Top 5 Music Videos

Music videos don't usually catapult a song to the top of the chart now-a-days, but in decades past the video was just as important as the lyrics of a song. Here's a list (unofficial as it may be) of the top five music videos of all time.

Money For Nothing by Dire Straits. Released in 1985 and directed by Mark Knopfler, the video was one of the first computer-generated videos on MTV. It was the first video that MTV showed in Europe. The video went along perfectly with the lyrics of the song, and even the animated characters were realistic. You can watch it here.

Take On Me by A-ha. Released in 1985 and directed by Steve Barron, the video won six awards at the 1986 MTV Music Video Awards. What could be better than a woman getting sucked into a comic book and having a romance with the character? The images were traced with pencil frame by frame to look like animated sketches. It might have been the only hit A-ha had in the US, but it's a great video anyway. Watch it here.

Smells like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. This video, directed by Samuel Bayer in 1991, won two MTV Music Awards in 1992. It is set in a gymnasium with Nirvana playing a pep rally. The students are unruly and the cheerleaders are tattooed anarchists. The song itself helped bring alternative rock and grunge into the forefront of music. You can see it here.

Don't Come Around Here No More by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Directed in 1985 by Jeff Stein, this video helped Tom Petty become popular with a younger generation of music lovers. He was great as the Mad Hatter in the Alice in Wonderland theme. At the end of the video, the girl turns into a cake and they eat the cake. This caused a small amount of controversy, so they produced a version later where she doesn't get eaten. Watch it here.

Thriller by Michael Jackson. Of course this is going to be number one. One of the longest videos ever produced, it's a whopping fourteen minutes long. Directed by John Landis in 1983, the great special effects and the zombie moves of the dancers make it the best video of all time. Mix in Michaels red and black jacket and Vincent Price's laugh, and you have a video that is at the top of the list every time. You can see what all the hype is about here.