Music videos offer a succinct, often easily digestible vehicle for big ideas—both political and technological. The opportunity for quick turn-around means that the medium, even more so than film and TV, can provide an almost real-time commentary on society. If last year’s best videos were a direct response to systemic racism and other forms of oppression, 2019 was the year artists and directors opted to seek refuge or remedy in the world of fantasy. Whether it was playful clips for EDM songs like the Chemical Brothers’s “We’ve Got to Try” and Hot Chip’s “Hungry Child,” which used humor to satirize relationships, FKA twigs’s “Cellophane,” which turned heartbreak into a wrenching visual representation of self-love, or Lana Del Rey’s “Doin’ Time,” which tonally falls somewhere in the middle, 2019’s most compelling videos looked outside our realm of reality to reflect what’s going on inside. Sal Cinquemani
20. Normani, “Motivation”
The video for Normani’s “Motivation” hearkens back to the imagery of early-aughts pop, complete with streetside dance breaks and a head-turning strut from Normani that nods to Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love.” But Normani proves she’s a force in her own right, incorporating gravity-defying tumbles and a basketball booty bounce. The latest generation of young pop stars—Billie Eilish, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes—seems to lack a superstar with the proverbial “full package,” with a commanding stage presense and capable of both jaw-dropping choreography and powerhouse vocals. “Motivation” captures the potential Normani has to become the next unstoppable female entertainer, emulating the showmanship of such pop icons as Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, and Queen B. Sophia Ordaz
19. Purple Mountains, “Darkness and Cold”
Purple Mountains is a lot of things, foremost among them the best confessional divorce album since Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom. On “Darkness and Cold,” David Berman directly confronts the dissolution of his marriage: “Light of my life is going out tonight without a flicker of regret.” At first glance, the song’s video is a literal rendering of the story, with Berman sulking around an apartment while he watches a woman get ready to go out. But they never interact directly. It’s as if Berman is sitting lonely in his room, torturing himself with thoughts of what she’s doing now. The clip’s editing heightens the misery: The action is interspersed with real pictures of Berman and his estranged wife, and the look on his face in the first shot is pure, uncut sorrow. But this wouldn’t be a David Berman song if that crushing, overwhelming sadness didn’t sit alongside gut-bustingly funny moments. His lip-synching into the microphone (and later flashlight) is comically exaggerated, and the video ends with a 10-second clip of rainbow-colored text wishing us all a happy summer from the Bermans as a pop song blares. “Darkness and Cold” is the last video we’ll ever get from Berman, but it perfectly captures the essence of his art: Life is unbearably terrible and unspeakably funny, and it’s usually both at the same time. Seth Wilson
18. Flying Lotus featuring Denzel Curry, “Black Balloons Reprise”
Darkness settles over L.A. as black balloons float skyward in the opening shot of Jack Begert’s video for Flying Lotus’s “Black Balloon Reprise,” and it only gets darker from there. Denzel Curry cuts a lonely figure throughout, whether he’s drawing a chalk box to lock himself in, writing messages in his own blood, or standing still, his shadow growing horns on the wall behind him. The track itself tackles the ugliness of life, the degradation of society, and our impending doom. “The day the black balloon explodes, we all die,” Curry raps just as huge balloons burst, strikingly and hopelessly, all around him. Anna Richmond
17. Brittany Howard, “Stay High”
The difference between weepy treacle and powerful melodrama is emotional honesty. Brittany Howard’s “Stay High” video is shot through with the latter, and not just because it so clearly reflects her working-class Alabama childhood. The day-in-the-life narrative follows a factory worker played by Terry Crews, dexterous at using his lumbering body for both humor and stone-faced realism, on his way home. He’s surrounded at different moments by people whose various shades of black, brown, and white skin reflect America as it actually is. They go about grocery shopping, playing games, and tributizing the deceased with an infectious optimism that isn’t blind to struggle or oppression—rather, it’s resolute. Schrodt
16. Doja Cat, “Juicy”
The cleverest postmodern image of 2019 shows Doja Cat in a skintight latex watermelon one-piece sensually splayed out on the floor, looking up at the camera, tantalizing the viewer with the possibilities of her body. Only thing is, she’s been literally sliced in half, her juice entrails exposed. The singer already proved herself as an eminent viral-video trickster who takes long-standing hip-hop tropes and current emoji-laden sexual communication and flips the script. Here she pares her art down to an elemental statement. She simultaneously wants you to lust after her, laugh at her lustiness, and question why the hell you’re lusting in the first place. Schrodt
15. Aldous Harding, “The Barrel”
The uncanny reigns supreme in Aldous Harding’s video for “The Barrel” as she walks a thin line between winking irreverence and disconcerting surrealism. Through a tunnel of soft sheets, the camera emerges into an apparently liminal space where Harding stands alone, dressed in black velvet and a comically tall, part-pagan, part-pilgrim hat. She dances in tiny, restrained moves, steadily holding the camera’s gaze until, after a brief spell wearing a grotesque blue mask (was that what was under the hat?) she moves freely, unburdened by the costume. It’s a cryptic video from an enigmatic performer, and invites bemused viewing after bemused viewing. Richmond
14. Lana Del Rey, “Doin’ Time”
A nod to the 1958 B movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the video for Lana Del Rey’s cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time” pitch-perfectly embodies the singer’s fondness for both SoCal culture and old Hollywood. Directed by Rich Lee, the clip quickly goes from frivolous to haunting when Del Rey’s giantess traverses the boundary between fantasy and reality, exacting vengeance on behalf of a scorned woman (also played by Del Rey). Cinquemani
13. Kevin Abstract, “Peach”
Kevin Abstract, leader of hip-hop boy band Brockhampton, establishes himself as a formidable director with this clip for a solo cut that’s nevertheless infused with a sense of camaraderie brought out by his featured collaborators. He and the other guys do silly nonsense guy stuff—pose in all white, fail to execute knowingly corny Backstreet Boys-era choreography, pop wheelies and improvise art on residential L.A. streets, stretch their bodies far out of a convertible careening on the edge of a cliff—and yet their bonding tells us everything we need to know about them. Every stifled laugh and awkward gesture illuminates Abstract’s own tentative steps toward artistic maturity under the stifling pressure of fame and expectations. A rich audiovisual document of time passed as much as it is a song or music video, “Peach” is ultimately a snapshot of young men trying to figure out the people they’re going to be—and the deep pain and ecstatic liberation that come along with that journey. Schrodt
12. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, “In Good Faith”
A simple song for dark times, “In Good Faith” is nothing short of a secular hymn. Will Oldham sings about small moments of grace and nature: rocks being shaped into diamonds, people helping one another through each day. The accompanying video is similarly gentle, with a documentary-style look at a group of people making their way through the world. We see them in homes, tending crops, generally filling their time with the tasks that constitute the bulk of life on Earth. The climax shows most of the characters singing in Sacred Harp choirs, joyfully joining voices to celebrate the possibility one finds in the sacred and infinite. At a time when religion divides people as much as any other force on the planet, the song and the video gesture to a world where our shared humanity joins us more than our ideas divide. You can’t go five minutes on the internet without seeing someone accused of lacking it, but “In Good Faith” celebrates the possibility that we might all make it out alive. Wilson
11. Alex Cameron, “Miami Memory”
Having met while making a mockumentary-style video for the song “Marlon Brando,” Alex Cameron and Jemima Kirke continue their fruitful collaboration with “Miami Memory,” at once a Technicolor dreamscape and a fearlessly intimate exploration of their dynamic as a real-life couple. The first third of the video seems to cast Kirke as a beautiful object—Cameron films her receiving a massage, then watches her dance—but the remaining two-thirds reset the balance. Kirke matches his gaze with hers, taking the camera over for herself, directing him, taking her turn to watch him dance. Full of warmth and free from self-consciousness, it’s a video that makes the line “Eating your ass like an oyster” feel like one of the most baldly romantic lyrics of the year. Richmond
10. Thom Yorke, “Anima”
“Anima” matches a stylistically gifted director with one of rock’s most singular voices. The short film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, takes three songs from Anima—“Not the News,” “Traffic,” and “Dawn Chorus”—and weaves them together to form a narrative that subverts the crushing doom evoked by Thom Yorke’s lyrics. Perhaps the most prescient futurist in rock, the singer-songwriter has been railing about the existential threat to human civilization posed by technology and creeping authoritarianism for two decades. The film is set in a world overwhelmed by both, where Yorke is one among a group of uniformed, automaton-like workers when a chance encounter with a woman (played by his partner, Dajana Roncione) jolts him out of his forced stupor. The film’s visual style is heavily influenced by early German expressionist cinema, with bodies casting long shadows against impossible architecture, while the figures surrounding Yorke move with the precision of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s biomechanics. The singer himself has an out-of-sync physicality reminiscent of silent film comedians like Buster Keaton. The climactic interaction between Roncione and Yorke leads to a moment of redemptive grace that belies the crushing sadness of “Dawn Chorus.” “Anima”—which is available exclusively on Netflix—is one of the most ambitious music videos of the decade, and an indelible companion piece to the album. Wilson
9. Danny Brown, “Dirty Laundry”
A hallmark of Danny Brown’s style is his ability to drop a punchline, and he’s described uknowwhatimsayin¿ as his stand-up comedy album. No surprise, then, that the video for lead single “Dirty Laundry” has him duded up like a Rupert Pupkin-ish lounge lizard zipping around on a gonzo tour of New York. In a mustard-yellow tuxedo and ruffled shirt, wearing a fake gut, Brown tools around the city in a yellow cab, wreaking havoc and generally having a great time. Hanging his head out of the cab like Heath Ledger’s Joker, Brown raps his gloriously filthy travelogue as he fights and seduces his way around town. The video’s multiple laugh-out-loud gags include him scream-laughing through the taxi divider at a terrified passenger and chilling on the bench at a laundromat in his underwear. The deranged protagonist matches the song’s manic tale of sexual depravity and takes the venom out of what could be a truly nasty song. Instead, the clip makes the song function more as a commentary on machismo than a celebration of sexual conquest. Wilson
8. Tove Lo, “Glad He’s Gone”
Directed by Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia, “Glad He’s Gone” takes both female solidarity and device dependence to absurd lengths, as Tove Lo steps outside a diner to take a call from an inconsolable friend, comically traveling the Earth, thwarting an armed robbery, getting arrested, changing her identity, and going on the lam—all while her date sits patiently at the table watching his meal get cold. Maybe chivalry isn’t dead after all. Cinquemani
7. The Chemical Brothers, “We’ve Got to Try”
Music videos didn’t have so much of a headline-making year in 2019 as in years past, but they came with plenty of merciful laughs. The Chemical Brothers returned with the polished cinematic sheen of “We’ve Got to Try,” which follows a group of scientists-cum-hooligans who train an adorable pooch to race cars (with prosthetic arms, natch) then launch into outer space where the animal finds self-actualization. Whatever has you down, this doggie dream will make you believe. Paul Schrodt
6. Stormzy, “Vossi Bop”
Stormzy’s “Vossi Bop” is a testament to unfussy, low-budget ingenuity that fuels some of the most sneakily brilliant music videos. The British rapper appears on seemingly desolate streets of London with a lively crew of sportswear-clad youngsters who dance alongside him and disrupt the action in the frame. Every frenetic whip pan and circular tracking shot mirrors Stormzy’s immaculate bars and muscular grime beat. Neither the words nor the visuals, with a cheeky parliamentary wig snatch, miss a chance for a forceful punch back at the U.K. government that’s dishonored its people. Schrodt
5. HAIM, “Summer Girl”
No strangers to a casual stroll through a cityscape, the Haim sisters perfect the art of walking and singing in their video for “Summer Girl.” Directed by frequent collaborator Paul Thomas Anderson, the clip sees Danielle, Este, and Alana shed their clothes item by item as if emerging from cocoons. A man playing the saxophone follows Danielle as she makes her way through the streets—a constant reminder of unfinished work and worry, perhaps—but by the end, joined with her sisters in their final, summer-ready form, she turns around to find he’s walking in the opposite direction. It’s a fun, loose video about the sisters seeking to unburden themselves from whatever’s holding them back, and by running headlong into the light. Richmond
4. Hot Chip, “Hungry Child”
The inventive clip for Hot Chip’s “Hungry Child” reveals how a relationship’s irreconcilable fault lines surface as petty grievances, utilizing the song itself as a plot device. In the midst of a couple’s argument, a house groove mysteriously begins to emanate from somewhere inside the house, following them into the street, and into an Uber ride and therapy session. Only when they resolve to break up does the song stop plaguing them. Ordaz
3. Angel Olsen, “Lark”
The video for Angel Olsen’s “Lark” operates according to a dream logic that underscores the song’s intensity, with locales and emotions changing on a dime. The song is about the moment a troubled relationship detonates with force of a supernova, unable to bear the strain of equal parts love, hate, recrimination, and guilt. The video makes “Lark” seem like a dream that’s just on the cusp of a nightmare. It begins with Olsen storming out of a house in obvious distress, then follows her through a quick succession of locations. The colors of the forest and the bonfire, and particularly the water ballet, are eye-poppingly gorgeous. But in the clip’s final moments, as she walks down a beach alongside some horses, we see a close-up of Olsen’s face, wracked with sorrow as her soaring voice fades. Wilson
2. Mitski, “Pearl”
At an astounding 1,480 individual frames, “Pearl” is a marvel of digital animation. Rendered to produce a dreamlike effect, the soft-hued stills—composed of ink, charcoal, pastel, and color pencil—depict a lone woman walking into a spacious mansion that falls to pieces at the strum of a guitar. Surrounded by a whirlwind of flying furniture, dishes, and paintings, the woman free-falls, becoming smaller and smaller in the immensity of an endless expanse of sky. Below, the bottomless abyss of an ocean awaits, reinforcing the song’s overwhelming sense of uncertainty. Ordaz
1. FKA twigs, “Cellophane”
The voyeuristic introduction to FKA twigs’s “Cellophane” is, perhaps, symbolic of the public scrutiny the singer endured in the wake of her split with actor Robert Pattinson. Her graceful flight up and down a stripper pole is vulnerable and wounded, far from the sensuality typically associated with the dance form. She abandons her performance, climbing the pole to a heavenly realm that opens up above her, where she contemplates a mechanical, insect-like creature that bears her face. Director Andrew Thomas Huang interweaves shots of twigs’s pole dancing and of her falling helplessly as she comes to grips with her deepest insecurities. twigs is covered head to foot in the brown clay that breaks her fall, as if she were settling in her insecurities rather than running away from them. Ordaz
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