100 GREATEST MUSIC VIDEOS

Released: 1999


Director: Hammer & Tongs


Who wouldn’t love the bittersweet tale of a milk cartoon looking for an absent Graham Coxon? Winner of the Best Video award at the 2000 NME Awards and still just as classic 11 years later.


Best bit: When Milky finally catches up with Graham only to meet a sticky end.

Released: 2010


Director: Peter Serafinowicz


A brilliant and long overdue piss-take of the hundreds of inane boyband vids we’ve been subjected to over the years, this sees the cheesiest bunch of buffed up twats get methodically zapped by the power of a genuinely decent tune.


Best bit: When the alien thing turns up and freaks the girls out.

Released: 1985


Director: Tim Pope


In which the band all cram into a wardrobe on a cliff, as you do, to play miniature instruments along to the track before finding themselves at the bottom of the sea surrounded by creations as if in some goth pop version of The Little Mermaid.


Best bit: When the octopus man thing wakes up

Released: 2010


Director: Jonas Åkerlund


Once upon a time, Lady Gaga was still making decent videos. ‘Telephone’ eschews all the overreaching cosmic weirdness of her recent clips and settles for a nine-minute lesbo action-filled Tarantino rip-off.


Best bit: When one of the guards says “I told you she didn’t have a dick”.

Released: 1999


Director: Spike Jonze


In which a fictional Torrance Community Dance Group get together and pull some particularly lame shapes to Fatboy’s big beat classic. Director Spike Jonze makes a cameo as the group’s leader.


Best bit: When the geek in the jumper tries to pull an MC Hammer and ends up ass over tit.

Released: 2010


Director: James Frost


It sees the band singing the track among some massive Rube Goldberg machine, which in plain English is one of those long, connected, set-ups that start with dominos cascading and end with a big OK Go advert.


Best bit: When the band get covered in paint at the vid’s climax.

Released: 2008


Director: Garth Jennings


Using simple but effective techniques like sped-up stop-start animation, blue filters and fishy finger puppets, Jennings created a short but sweet clip which complements Vampire Weekend’s jerky world punk better than tea complements biscuits.


Best bit: The surreal underwater bits.

Released: 2010


Director: Romain Gavras


Packed with sex, crack pipes and extreme violence towards redheads, the clip was banned from YouTube, thus cementing its status for all eternity.


Best bit: Not really the best part, but the shooting scene is the most powerful.

Released: 2006


Director: Chris Cunningham


Their explosive debut track was so uncompromising and unique that it coaxed legendary director Chris Cunningham out of a six year semi-retirement. Less fucked up facial tricks than an Aphex Twin clip but no less disturing.


Best bit: The flashes of some scary little girls near the end.