I mean music videos that have nothing to do with the music and mostly just do their own thing and tell their own story.
An example –
Basement Jaxx’s Red Alert seems to be about a meteor-worshiping cult awaiting the arrival of their rocky messiah in some unsuspecting greasy spoon cafe in the middle of nowhere.
Once the meteor crashes into Earth, everyone gets horribly mutated and convulses to the strange rays exhibited by the meteor. The infection seems to be localized entirely within the cafe. The End.
Edit: Please link to a video, or at least summarize the plot.
Edit2: Please actually link to a video, or tell me why the video plot is cool. Come on, it’s just 30 seconds of your time.
Lone Digger by Caravan Palace. It’s about a murder-brawl at an animal strip club.
Love it - it’s like if Zootopia was more honest about it’s seedy underbelly
Also, Mr. FEAR by SIAMÉS has a nice animation about an alien (?) and a human merging to make a larger alien (?).
More fan made, but the combo is killer: mukinabaht with nature will have unintended consequences. Boards of Canada with a trippy french animation, the two feel made for each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhheiPTdZCw
It’s visual commentary on society itself, as well as how fucked this system we’ve all built is to both our inner & outer nature.
Are these media systems self-sustaining? Aren’t apples the symbol of knowledge? Or will our inner animalism escape, in spite of the processed knowledge, given even the slightest chance?
Might be reading into it too much, though.
There is no video plot here. It’s just some guy having frankfurters thrown at him.
Dating myself a bit, but Men Without Hats " Safety Dance" is a clear indicator of how much cocaine was consumed in the 80s.
You're dating yourself? That doesn't seem healthy.
/s
Link for the other 96% of folks that get an error
Hah, that music video is genuinely a pretty accurate depiction of your average England village’s May Day celebrations. I went to one this year, got drunk watching old men skipping about while wearing bells, kids tying up a pole with ribbon, folk band (minus the fabulous Mike Edmonds as seen is this video) playing fiddle and more, sitting around on a bunch of straw bales, and cuddled a goat kid while my dog obsessed over a Shetland pony until my partner told us to go home.
Any one of the Lorn videos.
edit: or really any of his videos
I was afraid noone is going to mention this!
But note that it is Chris Cunningham, who is a twisted brain behind these.
Another classic: Come to Daddy
The video opens with an old woman (played by Coral Lorne) walking a dog in a grimy, industrial setting. The dog urinates on an abandoned television lying on the pavement, causing it to sputter unexpectedly into life, and a distorted and warping headshot of Richard D. James chants the lyrics. This unleashes a spirit, accompanied by a gang of small children, all of whom bear James’ grinning face and who appear to inhabit the abandoned buildings
See also: Monkey Drummer and of course Windowlicker, with its ridiculous 4 (?) minute intro.
My vote is for Windowlicker. Wicked satire of “horny ho” videos saturating the market at the time.
Well… It’s difficult to even say wtf is going on there 😅
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CnnGYaqjW-A
Einstürzende Neubauten - Sabrina, maybe not the weirdest, but weird enough to have stuck with me for the past 20 years
This isn’t that weird but a wolf and a bear are investigating another planet and come across these sexy pixies only for them to turn into robots that attempt to harvest their organs once they’ve all had a mad night on the booze.
Stuck in the sounds - Let’s Go also has a crazy video about an astronaut.
“When I get mad, my hand gets huge.”
Honorable mention to Ludacris’ Get Back for also using the big arm thing (though the video matches the song in this case)
I’ve always been puzzled by the Stabbing Westward video Shame. It features a fairly disturbing plot of a woman and her boyfriend who escaped from an insane asylum. However, the portions where the band is playing are completely contrary to the “plot” of the video and almost comical.
This is about aliens(?) and a warrior king.
Everlong was pretty wild
