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The 25 Best Music Videos of 2012

The entries on this list offer a glimpse of the staggeringly dissimilar outcomes of music video’s democratization.

The 25 Best Music Videos of 2012
Photo: XL

The entries on this list offer a glimpse of the staggeringly dissimilar outcomes of music video’s democratization, running the gamut from shiny, well-choreographed dance numbers to high-art conceptual pieces. There’s no theme or mood uniting these videos aside from the fact that a director no longer needs a cadre of set designers, caterers, stylists, and dancers to craft a captivating vision—proving that the power to not only make media, but imaginative media that reaches a large swath of the public now rests in the hands of a large and diverse group of not-always-professional auteurs. Kevin Liedel


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25. Le1f, “Wut”

Wut indeed. The hips of this rebel of the neon god, whose couture appears to have been designed by Project Runway alum and androgyne Fabio Costa, exist to shake things up. And like this swagger, the video’s practically Dadaist images are a hilariously winking “fuck you” to rap music’s heterosexist bias. Ed Gonzalez


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24. Björk, “Mutual Core”

Leave it to Björk to anthropomorphize the Earth’s tectonic plates. The lyrics to “Mutual Core” sometimes feel like she’s reading from a science textbook (“As fast as your fingernail grows/The Atlantic Ridge drifts”), but the video brings the song to explosive life, with Björk, naturally, in the role of neglected Mother Nature. Sal Cinquemani


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23. Sigur Rós, “Ekki múkk”

Practically a rebuke to the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, starring Game of Thrones’s Petyr Baelish being guided across a vast field by a wise snail toward an injured fox he comforts in its last moments. The snail’s narration can be a bit on the nose, but the mood of loss and loneliness is striking, as is the image of three creatures of different sizes meeting each other on the same level of mortal understanding. Gonzalez


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22. Major Lazer, “Get Free”

“I just can’t believe what they’ve done to me/We can never get free,” Amber from Dirty Projectors sings on Major Lazer’s “Get Free,” her plaintive lamentation juxtaposed with images of people doing precisely that in the streets, gyms, salons, and discotheques of Jamaica. Cinquemani

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21. M.I.A., “Bad Girls”

Wonderfully ridiculous in its juxtaposition of American excess and stereotypical Middle Eastern imagery, M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” treats viewers to illegal desert races full of drifting BMWs, burning oil wells, and hijab chic. In the middle of it all is M.I.A. herself, and deservedly so, as few other artists could lace such a wild, colorful collage with powerful but subtle nods to Saudi Arabia’s “women to drive” movement. Liedel


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20. Bob Dylan, “Duquesne Whistle”

An old-fashioned boy in modern times meets girl, girl shuns boy, boy destroys everything in his path for a second chance. The video, spry even at its darkest, ends in a dream, a melancholic vision of a kiss just out of reach, an image that ultimately attests to Bob Dylan’s own endurance. Gonzalez


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19. Todd Terje, “Inspector Norse”

A snarky ode to arrested development with a great undercurrent of sadness. Like the deliberately passé-sounding electronica of the Todd Terje track, the moustachioed nobody of the video feels out of time, clinging to a reality that left him behind long ago. Gonzalez


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18. Benga, “I Will Never Change”

In a day and age where amateur videographers can apply rather sophisticated special effects to their YouTube-bound film projects, there’s something to be said for achieving novelty the old-fashioned way. In what had to be a painstakingly tedious process, various vinyl records are lined up to match the wave pattern of British dubstepper Benga’s “I Will Never Change.” What’s particularly interesting about the project is that there’s very little mystery behind the feat: Viewers see quite clearly that each vinyl is numbered according to order, thereby making this one of those rare visual feats that’s just as honest as it is impressive. Liedel

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17. Zebra Katz t/ Njena Reddd Foxxx, “Ima Read”

Zebra fucking Katz’s rhythmic song is a mean queer’s manifesto, and its hypnotically trashy and intriguingly racially coded video, a horror-film aficionado’s wonderland, gets an A+ for its use of double entendre. Gonzalez


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16. Cloud Nothings, “No Future/No Past”

The video for “No Future/No Past” is an ideal pairing for the song’s creeping escalation, depicting a hapless bystander being dragged by some invisible, no doubt malevolent force to some unknown fate. As viewers, we see what the victim sees: garage ceilings, blue sky, wintry canopies—mundane, everyday vistas signifying the last fateful visions before death or worse. The horror show is made all the more impressive when considering that the scares are delivered in broad daylight, surrounded by typical suburbia, and without a drop of blood or visible violence. Liedel


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15. Jay-Z and Kanye West, “No Church in the Wild”

Though it was filmed in the Czech Republic, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s breathtakingly shot “No Church in the Wild” plays as a broader comment on the civil unrest that’s enveloped both the Middle East and director Romain Garvas’s native Greece, as well as the violent conflict that seems to be roiling beneath the surface in places as distant as Wall Street and Madison, Wisconsin. Cinquemani


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14. Perfume Genius, “Hood”

Part of Mark Hadreas’s charm as a musician is his upfront, naked vulnerability, most often manifesting in the delicate power of his voice. “Hood” quite literally envisages those characteristics, having a near-nude Hadreas being groomed, beautified, and cared for quite lovingly by hunky gay porn actor Arpad Miklos. At only two minutes long, the video is a stark reminder that, no matter how complex, nuanced, or numerous an artist’s idiosyncrasies may be, they can still be capably portrayed with the barest of aesthetics. Liedel


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13. Jay-Z and Kanye West, “Niggas in Paris”

This euphoric, epilepsy-threatening stroke of genius transforms Kanye West, Jay-Z, and their fans into inkblots, a kaleidoscopic effect that works to stress the sense of communal experience we all feel at concerts. Gonzalez


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12. Die Antwoord, “Baby’s on Fire”

Die Antwoord’s Yo-Landi Vi$$er is a modern-day Carrie in this pastel-colored visual feast, only her oppressor isn’t a Christian fundamentalist mother or a bunch of abusive classmates, but her sexist, hypocrite brother (played by the South African group’s other vocalist, Ninja). And while Yo-Landi’s revenge isn’t as preternaturally fiery as Carrie’s, it’s every bit as sweet. Cinquemani


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11. Flying Lotus, “Until the Quiet Comes”

Water is used as a metaphor for both death and resurrection in Kahlil Joseph’s stirring, Sundance-approved depiction of life in Los Angeles’s Nickerson Gardens housing projects. A black teenager rises from the sidewalk after being gunned down, his peculiar dance moves celebrating the joy and sorrow of his community as well as his escape from it. Cinquemani


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10. Chairlift, “Met Before”

Jordan Fish’s video for Chairlift’s “Met Before” gives viewers the freedom to dabble in some alternate outcomes for a trio of uncertain science grads caught in a potential love triangle. In having users act as the powerbrokers for all sorts of subtle decisions, Fish has essentially constructed a Choose Your Own Adventure for the YouTube generation. Editor’s Note: Experience the full interactive video here. Liedel

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9. Sigur Rós, “Ég Anda”

Both of Sigur Rós’s official videos for “Ég Anda” are advertisements for the pleasures of breathing. One, directed by Ramin Bahrani, expresses without heavy-handedness its reverence for the air through its gorgeously mysterious collaging of animal and mechanical bodies and industrial surfaces. The other, a dry heave in the style of Peter Greenaway, mostly attests to chocking as hazard that spares no one and uses humor as a reason to get your Heimlich on. Editor’s Note: Watch Ragnar Kjaransson’s video here. Gonzalez


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8. Earl Sweatshirt, “Chum”

What the fuck is going on, his shirt reads, which isn’t only a response to the something-sinister-to-it frogs sitting on top of one another. People and animals have no faces, and through this carnival of souls a somnambulistic Earl Sweatshirt floats through, chill, almost detached, forward but sometimes upside down, the whole world a fugue state that hauntingly expresses the agony of fatherlessness and feeling rootless. Gonzalez

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7. Lana Del Rey, “National Anthem”

The quintessential music video for the supposedly post-racial Instagram era, Lana Del Rey’s Super 8-style tale of innocence lost takes the singer’s (and our) nostalgia fetish to its logical conclusion, reimagining John F. Kennedy as a blinged-out, cigar-smoking lothario and Lizzie Grant as the Madonna/whore hybrid who watches in horror as her American Dream comes tumbling down. Cinquemani


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6. The Shins, “Simple Song”

In Daniels’s funny but poignant video for the Shins’ “Simple Song,” a bat to the foot and a cake to the face is apparently enough to inspire an elderly James Mercer to play one last game with his children following his death: Find the Deed to the House. As they elbow their way past each other to rummage through the house, they unearth injuries, heartache, and other painful memories, but also small moments of kindness and love. In the end, it takes a wrecking crew to bring them back together. Cinquemani

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5. Danny Brown, “Grown Up”

Danny Brown’s playful reflection on growing up hinges on a key line from the song’s hook: “Whoever thought I’d be the greatest growing up” By having a shorty lip-sync the lyrics to his song, Brown makes banal experience—riding bikes through broke-down streets, getting hauled by Moms to the store in a laundry cart, causing trouble in school—seem extraordinary: the building blocks of greatness. Gonzalez


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4. Solange, “Losing You”

Inspired by Daniele Tamagni’s photography of the Congo’s elegant street style, Solange’s “Losing You” is a kaleidoscopic, doc-style portrait of Cape Town, South Africa. The dapper denizens of a colorful shantytown strut through the dusty streets donning ’70s leisure suits while the singer alternately strikes cool poses and dances exuberantly in front of a hair salon and tailor’s shop, all captured though director Melina Matsoukas’s signature hazy lens. Cinquemani


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3. Grimes, “Oblivion”

Part of Claire Boucher’s charm is her inherent lonerism. It’s easy to imagine her writing and recording in some dank, dark basement, alone but for a litany of stuffed animals, dated twee trinkets, and other odd miscellany surrounding her laptop studio. “Oblivion” plays on that impression—and the capriciousness of Grimes’s music—by thrusting a girlish, headphone-donned Boucher into the public, male-dominated arena of various sporting events. Caught between varying levels of camaraderie and disconnect with passers by, Boucher is both humanized and alienated as she dances to the beat of her own drumpad. Liedel

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2. Explosions in the Sky, “Postcards from 1952”

As time passes, photographs inevitably become artifacts stranded in time, their context a fading memory. “Postcards from 1952” seeks to reimagine those lost details, focusing an excruciatingly slow eye on the beauty of the moments leading up to the flash. Seeing as how Explosions in the Sky’s post-rock has always worn its pensive heart on its sleeve, the sentimental exploration doesn’t quite come as a shock. What does surprise, however, is the video’s disregard for cheap nostalgia. It would be rather easy to pair EITS’s towering guitars with some heavy-handed Kodak moments, but “Postcard from 1952” eschews schmaltz for something far more captivating: The beautifully fragile details that never make it into the photo album, but are just as important as what does. Liedel


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1. MS MR, “Hurricane”

They say every image you’ve ever seen is subliminally catalogued in your brain forever, like a super-computer storing files until they’re called up again for recognition. “Welcome to the inner workings of my mind,” the anonymous female half of MS MR sings on the duo’s debut single, “Hurricane,” as an exhilarating montage of every pop culture image she’s absorbed in her life speeds by in a collage of memories, like time snowballing faster and faster until it reaches an old movie title card that reads, “The End.” Cinquemani

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