The thread of the title says it all: what music videos do you guys love?

They don't have to necessarily be your favourite song, by your favourite artist; just videos, for whatever reason, which you love.

I love the videos below, as they're more like short films than the traditional shite you'd find on MTV.

The emotion here is insane:



What needs to be said?



If you can ignore the wannabe Terrence Malick-esque VO, some of the cinematography here is brilliant:

Foster the People - Helena Beat

I love this video because of it's creative as hell!



Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs - Gold Lion

I just like this song and the video is pretty cool.  ;D

I loved videos as a kid in the 80s--still remember MTV's early days when they had little more to show than live artist concert videos. Any number of MJ's videos from the 80s and early 90s were terrific and groundbreaking. In the 90s, videos were a must for me as I was a DJ and played them along with vinyl and CD. Since 2000, haven't watched many at all--don't know where to watch them, really, as MTV and VH-1 jumped the shark long ago.

I won't post links to my two favorite videos of all time as I'm afraid they'll get me kicked off the boards for profanity and nudity. They are NIN's "Closer" (the director's cut), and Prodigy's "Smack my b**** up" in that order. "Closer" was a visual psychedelic trip, aided by one of my favorite songs of the decade. The nudity was artfully done. Some disturbing, trippy scenes. Prodigy's video was a feast of depravity, and although I first watched it like someone driving by an auto accident, the final scene blew me away with its reveal, and (kind of) redeemed the rest of it for me.

Other than those two, there were quite a few that had a lot of eye-candy of various forms, but few that had my head spinning like NIN and Prodigy.

Also from the 80's here. Two videos that stood out were David Lee Roth's Yankee Rose and Goin Crazy. Yankee Rose was just an awesome song, IMO, and was part of the soundtrack to my glorious teenage years. Goin Crazy was just flat out funny, with DLR in that fat suit, tipping over the car. His facial expression are priceless.

Peter Wolf's Come As You Are. Great, great song. Him hopping through the video that had only about seven or eight cuts.

Talking Heads And She Was was groundbreaking at the time for its stylized animation. Paul Simon used the same style for his Boy In The Bubble video.

I could probably think of a few others, but as my Ouija board once told me:
There's just too many!

Steve

There might be better videos since the 80s, but I've seen and been interested in very few of them.

From the Wayback Machine, I give you:

"Land of Confusion" by Genesis, dir. John Lloyd & Jim Yukich



"Money for Nothing" by The Dire Straits, dir. Steve Barron



Finally,

"Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" by 'The Pink Anderson/Floyd Council Sound', dir. Alan Parker & Gerald Scarfe

@ Danball:

GREAT choices! All three would definitely make my top ten of the 80s.

A lot of great choices. I haven't seen that many music videos since the early 90's but growing up in the 80's I remember watching Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl." Not groundbreaking by any means but I love it. Van Halens "Hot for teacher" is another one I enjoyed too.

I don’t really watch music videos anymore, listen to radio more now but I always enjoyed Weezer’s Buddy Holly – gotta love the Fonz's dancing.



Other notable mentions:

Ah music videos. My favorite short film. I don't know about the 80s, but one of my favorite still active bands, Sigur Ros, release this about a year ago. The concept isn't necessarily that original, but it snuck up on me so well I wasn't even sure where it was going until the music was already swelling to a climax.

Unfortunately I can't figure out how to embed. So this'll have to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TCDGlGK2aaQ