Director Jake Scott and R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe lay it on thick in the video for the band's "Everybody Hurts," a cut from the hugely popular
Automatic for the People. For the video, Scott prominently borrowed key themes and images from Joel Schumacher's underrated man-against-the-world flick
Falling Down and Fellini's
8 1/2, the Italian auteur's epic chronicle of directorial self-indulgence. The clip's series of subtitles evokes the disaffection of people trapped in a Los Angeles traffic jam. Stipe emerges from his car, spiritually cleanses them with his song and ushers them into the next world like the Messianic high priest that we all know and love.
Before Madonna, Olivia Newton-John made a ripple or two when her "Let's Get Physical" special aired on network television in the winter of 1982. This hour-long spectacle created by Newton-John and director Brian Grant was inspired by the artist's 1981 album
Physical, which spawned the number one hit of the same name. The music video for the song features Newton-John in full double-entendre mode. The singer casts herself as a horny aerobics instructor supervising a group of overweight men trying to shed some of their excess fat. By video's end, the porkers have turned into sweaty Adonises straight out of a Wakefield Poole porn. No doubt wanting to get in on the action, Newton-John is stunned to discover that her class prefers each other's company. The sight of men walking hand-in-hand into a gym shower caused obvious controversy at the time while Newton-John's influential fashion trends caused a few schools to adjust their dress policies.
Known for the gorgeous sheen of videos like Madonna's "Rain" and Lenny Kravitz's "Are You Gonna Go My Way," director Mark Romanek took a turn toward the macabre with his 1994 clip for Nine Inch Nails' "Closer." Inspired by the photography of the cadaver-lovin' Joel-Peter Witkin, the video features illusory images of 19th century laboratory daguerreotypes. The video's controversial content led to clever editing, including silent film-style title cards which read "scene missing." Shot with vintage cameras and antiqued film stock, "Closer" brilliantly juxtaposes the dreamlike past with modern-day fears and phobias including, perhaps, censorship itself.
Inspired by the novels of Jules Verne and early Lumiere films, illusionist George Méliès dazzled the world with the release of 1902's
A Trip to the Moon. Though his mini-epics are less structurally and thematically groundbreaking than many of D.W. Griffith's early works, his ravishing tableaus forever changed the way audiences looked at and experienced cinema. More so than any other music video, "Tonight, Tonight" displays an unmistakable love for the possibilities of cinema. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris used period clothing, theatre props and old-school "special effects" to replicate the look and feel of
A Trip to the Moon. This time, though, the journey is in color. The married directing team seamlessly incorporates the Smashing Pumpkins into the clip. Like the smiling moon from Méliès's film, Billy Corgan & Co. become not unlike celestial bodies alive with the joys of creation.
Interestingly, Metallica's greatest videos to date are condensed versions of larger works. In 1999, Swedish-born director Jonas Åkerlund toured the film festival circuit with
Turn the Page, a fifteen-minute docu-drama that follows the life and times of a stripper/prostitute and her young daughter. For the video to Metallica's cover of Bob Segar's "Turn The Page," the film was cut down to just under six minutes. Åkerlund's fascination with white trash angst is less contemptuous and certainly less humurous than that of photographer Larry Clark's. Both here and in their "One" video, the band is a major loose end—much like Aerosmith, Metallica has never found a way of seamlessly incorporating themselves into their videos. Regardless, the uncensored version of the "Turn The Page" video is still every bit as raw and immediate as the Metallica cover itself.
The video for her cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" finds Madonna immersed in civil rights-era black culture. The black-and-white clip's backdrop is a 1960s hotel room, in which a seemingly tortured Madonna waits impatiently for a phone call. A photograph of Muhammad Ali hangs on the wall; the spine of a hardcover book reads "NEGRO." In what might be one of her most restrained performances, Madonna removes her fake eyelashes, listlessly tidies up the room and then rummages through her dresser and frantically tries on different clothes like a junkie bidding for some semblance of control. All the while, she waits for the phone to ring. There are subtle implications that she's waiting for more than just a scorned lover. But like all things Madonna, the video's dualities are far less important than her final message of liberation: the call finally comes and she hangs up the receiver.
Before Jonathan Glazer made the successful transition from music videos to feature films, he was directing commericals for Levi's, Volkswagen and Nike. The London native has also produced some of the more cinematic videos to hit the MTV airwaves. Though his clip for Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" won the 1997 Video Music Award for Video of the Year, it is his work for Radiohead and U.N.K.L.E. that remains his most daring. Glazer claims that his video for Radiohead's "Karma Police" was inspired by a bad dream. In this creepy revenge clip, a car slowly follows a man running down a desolate road. When the man turns to face his potential killer, the car pulls back only to reveal a gas leakage in its wake. Glazer's remarkable use of point of view implicates the spectator in the clip's action but it's the spooky way with which he fashions a Möbius strip from karmic irony that makes "Karma Police" one of the more memorable clips of the last few years.
In 1992, Annie Lennox emerged with her first post-Eurythmics solo effort, "Why." The no-frills video presented the image-driven diva simply and delicately, echoing the solemn sentiments of the song and building gradually with it. Bereft, Lennox sits before a mirror and seemingly contemplates the complexities of life and love with aching sincerity. Like a painter, she slowly applies her make-up and redesigns herself as a diva one brush-stroke at a time. Directed by longtime associate Sophie Muller, the clip strikes an arresting balance between the feminine and powerful.
In this luxurious, deeply personal black-and-white carnivalesque clip for k.d. lang's "Constant Craving," Mark Romanek subtly yet hauntingly evokes the complex relationship between genuine human emotion and performance art. Romanek seemingly indicts an audience for enjoying a series of circus acts without proper regard for the humanity of the show's performers. Without ever garnering true sympathy or understanding from the crowd, the actors stand onstage advertising their big emotions like grotesque drama masks.
Mark Romanek's million-dollar video for the Nine Inch Nails song "The Perfect Drug" is inspired in part by the late Edward Gorey's macabre illustrations. Previously, Gorey's drawings had informed the opening title sequence and stage sets of PBS's famed "Mystery!" series. Though critics have scoured for deep meaning within his works, Gorey always distanced himself from such scrutiny. (Curiously, Gorey titled one of his collections
Amphigorey, a play on the word amphigory, meaning a nonsense verb or composition.) True to its inspiration, Romanek's breathtaking video is not unlike a collection of gothic tableaus. The titular drug here is both Trent Reznor's love for his dead girlfriend and the absinthe he drinks to drown out her memory. His struggle invites endless comparisons to other gothic figureheads who turned to drugs in times of crisis: Rimbaud, Edgar Allen Poe, Vincent Van Gogh and Jack the Ripper investigator Frederick Abberline (immortalized in the graphic novel
From Hell and played in the Hughes Brothers film by none other than director Tim Burton's favorite thespian, Mr. Johnny Depp).
Spike Jonze's clip for Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet" is a joyous homage to Hollywood's Technicolor musicals. Björk's enthusiasm is incomparable but so is Jonze's remarkable use of color. This lark is noticeably weightless but it's this very simplicity that makes it so delightful to watch. Jonze admits to being influenced by Jacques Demy's
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the 1964 Cannes Palm d'Or winner starring Catherine Deneuve. Interestingly, the film also inspired Lars Von Trier's own
Dancer in the Dark (2000 Palm d'Or winner), starring Björk and Deneuve as factory workers in 1964 Washington state.
Blur's "Coffee & TV" tells the tale of one courageous little milk carton as he ventures out to find the missing boy printed on his side. Along the way, he encounters a weed-cutter-wielding neighbor, hitches a ride on a motorcycle and gets lost in a ghetto of crushed bottles and cans. The clip is both touching and humorous and subtly incorporates Blur into its storyline. Eventually, the carton leads the missing boy back home, but not before it meets a violent end. Maybe it's true: every milk carton must meet his maker.
In 1939, Dalton Trumbo gained notoriety with the publication of his novel
Johnny Got His Gun, a pacifist treatise that tells the story of an American youth who returns from WWI sans arms, legs and face. In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee charged Trumbo of having communist affiliations. Some 25 years later, Trumbo revitalized
Johnny Got His Gun when he adapted his novel for the screen during the height of the Vietnam War. When Metallica began to work on material for
...And Justice For All, former manager Cliff Bernstein introduced James Alan Hetfield to Trumbo's book just as the frontman was writing the band's now-classic "One." Directors Bill Pope and Michael Salomon tapped into the very source that inspired the song itself, interweaving clips from the Trumbo film with shots of the band and creating what would become one of the most immediate videos ever produced. Though it's easy to fault this economical pastiche for its lack of originality, Pope and Saloman successfully whittle down Trumbo's film to its rawest and most satirical elements. In seven short minutes, Metallica arguably evoke a revolution of the soul far more devastating than that presented in the original text.
After viewing
More, the Academy Award-nominated short film by Mark Osborne, Ethiopian-born singer Kenna commissioned the director to edit the piece for his debut video, "Hell Bent." The claymation clip tells the story of a tortured drone who attempts to manufacture happiness. His invention ("sunglasses" which tint the world) is a huge success but he quickly realizes its artificiality. While Osborne's decision to commericialize his art has been criticized, the minor cuts he made for "Hell Bent" do not compromise the integrity or profundity of his message. The video seamlessly marries Osborne's poignant saga of innocence lost with Kenna's music, and remains one of the most compelling videos in recent memory.
"I personally don't get off on seeing beautiful people in videos. It bores me," said Casey Niccoli about casting the extras that appeared in her now legendary clip for Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing." The beautiful Niccoli, then-girlfriend of Perry Farrell, was looking for the bizarre and that's exactly what she got. The video extols the strange goings-on at a 50's-style supermarket in Venice, California. The video's unadulterated fun, celebration of free-floating libidos and general air of mischief makes it a delirious precursor to the then-burgeoning alt-rock movement.
In the early 80s, women entered the workforce shoulder pad to shoulder pad, proclaiming their equality and aiming to prove it. Recovering disco diva Donna Summer also had something to prove: "She Works Hard For The Money" was one of Summer's first post-disco hits and it quickly became a feminist anthem. The campy video tells the story of a cleaning lady/waitress who moonlights as a seamstress and pines for her long-lost dream of becoming a ballerina. At home she tends to her rowdy, milk-spilling children. "What is that crazy singing black lady doing in our backyard?" the woman seemingly wonders as she peers out the kitchen window. When a looming Summer suddenly enters the storyline and tries to intervene, the woman draws back in confusion and fear. Later, the woman joins her fellow working class ladies in the street for a bit of working-woman unity and some well overdue synchronized dancing.
Paul Hunter's exquisite "Get Along With You" takes singer Kelis on a journey inside her own body and through a gothic forest to a claymation garden reminiscent of Tim Burton's
The Nightmare Before Christmas. There she removes her limbs and forsakes "worldly things," including her life, to be with the man she has lost. Darkly poetic and visually rich, the music video for "Get Along With You" is a perfect complement to Kelis's love-torn song.
Madonna's infamous "Like A Prayer" video stirred up controversy in 1989 due to its religious and interracial imagery. The religious right was up in arms, blacks were offended and Pepsi, with which Madonna had signed a multi-million dollar marketing deal, caved under the pressure. Hullabaloo aside, "Like A Prayer" was a simple, modern morality tale: white woman is raped and beaten by a group of white gangbangers, black man intervenes and is arrested by police. Cultural critics like Bell Hooks have criticized the video, claiming Madonna appropriates black culture for less than holy purposes. But Madonna's intent is not to exploit but to
expose. "Like A Prayer" is constructed as a theatrical tale, one that could not have been told in a white suburban church. The video's controversial images (burning crosses, Madonna kissing a black saint) have proven to be some of the most striking, unforgettable images in music video history and serve only to further the clip's condemnation of racial profiling and religious guilt.
Prodigy's controversial 1997 video follows its antagonist on a path of destruction as the character boozes, snorts, shoves, molests, vomits and fucks "his" way through the night. Unexpected behavior coming from the buxom beauty revealed at the end (the clip challenges stereotypes and audience expectation with a twist ending worthy of M. Night Shyamalan), but "Smack My Bitch Up" offers enough social substance to excuse its gimmick.
Inspired by Zbigniew Rybczynski's short film
Tango, director Garth Jennings created a faux lifescape with R.E.M.'s "Imitation of Life," a kaleidoscopic mural that dared to challenge an increasingly stagnant music video medium. Jennings presents a series of miniature dramas that transpire at an affluent suburban birthday party: a couple has a secret hilltop rendezvous; a girl throws a glass of water in a socialite's face; and Michael Stipe performs his signature shiny happy dance. As Jennings' camera pans repeatedly across the screen, actions begin to repeat themselves while random characters pick up lip-syncing where others left off. The truly groundbreaking clip challenges the viewer's perception of what's real and what "real" really looks like.
