First, isn't youtube a wonderful thing? (Yes. Yes, it is)
Top 100 Music Videos of All Time (Stylus Magazine)
Second, I like the boldness of the pronouncement: Top videos "of All Time" (!), but then I am let down by the backpedaling in their preface by qualifying the list as "democratically selected" and "humble and largely unofficial".
Third, Michel Gondry's video for Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be" ought to be much, much higher on the list, easily in the top 20. Perhaps Stylus can't be held responsible for the poor, mosaic-pixellated quality of this particular video, but this really does undermine Gondry's clever sampling and distortion of familiar video techniques, which is a key element to this particular work.
Fourth: I can't agree with all the choices here, but it's a pretty good list. A nice piece of work. I guess it would have been possible to mine it for leads to repost over time to this blog, but that would have just been intellectually dishonest.
Finally: What, no Hurra Torpedo cover of "Total Eclipse of the Heart"?!
Now go watch.
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UPDATE 9/23: In comments, Allen recommends Pitchfork's 100 Awesome Videos.
I spent most of the morning poking at it. There is some genuinely awesome stuff in there, and they make it hard for themselves by excluding videos from Director's Label (this eliminates, for example, the Greatest Video of All Time, "Let Forever Be").
Although a good number of the links to youtube posts have expired, it is still a really strong list, even if it fails to acknowledge certain hallmarks of the medium that Stylus does.
At any rate, both worth a look.
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2 comments:
Include the Pitchfork top 100 and you are getting no work done today.
Thanks for the link. Obviously I'll have to spend some quality time with it later. However, my first impression is that I have to shave a few points off for calling their list simply, "100 Awesome Music Videos", which is not as astounding a pronouncement as "Top 100 Music Videos of All Time".
I think I'm being pedantic about this today, partly because of the slight fever I've got going on,
but on the other hand, if you're going to throw down you might as well go for broke and make an authoratative and barely defensible declaration.
TOP POST OF ALL TIME, YOU MAY STOP READING FOREVER etc. etc.
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