Dancing In The Dark by Bruce Springsteen
Director: Brian De Palma
Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables… those are a few Brian De Palma films. The man has also directed Dancing In The Dark by Bruce Springsteen.
Courtney Cox cameo at the end, when the singer invites her up on stage to dance. The video was shot at the St. Paul Civic Center in Minnesota over two nights, the first being a straight video shoot, the second being the opening night of the Born in the USA tour.
Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim
Director: Spike Jonze
Christopher Walken is sexy as hell in Fatboy Slim’s video for Weapon of Choice. He dances through the halls of an empty hotel like a pro. Of course, we sometimes forget that he is a trained dancer from the Washington Dance Studio. Walken as a suited-up businessman hangs his head wearily in a hotel lobby until the music begins to play.
Another iconic moment comes when the actor begins to “fly” around the lobby of the Los Angeles hotel where it was shot. “I just imagined my dad at these hotels, travelling around the country, the mundane, repetitive, numbing quality of that. The idea was like the fantasy that kind of comes out of that,” Jonze told The Nine Club in 2018.
Take On Me by A-ha
Director: Steve Barron
When the video released in 1985, it was simply unbelievable. In fact, there are two videos — the first is a simple one that released in 1984 and then the one with the comic-book effect, directed by Steve Barron or the man behind the 1990 film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
A lonely girl sits in a diner, reading her comic book until the moment she is sucked into the story. Wrench-wielding bad guys chase them and the singer rescues the girl, making her return to her world and he soon follows, escaping a story to become her real boyfriend.
Avalon by Roxy Music
Director: Ridley Scott
Bryan Ferry appears on the staircase wearing a white dinner jacket and slowly his group appears and the camera zeroes in on a falcon sitting under the dinner table.
Classic English video shot in an old palace for a classic art rock group. Ridley, in fact, is a genius when it comes to videos –– the legendary 1984 Mac ad, Chanel No. 5’s Share the Fantasy (1979) commercial, Miami Vice Pepsi ad (1985) and Built for the human race ad for Nissan (1990).
Bad by Michael Jackson
Director: Martin Scorsese
Almost every ’80s kid has seen this video a thousand times. Michael Jackson with his leather jacket doing his dance moves to the T inside a subway station. The original 18-minute video, influenced partly by West Side Story, starts in a college, moves to a train and arrives at his house only to find a letter from his Mama (voiceover by Roberta Flack).
And after he meets some neighbourhood goons, he says: “Come on, let’s do it. Let’s see who’s bad, man?” You know how it goes.
I Would Do Anything for Love by Meatloaf
Director: Michael Bay
Michael Bay was the perfect director for the video as the late Meatloaf was known for his larger-than-life ideas. Based on ideas taken from Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera, the video is a wonderful short film.
And it’s not sexy actress Dana Patrick singing a few lines in the song; it’s actually Lorraine Crosby.
Vogue by Madonna
Director: David Fincher
From the ballroom to the living room, Madonna took voguing to a new high with this video. The video was Madonna’s third collaboration with director David Fincher, following on the heels of Express Yourself. “We cut this thing together as quickly as we could.
We shot the video in, like, 16 hours… that was it. She got on the plane and went on her world tour,” David Fincher has said in interviews. If you are interested in the subject, watch Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning.
Losing My Religion by R.E.M.
Director: Tarsem Singh
Some remember him as the director of films like Mirror Mirror, The Cell and Self/Less but for most he will always remain the man behind the video for the song Losing My Religion. He was finishing up film school when the opportunity came up while his previous music video efforts have been for Suzanne Vega and En Vogue. “I had done a Suzanne Vega video [for Tired of Sleeping], I really liked the song and I wanted to do something in the style of the photographer [Josef] Koudelka. The Czech Republic was just opening up. My college professor at the time was from the Czech Republic and I told him, ‘You want to go there for a week? We can shoot this thing in the countryside. They don’t seem to have a working currency. We can sleep in a bus and do it.’ He said, ‘OK.’ That landed with the R.E.M. guys and Stipe was a fan of Koudelka. They approached me to see if I was interested in doing a music video,” the director has told The Rolling Stone.
The iconic music video recently surpassed one billion views on YouTube — one of only about a dozen songs from the decade to hit the milestone. Other videos from the ’90s in the YouTube Billion Views Club include Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain; Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit; The Cranberries’ Zombie; Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You ; and Aqua’s Barbie Girl.
Fight The Power by Public Enemy
Director: Spike Lee
It’s not a standalone video; it was created by Spike Lee for his film Do The Right Thing. And legendary hip hop group Public Enemy recorded Fight The Power to fit the video shot on a Brooklyn street to make the group appear in what appears to be a political rally.
Spike Lee has also directed the video for Eminem’s Headlights. The song was written as an apology to his mother after a turbulent and toxic relationship.
Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley
Director: Simon West
The guy who gave us Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Expendables 2 is also the man who has Rickrolled the world for years.
This is the song that gave birth to the coolest music-related meme ever. Rick Astley dances and lip-syncs in a few different settings. Simon West has said that the video “haunts [him] like a bad poltergeist”.
Reach by Martini Ranch
Director: James Cameron
Care to watch James Cameron direct Kathryn Bigelow instead of Kate Winslet? Try this forgotten video to a forgotten number by a 1980s new wave band featuring Bill Paxton.
In a town where fights are easily picked up, outlaw Paxton arrives. And so does a group of women bounty hunters led by Kathryn.
I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself by The White Stripes
Director: Sofia Coppola
First, the White Stripes turned the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song inside out and then gave it a well-known video, which brought together supermodel Kate Moss with director Sofia Coppola, who was then about to release Lost In Translation.
According to The New York Times, the concept came easily to Coppola: “I said, ‘I don’t know – how about Kate Moss doing a pole dance?’ I said that because I would like to see it. That’s the way I work: I try to imagine what I would like to see.”