Elbow-deep in sweat, chaps, naughty school girls, cockfights, female boxing, mud wrestling and Thai signs that, when translated, read "Young Underage Girls," Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" video caused a nasty stink in 2002. The clip's most poignant moments include guest artist Redman punching a dancer sporting a bunny costume and a scene in which Aguilera and a group of her young frolicking friends get hosed down in a men's restroom. At the end, a spent and extrra-dirrty Aguilera attempts to wipe what can safely be assumed is Syphilis from her mouth.
For "New," their contribution to 1999's
Go soundtrack, No Doubt enlisted director Jake Scott to help create a retro-rave club setting to juxtapose the band's edgy New Wave rock. Each band member assumed a role: Adrian was the speed freak, Tom was the club entrepreneur and Gwen was the free spirit who just came to get her groove on. Fuzzy plotlines aside, the gorgeously filmed "New" rang in the post-ska No Doubt as we now know them and reintroduced Gwen Stefani as fashion's diva du jour.
A group of Cold War aliens, 50s-style swimmers, skeletons, mummified women and statuesque ravers circle each other onstage in this demented clip for Daft Punk's "Around The World." Director Michel Gondry keeps things simple—via a series of effortless zooms and overheads timed to the circular choreography, he evokes dance music's appeal as an ageless global phenomenon.
DJ Jason Nevins made Run-DMC sound cool again with his remix of the group's first single, 1983's "It's Like That." This old-skool-meets-new-skool clip for the song works off the combative nature set up by the "vs" between Run-DMC and Nevins. A group of ravers gather together in an abandoned warehouse, fending each other off not with fists but with body moving. Killer choreography and silky camera moves are director Marcus Sternberg's visual weapons of choice. More importantly, though, this anthropological celebration of alternative modes of competition works as a continuation of Jennie Livingston's legendary documentary
Paris is Burning and Madonna's "Vogue" video.
In stark contrast to the often excessive videos of its time period, Sinead O'Connor and director John Maybury's minimalist video for "Nothing Compares 2 U" proclaimed O'Connor as an iconoclast to be reckoned with. Moody images of O'Connor walking through a paganistic, gargoyle-filled park were offset with close-ups of the singer's porcelain face against a black background. And yes, that's a real tear.
Only in a Tom Petty video can Alice trip her way through Wonderland. A naïve Alice downs psychedelic shrooms courtesy of a hookah-smoking caterpillar. As the crazed Mad Hatter, Petty fucks with her high. The clip itself hasn't aged well but its stunning art direction was remarkably ahead of its time. Here, it's a virtual threat to Alice's confused sense of perspective. When the munchies kick in, Alice herself is downright edible.
A group of record executives arrive at a rehearsal hall where Paula Abdul is waiting to audition her new music video concept. The execs sit and watch in horror as Abdul and her troupe of dancers (who appear as if they've been plucked right off New York's dingy city streets) pull the shades and unveil their racy creation. Inspired by the dance sequence "Aerotica" from Bob Fosse's
All That Jazz and directed by a then-virtually unknown David Fincher, American Idol Abdul's campy "Cold Hearted" is, along with Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" and Madonna's "Vogue," one of the greatest clips of the "dance video" genre.
Outkast's urgent "po-wer music electric revival" is matched with a video clip courtesy of Dave Meyers that is just as brilliant and high-energy as the song. The video deftly mixes the soulful with the decadent as a pre- (or post-) apocalyptic community (including dancing hoochies, bone thugs and choir women) flocks to the last house on Earth for one final dance call. It's all about peace, love and heading into your next lifetime with a smile on your face.
In 1999, the Red Hot Chili Peppers returned with new do's and John Frusciante in tow. The stylish first video from their much-celebrated
Californication was simple and profound. Directed by Stephane Sednaoui, who helmed the band's famously silver-hued "Give It Away," the symbolic "Scar Tissue" found the Chili Peppers driving across the desert in a red convertible. Beaten, bandaged and at peace, the band mimes their broken instruments to the familiar riffs of Frusciante's guitar. The clip was a beautiful metaphor for the band's resolve and triumph over death, drugs and, most of all, time.
Director Howard Greenhalgh challenges American complacency in his apocalyptic video for Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun." The clip mocks and exaggerates our society's search for truth in television and its gratuitous exploitation of the earth. Soon nature turns itself on the unsuspecting suburb. A tall, thin blonde bakes in the sun as a Barbie doll is scorched on a barbeque. For torturing a cockroach under a magnifying glass, two young boys are burnt under the giant lens of the Black Hole Sun. In the end, the town people's distorted self-images and general arrogance becomes their end.
Mark Kohr's best music video is this underrated clip for Alanis Morissette's "Hand In My Pocket." Based on Morissette's purported fascination with observing people in crowds, the video casts the singer/songwriter as the chauffeur of a local parade. The languid black-and-white photography, Kohr's cynical direction, Morissette's possessed "taxi cab" facial tick and off-kilter lip-syncing manage to add to the strange if not elusive scent of subversion.
Before
Highlander, Russell Mulcahy helped launch a network as director of the first music video to play on MTV, "Video Killed The Radio Star" by The Buggles. More threatening than the canons-cum-cocks of Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time," Mulcahy's cinematic clip for Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" reimagined Wolf Rilla's horror classic
The Village of the Damned as gay fantasia. The witchy headmistress played by Tyler must defy the pink curtains and unexplained doves that shoot out at her from the vaginal hallways of her all-boys school. Tortured by her pent-up sexual energy, she discovers release in fantasy, imagining her pupils as dancing ninjas and scantily clad Tarzans. Morning call seemingly restores her faith in prudence though a child's bright eyes portend yet another vaginal flow. Though the openly gay Mulcahy would channel some of the leftover homoeroticism into the first three episodes of the Brit version of "Queer as Folk," the video's stateside legacy is a sad one. In the 90s, the video was updated for two other Jim Steinman produced tracks: Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love" and Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back To Me Now."
In one mesmerizing long take, Spike Jonze follows a man on fire running through a city street in California. Ignored by pedestrians and motorists alike, the man turns a corner as a bus pulls away from its designated stop. Jonze's use of slow-mo works like a terrifying drawl that emphasizes a culture's complete and utter self-involvement, not to mention its shoddy public transit. For anyone new to the Golden State or anyone without a car, the message is clear: keep out! Precedes and compliments the Dayton & Faris clip for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication."
Culled from a long-form video which told the morality tale of two shoeshine boys who discover the Rhythm Nation (the mini-musical also included "Miss You Much" and the rarely-seen "The Knowledge"), the unity-themed "Rhythm Nation" clip stands on its own as one of the most intricately and powerfully choreographed music videos of all time. The solidarity of Janet Jackson's multi-racial Rhythm Nation dancers is evoked with hyper-synchronized movements while their individuality is expressed via their separate, distinct dances.
Dave Matthews Band's stylish "Crash Into Me" was pieced together from still shots taken by director Dean Karr on location in Woodstock, NY. The striking watercolor-like images (reminiscent of and perhaps influenced by the Eurthymics' "Sweet Dreams") include a ball-and-chain and bassist Stefan Lessard playing an upright bass submerged in a pond. The surreal video evokes a dream in which Matthews is indeed "the king of the castle" of love.
In Stephane Sednaoui's video for "Ironic," four Alanis Morissettes ride along a wintry highway and discuss things both ironic and, as many would gleefully point out,
un-ironic. But grammar usage and execution aside, this colorful video clip captured Morissette's multifarious public persona quite perfectly.
Inside their happy suburban home, a husband (Dave Grohl) and wife (Taylor Hawkins in drag) communicate via dreams. Grohl is Sid Vicious at a lame costume party. Pat Smear and Nate Mendel are the bouncers hot on his tail. The thugs access the couple's shared consciousness, kidnapping the wife and hiding her inside a remote cabin in the woods. Water imagery and opening doorways heighten Grohl's penetration anxiety. A ringing phone figures prominently in and out of sleep and serves to clue Grohl in to the power of dreams over reality. Or is it the other way around? Magritte meets Lynch in this surprisingly intimate paean to lucid dreaming.
Spike Jonze challenges the way music is incorporated and represented in music videos with his bizarre, 80s-style clip for Daft Punk's "Da Funk." Charlie the dog-boy moves to the East Village with a pocketful of dreams and a ghetto blaster by his side. Coping with a broken leg and lack of friends, this anthropomorphic creature is rejected by one New Yorker after another. "Da Funk" is his failed battle cry; indeed, an ornery street vendor reacts less to the noise emanating from Charlie's boombox than he does to the dog's lame attempt at "keeping it real." A chance meeting with a childhood friend suggests things will get better yet the video's devastating finale suggests that Charlie will never learn.
Peter Gabriel and director Stephen R. Johnson teamed with the Brothers Quay and Nick Park ("Wallce & Gromit") in an effort to make a video that Gabriel called "a bit groundbreaking." Clearly meeting their lofty goal, 1986's "Sledgehammer" paved a stop-motion, claymation path for videos by Primus, Tool and, most recently, The White Stripes. Though the award-winning "Sledgehammer" isn't exactly profound, its visual pretenses are crafty and certainly fun to watch.
Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" is as ripe with allusions as it is oversaturated with color (the video was shot in black and white and then computer-colorized). Directed by Anton Corjbin, the clip features surrealistic images including a winged, gluttonous woman reaching for plastic fetuses hanging from a tree and an emaciated Jesus with a Victorian beard and Santa hat climbing onto a cross. While the song makes vague references to cancer, umbilical cords and meat-eating orchids, the video entangles faith and sickness with the clarity of a man who's damn close to giving up his eternal search.
