00:00Welcome to WatchMojo and today we're counting down our picks for music videos
00:11whose concepts were likely meant to be inoffensive but whose aesthetic and
00:16connection with the song are ultimately kind of disturbing.
00:2310. Electric Feel Director Ray Tintori supported the
00:36album Oracular Spectacular by applying MGMT's upbeat indie pop to hyper-surreal videos. The
00:43one for kids is famously traumatizing but Electric Feel seemed to be aiming for a more
00:48buzzy vibe. The band attends a festival in the Teekle Jungle, whose CG environment is
01:01deliberately pronounced by oversaturated cinematography. This homage to hallucinatory
01:06partying escalates when animatronic woodland creatures show up and the partygoers bathe
01:11in a multicolored ooze they cut out of the moon. By the end, the celestial body is destroyed
01:23by space motorcyclists. It's no wonder the ambitious video earned a VMA nomination for
01:29Best Art Direction. Still, an outside observer would say that Tintori and MGMT's party got
01:35a little too wild.
01:449. A Sort of Fairytale
01:47Tori Amos
01:56You Complete Me is an extreme romantic declaration when you think about it. Sanjeeva Sanji
02:02Sanjeeva Sanaka had to know what he was making when he accompanied Tori Amos' gorgeous A Sort
02:07of Fairytale with that impassioned of a love story. But Amos' head on a disembodied leg and
02:20Adrian Brody's head on an arm is pretty bold symbolism. As well as the soon-to-be Oscar winner
02:27expressing intense longing, the visual of these appendages' intimacy is a bit too intense.
02:38Even the process of love turning them into full humans measures up to any transformation in a body
02:44horror film. Amos' song, if not Sanjee's theme, remains beautiful, but only if viewers can embrace
02:51the full context.
02:578. Sat In Your Lap
03:00Kate Bush
03:00The late single on Kate Bush's The Dreaming sets the album's revolutionary contrasts between experimental
03:14songwriting and commercial tone. But Brian Wiseman may have overstepped visualizing Sat In Your Lap's
03:21satire of humanity's futile drive for knowledge.
03:249. Sat In Your Lap
03:31Bush skates and dances with jesters, men in ritual bowl costumes, and white-clad dancers whose dunce caps
03:39resemble caperotes. All the while, she eerily stares at the screen.
03:53The video was shot on a low budget in just two days. Hallucinatory editing is doing most of the
03:59work in conveying what seems to be an ambitious spoof of religion, culture, and education. Whether the
04:05imagery was meant to be as bold and funny as the song itself, it's more just unsettlingly crude.
04:187. Big Time Sensuality
04:21Bjork
04:27The always daring artist Bjork is known for surreal music videos that are often downright terrifying.
04:33Although, this goes back to the Michelle Gondry-directed Human Behavior,
04:38which is another song on the debut album that proved Bjork's eeriness inherent.
04:52Stéphane Sednoui directs her ecstatically dancing and mugging on the back of a truck drifting through
04:59Manhattan. The concept simply yet effectively conveys the passionate impulsivity at the heart of big-time
05:05sensuality.
05:13But with the singer's over-the-top gestures and outfits, on top of the black-and-white photography,
05:18the final product is as nightmarish as it is dreamy. Whatever Sednoui had in mind, Bjork has since
05:25settled that she prefers that quality in her videos as well as her music.
05:386. Dancing in the Street
05:41David Bowie and Mick Jagger
05:43The Rolling Stones couldn't make Live Aid, but Mick Jagger collaborated with David Bowie on a cover
05:54of Dancing in the Street to support famine relief. This would be more uplifting if David Mallet's
06:00video weren't notoriously awkward. All of London clears out as the two rock stars exaggeratedly,
06:14you guessed it, dance in the street. It's not just widely considered one of the cringiest music
06:19videos of the 80s, though that's not saying a lot. Jagger and Bowie gleefully expressing their
06:32hammiest quirks in a sort of urban wasteland is eerie on so many levels. This version of Dancing in the
06:39Street ultimately evokes many emotions, not as positive as the cause it contributed to.
06:455. Cellophane
06:54The seductive sorrow in cellophane is effectively translated into an elaborate pole dance that
07:09FKA Twigs trained for extensively. Andrew Thomas Wong's presentation, however, is harder to wrap your
07:16head around. His video's dark cinematography already contorts the poetry and Twigs' routine,
07:29never mind when it's interrupted by an angelic being with a robotic face.
07:332. Cellophane
07:41Twigs then plummets into a wasteland, where several women cover her in mud. The singer has indicated her
07:47vision of a particularly poignant art piece amid videos that are more overtly unsettling.
07:56While there's no denying the final work's technical splendor, it may be too abstract for comfort.
08:03There's still a lot of moving symbolism in cellophane, if you can look through the horror.
08:164. Blue Dabba Dee
08:19We obviously have to forgive the limitations of 90s special effects, especially for cash-strapped
08:33music videos. But it's hard to imagine that audiences at the time had as much with the Blue
08:39Dabba Dee video as the aliens who abduct Eiffel 65 for a concert.
08:51This kicked off the Blisco Media series of cluttered and computer graphics-heavy videos,
08:56edited in a garage with limited means. Even stiffer than the animated characters are the
09:02unconvincingly superimposed band members. Whether Blue Dabba Dee is more catchy than campy, the Eurodance
09:17Staples video is just remembered for being clunky. Or maybe it's crude visuals just permanently scarred 90s kids
09:25and beyond.
09:253. Sledgehammer
09:35Peter Gabriel
09:43Steven R. Johnson and Aardman Animations teamed up on one of the most imaginative videos of the 1980s.
09:50It may also be one of the most divisive as far as tone.
10:00A montage of stop-motion visuals surrounding Peter Gabriel's head certainly complements
10:05Sledgehammer's lively energy. Then the format shifts to claymation, and Gabriel uses the titular
10:12tool to pummel his own face and produce an egg that hatches out a dancing chicken. No less unsettling
10:19is the climactic dance number in stop-motion wide shots.
10:29The historic video succeeds in its mission to deliver more symbolic imagery than anyone could
10:34follow in one sitting. It still takes quite a few viewings to fully shake off the surrealism.
10:412. Godly and Cream
10:51We can all respect the metaphor for shared human struggle in Godly and Cream's self-directed video for
11:04crime. Cross-fading the singing faces of people from many different backgrounds influenced such
11:09works as Michael Jackson's black or white video. But the effect feels less romantic when the faces
11:20are deeply sad and shot in black and white extreme close-ups. It's hard to not be a little bit judgy when
11:27an actual clown pops up out of the lineup. Above all, the visual enhancement of the already moving song is as
11:40commendable as it is innovative. It's still okay to recognize that the tonal context for this surreal
11:46effect requires a good deal of tolerance.
11:501. Total Eclipse of the Heart
12:10You can't help but belt along with Bonnie Tyler's legendary breakup anthem,
12:23Total Eclipse of the Heart. Seeing the video could evoke a different scream though.
12:27Russell Mulcahy lays a seemingly dreamy scene by having Tyler stroll through the Holloway
12:33Sanatorium in Surrey. The Odyssey then becomes nightmarish as she recalls ghostly schoolboys
12:46under extreme lighting. Tyler eventually comes upon a choir of children with glowing eyes who can fly.
12:53This gothic setting just had to be, in some way, intentionally terrifying. Sure enough, the video
13:06pays tribute to the unrealized Nosferatu musical which inspired Jim Steinman to write Total Eclipse
13:13of the Heart. But if Mulcahy wanted to reconcile that with the song's romance at his own surreal concept,
13:19he clearly got turned around. What music video gave you the creeps, whether they meant to or not?
13:32Let's jam in the comments!
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