Top Five Favorite Music Videos

While my friend Jeff Musall's recent list of his top 5 favorite videos was an interesting one, after reading his list I couldn't help but be bothered by the content of it. That is, none of the videos on his list were videos that would have been the same on my list. I had to think about it and know that anyone who knows me may be surprised by this list, but there was a pretty small window of time for me to be really all that influenced by music videos. Here is my own personal list of my top 5 favorite music videos.

Bell Biv DeVoe: Poison (1990) Looking back at this video twenty one years later, I am reminded of all the reasons I loved this video. As an 11 year old, thinking I was a lot older and cooler and more urban than I was, the Bell Biv DeVoe song not only fills smoky rooms with curvy women, but their dance moves were the exact opposite of the much loved by my peers and hated by me New Kids on the Block (even though all the dance moves were basically the same).

A-Ha: Take On Me (1985) One of the first videos I'd ever seen, the "Take On Me" video takes a girl in a coffee shop reading a comic book and launches her into the comic strip. A hand from her drawing reaches out and she joins the story. For the time, the blurring of the lines between art and "reality" was pretty cool. Plus the song, with its synthesizers was just so reflective of the time. The girl winds up getting cast out of the comic strip and runs home to finish the story. The male character in the comic strip winds up dead at the end of the story, but breaks out of a 'still-living' frame from the comic and joins the teary-eyed girl in her apartment. I love happy endings.

Pearl Jam: Jeremy (1992) What a huge video this was. Jeremy, this troubled, naked kid, draped in an American flag; sitting at a classroom desk in front of this huge sea of flame, running scared and angry around the woods; the images of this video were very striking and really helped convey a lot of the anger in America at the time. Sadly, this kids wielding of a gun on such a public stage as MTV heavy rotation in 1992 and 1993 may have helped define a generation to come of Columbine and the violence which erupted after that. At the end of the video this kid walks into a classroom of kids all frozen still, throws an apple to the teacher, and blows his brains out in front of the class.

Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991) What may be most remarkable about "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is how unremarkable it is. A gymnasium with some bad cheerleaders who reveal Anarchy "A's" on their uniforms, the three piece Nirvana rocking out, a janitor dancing with his mop, and an audience of what at first appears to be school kids at a basketball game and winds up being a flame throwing, riotous, band of Nirvana fans who mosh and thrash the band and each other. "I-found-it-hard-hard-to-find-the-well-whatever-nevermind"-indeed!

Scorpions: Wind of Change (1991) While I may not have known all that much about East Germany and West Germany as a 12 year old, I still loved the "Wind of Change" video. The interspersed video clips of real news events with this band playing to a sold out stadium crowd of sparkler and lighter wielding fans definitely helped get me interested in current events, celebrity, news, and culture. So I guess this Scorpions song helped shape the person I still am today.

There were of course many favorite bands, songs, and videos which were not included in this list, but that's my take on it. What do you think of these videos? What are your favorite videos?

Sources:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8271819/30_years_of_mtv_five_favorite_videos.html?cat=2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6blgjF6UkU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS91knuzoOA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg&ob=av3e

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RjJKxsamQ&ob=av3e