spirit of what may be R.E.M.'s last great song, a lush, euphoric, and, most important of all, irony-free celebration of street and life. EG

4. Battles featuring Gary Numan, "My Machines" (Director: Daniels). Common symptoms of Escalaphobia include nausea, increased heart rate, dizziness, visible trembling, and an overwhelming compulsion to listen to math rock. SC

3. Tyler, the Creator, "Yonkers" (Director: Wolf Haley). With typical I-don't-give-a-shit-ness, Tyler makes himself the target of this particular litany of gripes, essentially a series of paradoxes so Joycean in their density they could stand to have their own set of Cliffs Notes. Take this black-and-white clip as an expression of how Tyler sees himself in constant war with himself, or as a wry, perverse acknowledgement on his part that the best, maybe only, way of making sense of his sick rhymes is by overdosing on bug juice. EG

2. Lady Gaga, "Born This Way" (Director: Nick Knight). You won't see a more striking visual this year than the first 30 seconds of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," where a sparkly unicorn and hot-pink laser triangles give way to the artist's 21st-century portrayal of Metropolis's Maschinenmensch. Perhaps more impressive, however, is that the video's ensuing shots manage to be just as provocative: glistening kaleidoscope gore, hermaphroditic machine-gun phalluses, black-tie zombies, and a literal human melting pot that plays out like something dreamed up by a gloriously unholy matrimony of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Zack Snyder, and H.R. Giger. KL

1. Is Tropical, "The Greeks" (Director: Megaforce). Satirical commentary on society's obsession with gratuitous violence, or child exploitation in the form of reverse infantilism? Either way, French collective Megaforce's clip for Is Tropicals's "The Greeks" is both the funniest and most explosive music video of the year, a celebration of the imaginations of boys who only slow down for a rotisserie chicken and some mashed potatoes. SC