The History of Music Video in 169 Seconds

This video essay is an experiment in the journal 16:9’s fixed format of “169 Seconds.” Collecting brief excerpts from one music video per year from the period 1964-2024, the video essay attempts to recount the entire history of music video in one single sweep from its beginnings to the present day. Attempting to cover the full complexity of music video in all its historical manifestations in a haphazard audiovisual supercut of a mere 169 seconds is obviously a project that is bound to cave-in on itself – but still the experiment invites several critical reflections about canonization and music video history that this written statement will serve to anchor and illuminate.

In essence, the video essay can be seen as an attempt at providing a list of canonical music videos. The inspiration for making the essay came from similar brief supercuts of standout moments from film history, a type of video essay that has circulated on YouTube for quite some years now (for examples, see here, here or here). The video essay thus collects one music video from every year in the period from 1964 to 2024 in chronological order, from The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” (fig. 1). At a breakneck pace, the video essay aims to make the development of music video come alive before our eyes and ears by showcasing landmark music videos by remarkable musical artists and video directors, along the way revealing historical changes in both musical, visual and audiovisual aesthetics.

(Why) Do We Need a Music Video Canon?

Before we tackle the issues raised by this exercise – like the criteria for video selection, the question of when music video history began, or whatever the essay might indirectly tell us about music video history – a first question needs to be addressed. Do we even need a music video canon? And if so, then why and for what purposes? One place to start answering these questions is by simply stating that past music video scholarship has done little to produce such a canon – or at least has done relatively little to actively and directly pursue the question of what a music video canon could amount to. In fact, a certain cautiousness can be traced whenever the question of canonization appears in past music video research. In his recent book, The Rhythm-Image, Steven Shaviro makes sure to remind the reader that he is decidedly “not trying to create a canon of music video masterworks” (Shaviro 2022, p. 5). Similarly, in her book on the history of British music video, Emily Caston maintains that creating a single canon of music videos would simply “be impossible” (Caston 2020, p. 14) in part because different musical cultures have quite dissimilar value systems. Thus, the basic answer to why we need a music video canon would be that, contrary to what is the case for other audiovisual media forms, a music video canon simply does not yet exist – or as Carol Vernallis has put it, that “while film studies […] has created a canon of its own, no similar corpus exists for music video” (Vernallis 2013, p. 25).

Closely tied to this lack of a commonly shared music video canon is a general lack of documentation and archiving. Information about who assisted in creating a given music video is not always obtainable, in part because labels have not necessarily kept “clear records of the work undertaken” (Caston 2020, p. 15). Even if the site imvdb.com is a valuable source for obtaining production credits for some music videos, to say that its history is “uncatalogued” (Austerlitz 2007, p. 1) or “poorly chronicled” (Vernallis 2023, p. 74) is certainly no understatement. Even though many music videos are readily available online on various video streaming platforms, there are in fact “no archives for music video” (Vernallis 2013, p. 26). It is probably a common misconception that YouTube is a dependable archive for music videos, but in effect many music videos are not available for study and just as many are accessible only in a poor quality. In researching this video essay and gathering materials to include, I would often face a situation where a given video was either nowhere to be found or available only in a quite degraded version. The history I could tell and the canon I could thereby compile was thus limited by the more or less random accessibility of music video works. So even if “the public perception is that music videos are everywhere, closer inspection shows that the condition of music video archives is perilous” (Caston 2020, p. 15) – and whenever you do locate any given more or less obscure music video, “viewers, users and researchers cannot know what version they are watching” (Caston 2020, p. 15). At one point, for instance, I used an excerpt from Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” as one of the included examples – but I ended up having to opt for something else as I was not only unable to chase up who made it, but also to determine the year in which it was produced. Several different videos for this track exist and while the animated music video seems to be from 1974 or 1975 and directed by Robert Mainwood, I used another video with live-action footage, that might be from as late as 1979 (fig. 2).

However, to say that we need a music video canon simply because it doesn’t already exist is of course not a complete answer as to why (or even if) we would want one. On one hand, we might ask, as does Vernallis, whether music videos even “deserve” (Vernallis 2023, p. 74) a canon, while on the other, it is worth asking whether canons in general “have outlived their usefulness” (Kassabian 2010). Certainly, canons are increasingly surrounded by a certain skepticism with critics advocating for more inclusive and flexible canons or even questioning the need for canons at all. Canons risk conservatively reinforcing the centers of power and sustaining the status quo, thereby stifling diversity and leaving no place for new voices and less-known more experimental works. Along this line of reasoning, canon lists are arbitrary and subjective at the same time as they confirm the privileged and prejudiced politics of whoever is making such a list. Whenever something is highlighted, something else is ignored, and canons are indirectly as much about exclusion and marginalization as they are about arriving at some sort of consensus about the aesthetic essence of a given phenomenon. In short, canons restrict rather than inspire your imagination.

Even so, there are also arguments for defending canons. Canons can be a useful short-hand for arriving at shared references and resonances – both in general but also in more specific contexts, like those of research and teaching (Kassabian 2010, p. 74, p. 76). Once you have a canonized set of works, “referencing those works is economical and brief” (Staiger 1985, p. 9). In this view, canons help define what should be known and can facilitate critical discussion. Being familiar with canonical works in a given field can also provide historical insight into the phenomenon in question, a knowledge of key developments in a cultural field as expressed through exemplary works. Easy as it may be to disagree with any proposed list of canonical works, what a canon does provide is a starting point for discussing the merits and standards of excellence of whatever the canon is supposed to cover. In the specific case of music videos, a canon might also serve the additional purpose of arguing that music videos have actual cultural and aesthetic value and are worthy of preservation as cultural heritage. Scholars have often noted how music video is “an underappreciated, critically unnoticed subgenre of filmmaking” (Austerlitz 2007, p. 1), how it has been “largely neglected” (Caston 2020, p. 157), and how academic screen studies have relegated it “to a lower rung, despite its central role in generating representations and new configurations of old and new media” (Perrott 2024, p. 2). A canon might assist in building credibility for such a devalued cultural phenomenon and remind us that it is problematic that too many videos are not being preserved.

Listomania?

No matter whether one finds the arguments for or against canons the most convincing, it is likely true that canon formation will never simply disappear. And even when trying to establish counter-canons, you end up facing some of the same issues anyway – since, as wisely argued by Janet Staiger, “even in revising and decentering dominant canons, new centers appear” (ibid., p. 4). It is probably only a natural inclination to feel drawn to discussing which music videos we might find iconic, particularly accomplished or historically significant. Because as Simon Frith has suggested, “[p]art of the pleasure of popular culture is talking about it; part of its meaning is this talk, talk which is run though with value judgments” (Frith 1996, p. 4). Canon lists inevitably involve such value judgment and might helpfully instigate discussions about the worth of a given cultural phenomenon.

Even if past music video scholarship has done little to interrogate the issue of canonization, it is still implicitly present every time any given music video is singled out for research attention at the expense of other videos. To my knowledge, past writings on music video have only produced three actual canon lists of videos: the earliest one in Michael Shore’s book on early rock video (Shore 1985, p. 259-310), and then two more recent ones in Saul Austerlitz’ popular history of music video (Austerlitz 2007, p. 225-227) and in the French-language book by Laurent Jullier and Julien Péquignot (Jullier & Péquignot 2013, p. 120-121) – though you could also include the collection of British music videos in Emily Caston’s largescale music video research project collected on an edited six-DVD boxset, even though this is of course limited to British videos (for an overview of the collection, see Caston 2020, p. 163-178). While not compiling such lists, all the standard references within the field of music video studies of course also contribute indirectly to the canonization of some videos, simply by means of discussing certain videos and omitting others.

Outside of academia, though, such lists are more common. For one thing, MTV has produced its own array of such lists, including for instance a “top 500 of all time” in 1997 (see Beebe 2007, p. 309-310). But music video charts have proliferated elsewhere as well, particularly online, both in the form of “best of all time” lists, but also narrower “best of”-lists for particular genres, directors or musical acts – from country to hip-hop, from Madonna to Björk, or from Hype Williams to David Fincher (fig. 3). As noted by Diane Railton and Paul Watson, the gradual increase of this practice of list-making has served to produce “an informal canon of videos that appear on list after list: a canon which cuts across both time and genre” (Railton & Watson 2011, p. 6). In addition to this informal process of canonization, Railton and Watson also point to a more institutionalized process of canonization with museums like MoMA in New York and film institutions like the BFI in London archiving and exhibiting music videos. In exhibiting music videos in a context normally reserved for high-art, such music video exhibitions have assisted in “legitimating music video as an art form of sorts” (Korsgaard 2023, p. 48).

A less institutional and more transitory phenomenon also contributing to such processes of canonization was the release of various DVDs featuring the music video work of either musical artists or leading directors. A great many musical artists have had their videos collected on such DVDs, from 80s trendsetters like Michael Jackson or Madonna and on to Radiohead or Beastie Boys onwards (see also Kooijman 2017). While the release of DVDs featuring the work of directors is rarer, the series from Palm Pictures released between 2002 and 2005 was quite influential in lionizing a group of (all male) directors. The series was initiated by Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry who were the first directors included in the series to be followed later by Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer, Anton Corbijn, and Stéphane Sednaoui (fig. 4). The importance of these collections is confirmed by the fact that the first three DVDs including the work of Jonze, Cunningham and Gondry were also the starting point for one of the only extant academic discussions of music video canonization, namely a chapter by Carol Vernallis in her 2013 book, Unruly Media (Vernallis 2013, p. 262-272). Others have also made the case for the importance of these particular DVDs in helping establish the idea of a “canon of music video artist-directors” (Fleig 2021, p. 140, my translation).

Directors vs. Musical Artists

This tendency to focus on music video directors when discussing music video canons points to a central tension regarding music video authorship. While directors are certainly important creative agents in making a music video and while the notion of the auteur has frequently been called upon in terms of legitimizing music video’s cultural value, it is also self-evident that music video is fundamentally collaborative. Without the music and the musicians who make the music, there would be no video. For this reason, one cannot simply adopt the film studies auteur-based approach to the question of authorship – or at least, such an adoption “will need to be modified” and “specially tailored to music video” (Vernallis 2013, p. 25; see also Caston 2015). In the case of music video, it seems intuitively correct to assume that they are the product of a dual authorship between the musician(s) and the director – and even if their expressive aims can differ, in the end product of the music video these “differing perspectives must somehow coalesce” (Shaviro 2022, p. 1).

In the case of my video essay, this also meant considering both important directors (including some of the “usual suspects” mentioned above on to early pioneers like Russell Mulcahy and still-active luminaries like Joseph Kahn or Dave Meyers) and important musicians (some of which have also already been mentioned). The risk of importing the film studies auteur-approach simply focusing on music video directors would be that “90 per cent of the content will be judged inadequate for a canon” (Caston 2020, p. 155). But on the other hand, it is also problematic to focus solely on the music. Discussing one of the MTV “best of”-lists, Roger Beebe notes that the awarding of the top spot to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is a reminder that “these are music videos” (Beebe 2007, p. 324). Beebe’s argument rests on the view that while “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is indeed one of the most iconic 90s songs, the video itself is somewhat less accomplished (fig.5). In balancing out the attention given to influential directors versus touchstone musicians and songs, this particular video is still included in my video essay, though.

In other cases, this question of visual vs. musical authorship is less problematic. On one hand, this includes those instances where music videos are the result of existing collaborative partnerships between certain directors and musicians. In the video essay, this goes for videos as different as Lasse Hallström’s video for ABBA’s “Waterloo” (1974), Chris Cunningham’s video for Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” (1997) or Hiro Murai’s video for Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” (2018). On the other hand, authorship is also potentially less complicated in those cases where the musicians self- or co-direct their videos. In the essay, this goes for videos like David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” (1980), Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” (1981) and the videos by OK Go (fig. 6).

The fact that the music is always the starting point for any music video also means that the director’s task is somewhat different than in other types of audiovisual production. There is always an aesthetic negotiation between the musical and the visual taking place in music video production, and thus directors need to rely on a specific skillset that involves how they “understand and approach a song” as well as how they “deal with music video’s particular requirements—its short form, lack of dialogue, and need to showcase the star” (Vernallis 2013, p. 25). Along the way, specific musical genres have developed specific visual languages and stereotypes, ultimately meaning that “the kind of video that works for Radiohead isn’t the kind of video that works for One Direction’s fan-base” (Caston & Smith 2017, p. 3). In terms of trying to have the video essay arrive at a general canon of music videos that does not favor any particular music genre, this poses yet another challenge. Seeing that videos for each music genre “exist on their own timeline, with their own clichés and their own techniques” (Austerlitz 2007, p. 9), the canon presented in the essay needed not just to represent key directors and musicians, but also at the same time a breadth of musical genres, making the compilation of examples an extremely complicated puzzle that must factor in several variables all at once. The impossibility of fully solving this puzzle also led to the killing of a great many darlings as well as some uncomfortable omissions, whether in terms of directors, musicians or genres.

Where to Start?

The format of “169 Seconds” (inspired by the journal’s name) was what originally sparked the idea to make a highly condensed compilation of music video highlights. The length restraint for the video essay to be only 169 seconds long imposed a simple challenge: how much can you even fit into such a short duration? Another self-imposed constraint was that I could pick only one music video per year. With a period of roughly sixty years to cover, this would facilitate a rapidly alternating historical tour of the progression from music video’s early years to its current incarnation – the equation being that around sixty clips of around two seconds each plus a beginning and an ending would add up to the required 169 seconds. Even as this provided a rough guideline for gathering videos to include, three questions still lingered: what counts as a music video? In what year should the essay commence? And what are the criteria for including videos?

Past scholarship has proven that offering a permanent definition of music video is a surprisingly difficult task – and a task that has only become progressively more challenging with music video’s travels from MTV onto YouTube and social media (Jirsa & Korsgaard 2024). This development has led one of the leading music video scholars, Carol Vernallis, to suggest that “at one time we knew what a music video is, but no longer” (Vernallis 2013, p. 11) and that this constant remediation of music video means that the best definition we can arrive at is that music video is “a relation of sound and image that we recognize as such” (ibid.). This broad definition certainly offers flexibility in terms of what counts as a music video, but other more strict definitions also exist – like for instance the list of 5-7 key traits outlined in my own book, Music Video After MTV (Korsgaard 2017, p. 26). This definition would have that music videos are characterized by being a combination of music and visuals where popular music forms the foundation for the video: the song is pre-recorded and precedes the images and is also the structural unit for the video, meaning that song length and video length are typically more or less the same. Still, this is certainly not a catch-all definition – and in the essay, I have aimed for an understanding of music video that lands somewhere in-between such inclusive and exclusive definitions. This has also allowed for the inclusion of borderline examples all the way from the first example included in the video essay, The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” which stems from a feature film, onto more recent videos like Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark” which is just as much of a children’s video (fig. 7).

In terms of determining the birth year of music video, past scholarship has proven time and time again that this is impossible to arrive at in any simple terms, precisely because there is no one definition of music video. It is also related to the fact that music video has a diverse set of historical roots and “came into existence only gradually and as the offspring of many different precursors” (Korsgaard 2017, p. 17). This poses a very concrete problem when trying to historicize the medium of music video – one might point to developments ranging all the way back to the era of silent cinema, to the experimental tradition of so-called “visual music”, or to various videos shown on visual jukeboxes (like the 1940s “Soundies” or the 1960s “Scopitones”). Along these lines, it is true that there “is no such thing as ‘the first music video’” (Marks & Tannenbaum 2011, p. 22), and therefore no self-evident starting point for the video essay.

That the essay starts in 1964 with The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” is thus just one possible solution – as mentioned above, in a sense it’s not even a music video, but rather an excerpt from the film of the same title, directed by Richard Lester. Still, this film was important in establishing some of the tropes of what would later become music video proper – and the mid-1960s is generally considered an important time for the beginnings of music video. For instance, Caston’s book on British music video starts in this period as well, though in 1966 instead of 1964 (Caston 2020). Having established 1964 as the year to start the essay, the historical progression is simple enough: one video per year all the way up to the year in which I made the essay, 2024. Still, to establish a canon or a history of music video is clearly an absurdly unachievable task in a mere 169 seconds. In fact, some of the few comprehensive writings on music video history establish that this is something that even a whole book cannot truly accomplish: Austerlitz calls it a “hopelessly ludicrous enterprise” (Austerlitz 2007, p. vii) while a more recent anthology confirms that “given the volume of music videos in the world” it cannot amount to “an exhaustive history” (Arnold et al 2017, p. 4).

Yet, this impossibility is potentially part of the essay’s allure. For one thing, the impossibility of writing a purely objective and straightforwardly chronologic history might be said to be true of any historical phenomenon and not simply of music video – as suggested, for instance, by Antti-Ville Kärjä in relation to popular music in general: “Writing history is always about selecting things to tell – writing total history is impossible” (Kärjä 2006, p. 4). It is precisely the fact that you cannot get anywhere near to covering everything in 169 seconds that is demanding and thought-provoking. What to include in so little time? The viewer might similarly wonder: why was this or that video left out? Why so many examples of this particular ilk? Why so blandly middle-of-the-road or why so pretentiously leftfield? The very question indeed becomes “what is worth including?”.

Selection Criteria

Put differently, a video essay like this one needs a set of criteria for selecting videos. A few of these have already been implied above. Some relate to the form of the essay: exactly 169 seconds and only one video per year. Others are evaluative: which directors and musicians have been crucial to the evolution of the form? And which particular videos – that might not include key artists and/or standout directors – stand out as iconic touchstones? This is of course a matter of debate, even if some argumentative force can be gained by looking at which videos, artists and directors that have appeared in past lists, that have been frequently analyzed and constantly inspire new writings, that have been and continue to be immensely popular and influential, and so forth. Within this set of criteria – key artists, directors and/or videos – I also attempted to strive for a high level of diversity.

This also relates to something already touched upon – the fact that “music video greatness” varies by music genre: “There are many different music genres and music communities, and each holds a different set of criteria about what constitutes a ‘great’ music video” (Caston & Smith 2017, p. 2). Striving for the inclusion of many different music genres thus also became a goal in and of itself. This quest for diversity also rests on a frequent argument in past music video studies that music video, regardless of music genre, is an aesthetically versatile phenomenon caught in a state of permanent transformation (Perrott 2024, p. 12; Jirsa & Korsgaard, 2019, 2024). A 1970s punk music video (like Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”) is obviously wildly different from a 2010s pop music video (like Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space”). And in between and beyond these two examples, the history of music video is even more multifaceted. In compiling videos, I also strove for some level of diversity in terms of the artists and directors represented as well as the countries of origin – though, I’ll admit, with varying degrees of success, given that these concerns also had to be balanced out with the other criteria. So while there is at least some balance in the amount of female artists and artists of color represented, there is at the same time a massive overweight of US and UK videos and a massive overweight of male directors.

With this complex of multiple criteria in play all at once, the videos ended up being included for different reasons – some for multiple reasons. To provide but a few examples: “This Is America” was included for its strong representation of an artist of color (Childish Gambino), but also simply for being a standout video with an immense popularity – and also for its director, Hiro Murai, who is perhaps less well-known than other influential directors, but still a productive music video director held in high regard. Despite the controversies surrounding Michael Jackson, a music video canon that would not include “Thriller” is hard to imagine – perhaps the most famous video of all time, it was very influential for extending music video into miniature films. OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” was one of the first viral videos to prove how online distribution changed the rules for music video. “Take on Me” by a-ha is very famous for its use of the animation technique of rotoscoping and also one of those relatively rare pre-online music videos to have made it into the billion-views club on YouTube (in fact, it is currently the most viewed pre-millennial music video on YouTube with more than two billion views). Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark” might be massively annoying, and as already touched upon some might not even consider it a music video even though it is prerecorded music provided with lipsync imagery as in music video proper – but at the present moment it is the most watched YouTube clip of all time by a far margin. Sometimes a specific year would have more than one obvious contender: for the year 1990, how do you choose between the iconic tear in Sinéad O’Connors “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Madonna’s “Vogue” (fig. 8), one of music video icon Madonna’s most notable videos and certainly one of famous director David Fincher’s landmark music videos? (see Korsgaard forthcoming).

Lessons Learned

The final thing to consider is what can be learned from this video essay experiment. I went into compiling videos with the criteria in mind, but without a pre-formed idea of any narrative or message about music video history I wanted the essay to communicate. Being able to now reflect on the essay at a distance, there are a few lessons that spring to mind. First of all, the essay chronicles the evolution of music video style, both visually and musically. In terms of visual style, the essay shows the three general music video genres of performance, narrative and “dream” videos as they develop historically (see Kinder 1984). Early videos are often driven by a relatively straightforward performance mode, while more recent clips tend to adopt more conceptual and narrative approaches and frequently blend the three types. Musically, the essay cannot help but reflect the rise and fall of popular music genres, from rock into pop into grunge into electronic into hiphop and back into pop again. Both visually and musically, the essay confirms the diversity of music video and its propensity towards constantly experimenting with new ways of generating images and new ways of combing sound and vision.

Another thing that indirectly reveals itself is music video’s overlap with other media forms. The first two “videos” in the essay are from films (The Beatles from Lester’s feature and Bob Dylan from D. A. Pennebaker’s rockumentary, Dont Look Back). But some of the more recent clips also overlap with other media forms, from the children’s entertainment of Cat Stevens’ “Moonshadow” (and of “Baby Shark”) and onto the visual album with Beyoncé’s “Formation” taken from Lemonade. At other times, by chance the videos that happen to be in adjacent years appear to be speaking to each other. There are several such serendipitous interrelations between the videos. Sometimes this occurs between the lyrics: from Spice Girls’ “Yo, I’ll tell you what I want” into Aphex Twin’s “I want your soul” (from sexual desire into commercial desire) or from Kendrick Lamar’s “get the fuck off my stage” into Childish Gambino’s “get down!”. At other times, the resonances are visual: from Missy Elliott’s phone to Britney’s phone (though with Outkast sandwiched in-between) and with women on motorbikes in both Rosalía and SZA (fig. 9-10). And occasionally the relations occur between registers: from the proclamation “Hop on top, I wanna ride” in Cardi B’s “WAP” into Lil Nas X giving the devil a lap-dance.

In a weird way, this also tells us something about the question of what constitutes music video greatness. “Great” music videos are often thought to rely on such spillover effects between music, image and words. The best music videos are frequently thought to give rise to a kind of “thirdness” that elevates a music video to more than the sum of its visual and musical parts. However, what the essay also demonstrates is that even if this can be considered an essential trait of music video aesthetics, it is something that can appear in many different guises.Accordingly, many versions of this video essay could be made – and so the essay is probably at least as valuable in the discussions it provokes as it is in and of itself. I could certainly have made multiple versions of the video essay where I replaced all videos with other videos that I might personally find more accomplished and engaging works – but that are much less well-known and exemplary, and thereby, in some sense, less canonical. By way of conclusion, I would love for others to disagree with my choices, if not for anything else then simply for initiating a conversation about what constitutes a great music video. So more than anything else, consider this video essay an invitation: what would make it onto your list?

* * *

Facts

Videos (by order of appearance)

The Beatles: “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964). Excerpt from A Hard Day’s Night, dir. Richard Lester.
Bob Dylan: “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965). Excerpt from Dont Look Back (1967), dir. D. A. Pennebaker.
The Kinks: “Dead End Street” (1966), dir. Ray Davies.
The Beatles: “Strawberry Fields Forever” (1967), dir. Peter Goldmann.
The Doors: “The Unknown Soldier” (1968), dir. Mark Abramson.
The 5^th Dimension: “Age of Aquarius” (1969), dir. unknown.
The Carpenters: “Close to You” (1970), dir. unknown.
John Lennon: “Imagine” (1971), dir. John Lennon & Yoko Ono.
Cat Stevens: “Moonshadow” (1972), dir. Charles Jenkins.
Pink Floyd: “Money” (1973), dir. Barry Chattington (?), Peter Medak (?), Wayne Isham (?).
ABBA: “Waterloo” (1974), dir. Lasse Hallström.
Queen: “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975), dir. Bruce Gowers.
Devo: “Jocko Homo” (1976). Excerpt from The Truth About De-Evolution, dir. Gerald Casale & Mark Mothersbaugh.
Sex Pistols: “God Save the Queen” (1977), dir. Julien Temple.
Kate Bush: “Wuthering Heights” (1978), dir. Keith MacMillan.
The Buggles: “Video Killed the Radio Star” (1979), dir. Russell Mulcahy.
David Bowie: “Ashes to Ashes” (1980), dir. David Bowie & David Mallet.
Talking Heads: “Once in a Lifetime” (1981), dir. Toni Basil & David Byrne.
Duran Duran: “Hungry Like the Wolf” (1982), dir. Russell Mulcahy.
Michael Jackson: “Thriller” (1983), dir. John Landis.
Cabaret Voltaire: “Sensoria” (1984), dir. Peter Care.
a-ha: “Take on Me” (1985), dir. Steve Barron.
Peter Gabriel: “Sledgehammer” (1986), dir. Stephen R. Johnson.
Whitney Houston: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” (1987), dir. Brian Grant.
Neneh Cherry: “Buffalo Stance” (1988), dir. John Maybury.
Madonna: “Like a Prayer” (1989), dir. Mary Lambert.
Sinéad O’Connor: “Nothing Compares 2 U” (1990), dir. John Maybury.
Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991), dir. Samuel Bayer.
Guns ‘N’ Roses: “November Rain” (1992), dir. Andy Morahan.
Björk: “Human Behavior” (1993), dir. Michel Gondry.
Beastie Boys: “Sabotage” (1994), dir. Spike Jonze.
Michael Jackson & Janet Jackson: “Scream” (1995), dir. Mark Romanek.
Spice Girls: “Wannabe” (1996), dir. Johan Camitz.
Aphex Twin: “Come to Daddy” (1997), dir. Chris Cunningham.
UNKLE feat. Thom Yorke: “Rabbit in Your Headlights” (1998), dir. Jonathan Glazer.
Björk: “All Is Full of Love” (1999), dir. Chris Cunningham.
D’Angelo: “Untitled” (2000), dir. Paul Hunter.
Chemical Brothers: “Star Guitar” (2001), dir. Michel Gondry.
Missy Elliott: “Work It” (2002), dir. Dave Meyers.
Outkast: “Hey Ya!” (2003), dir. Brian Barber.
Britney Spears: “Toxic” (2004), dir. Joseph Kahn.
Nine Inch Nails: “Only” (2005), dir. David Fincher.
OK Go: “Here It Goes Again” (2006), dir. Trish Sie & OK Go.
Arctic Monkeys: “Brianstorm” (2007), dir. Huse Monfaradi.
Weezer: “Pork and Beans” (2008), dir. Mathew Cullen.
Lady Gaga: “Bad Romance” (2009), dir. Francis Lawrence.
OK Go: “This Too Shall Pass” (2010), dir. James Frost & OK Go.
Tyler the Creator: “Yonkers” (2011), dir. Wolf Haley.
Psy: “Gangnam Style” (2012), dir. Cho Soo-hyun.
Miley Cyrus: “Wrecking Ball” (2013), dir. Terry Richardson.
Taylor Swift: “Blank Space” (2014), dir. Joseph Kahn.
Pinkfong: “Baby Shark” (2015), dir. unknown.
Beyonce: “Formation” (2016), dir. Melina Matsoukas.
Kendrick Lamar: “HUMBLE.” (2017), dir. Dave Meyers.
Childish Gambino: “This Is America” (2018), dir. Hiro Murai.
Billie Eilish: “Bad Guy” (2019), dir. Dave Meyers.
Cardi B: “WAP” (2020), dir. Colin Tilley.
Lil Nas X: “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” (2021), dir. Tanu Muino & Lil Nas X.
Rosalía: “Saoko” (2022), dir. Valentin Petit.
SZA: “Kill Bill” (2023), dir. Christian Breslauer.
Kendrick Lamar: “Not Like Us” (2024), dir. Dave Free & Kendrick Lamar.

Literature

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