my fave (classic) music videos

To pass the time while waiting for the Hubby to fetch me, i thought of making a list of my ten favorite (classic) music videos.

I thought of embedding clips for everything, but i later decided against it.

So anyway, here goes, in no particular order:

  1. Let Forever Be
    Chemical Brothers



    It's like a kaleidoscope, it's like a psychosis, it's like a morphine-laced nightmare. I absolutely love the way visual elements fold up, tilt, or spill into the following scene. I love its philosophic take on adult existence. The choreography rocks too.


  2. November Rain
    Guns n Roses



    Rumor was that the MTV featured actual stuff from Axl Rose's wedding to Supermodel Stephanie. But that probably isn't true because it's too cleaned up.

    Melodramatic and haunting, it's like a 9-minute, 14-second mini-flick on love and loss.
    It of course has the GnR-video trademark of a wild-haired Slash and his guitar against an arid landscape.
    The most baffling bit is probably the one where this long-haired guy crashes into the wedding cake - I mean, why the heck did he do that?
    My favorite scene is the one which showed a bouquet of red roses on a grave, their color draining out into a bloody puddle.


  3. Jeremy
    Pearl Jam

    Jolting and disturbing, it recreated the real-life event that the lyrics of the song were based on, the public suicide of highschooler Jeremy Wade Delle.

    I remember watching the 1993 MTV VMA on channel 23; Jeremy won a top award. Eddie Vedder and the guys received the trophy with their video star (i believe his name was Trevor) joking, "He's still alive!"

    After a wave of campus shootings in the 1990s, the airing of Jeremy was banned in certain US states and in Asia. Good thing I got to see it before the ban.


  4. Deep
    Nine Inch Nails

    Lemme just say that it's a fave not because i like it. The fact is I don't actually like it, but I think it's deviant and brilliant. It - like most of the other NIN vids - is a twisted but artistic nightmare sequence from someone's dark, dirty mind. NIN videos are usually too explicit in lyrics and visuals, thus a lot of them are banned in certain areas. They have their particular flavor: unsettling, profane, shocking - but not always in a blatant way. Its more like they cause viewers to do a double-take, wondering "Did i just see that"?


  5. Take On Me
    A- Ha

    Take On Me was groundbreaking in its day with the animation and rotoscoping. Of course it probably seems like a joke now compared to the more recent videos that employ more advanced techniques.

    I remember seeing it for the first time as a kid and being enthralled by the visual story (a love story, of course!) as well as with the then-fresh, then-cutting-edge treatment.



  6. Smooth Criminal
    Michael Jackson

    MJ had this flair for narrative music videos with kickass dance moves. This is just one of them that makes you applaud and say, "More! More!"


  7. Black or White
    Michael Jackson

    Gotta love the creative cut-to's and wipes as one scene shifts into another. There are just too many delicious visuals, that one would need several viewings to savor it all.

    One of the most engaging bits is the part toward the end of the song, where solos of people of different races were shown one after the other, but in such a way like one morphed into the next. When i watched Black or White again recently (in memory of the late great MJ) I noticed that that scene included Tyra Banks - i never noticed her before, because though she was already a supermodel then, she wasn't readily recognizable yet. There were other cameos too - a prime-of-his-life Slash, a pre-drug habit Macaulay Culkin, et al.


  8. Remember The Time
    Michael Jackson

    Dangerous might have been Jacko's golden age, and Remember The Time was the trophy. More celebrity cameos, "magic", and dance steps that look good only on MJ. Or Janet. It was a big deal to pinoys back then that the costumes tailored for this music video were made in the RP.


  9. Janie's Got A Gun
    Aerosmith



    Forget the rockstar-performance scenes though.

    I've been fascinated with the way '90s Aerosmith videos seem so much like trailers for real movies. This one kinda left me wondering what really happened and kinda wishing there really was a movie.


  10. Crying
    Aerosmith

    Crying is so mid-90s: tatts, a navel piercing, oversized blazers, babydoll dresses worn with boots, plaid long-sleeved shirts, straight-cut jeans, one-length haircuts. Alicia Silverstone. Stephen Dorff. Aerosmith.

    It featured an already popular-among-teenage-girls Stephen Dorff and a pre-hollywood Alicia Silverstone. And guess who too: a then-obscure Josh Holloway.

    Silverstone starred in a few Aerosmith MVs, and it was said that those videos launched her career as an actress (well, it seems she needs to try doing music videos again). She was also in Amazing and Crazy, the latter with a yet-unknown Liv Tyler (who was then not yet known as the daughter of frontman Steven Tyler).

Well, that was fun. I should do this music-video reminiscing thing more often - with different categories next time of course. Maybe "my ten fave classic rock videos" or "ten really funny dance videos from the '80s". This is good, for now.
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