The 100 Greatest Music Videos of the 1990s

Romanek shot it like a set of Victorian medical photographs — sepia, a heart wired to a machine, a monkey tied to a cross, a nude model in a bondage collar — and MTV cut it to a 4:36 broadcast version with "scene missing" title cards where the offending frames had been. The cards became part of the video's identity; the uncut director's cut, which is the version here, circulated for years before it could be shown openly. Harris Savides, who would later shoot Zodiac and Elephant, lit it; Romanek returns at #14 with the most expensive video ever reported and at #85 with Fiona Apple; he closed the decade as one of the seven Directors Label names. Nine Inch Nails supplied the only 90s video to be famous for what wasn't in it.

Nick Brandt shot Whitney Houston seated in an empty theatre — she was pregnant, which shaped the staging — intercut with scenes from The Bodyguard. Then Clive Davis had the video re-edited, and Brandt removed his name; the official credit is the Directors Guild pseudonym Alan Smithee. The clip is on this list on recognition alone: it is one of the most-viewed videos of the decade, and the image of Houston in the theatre is how a generation pictures the song. The director's disowning of it is the reason it's not higher.

George Michael would not appear in his own video, so Fincher cast Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz and Cindy Crawford to lip-sync the song instead, in a dark London house lit like Blade Runner. It is the video that made the supermodel a pop-culture role, and the second of Fincher's two 1990 landmarks after Vogue (#7) — the same photographer's eye, the same Propaganda Films precision, turned on a different kind of icon.

Black-and-white, a spacecraft interior built as a run of studio sets, the two Jacksons in matching PVC playing video games and smashing the furniture. Romanek — one year after Closer (#11) — made the anti-Black or White (#5): no morphing, no message, just scale and control. The "most expensive ever" title that follows it around is one Romanek himself disputes, but the eleven VMA nominations were real, and it took the Grammy. Michael Jackson's second entry on this list, and the only one with Janet.

Cars stopped on a Texas flyover, their occupants' thoughts subtitled on screen, until Michael Stipe walks out of his car and everyone follows on foot. Jake Scott — Ridley Scott's son — built it on the opening of Fellini's 8½, and shot the whole thing in a real traffic jam staged on a real interchange. It won Best Direction at the 1994 VMAs, which is when Adam Yauch took the stage in a Swiss director's costume to protest on behalf of Sabotage (#3). R.E.M.'s second entry; its first is #1.

A straight performance video on a stage-like set: Radiohead play the song, the camera stays with them, and nothing else happens. It is here because of what it became — one of the most-viewed music videos in existence — and because it marks the start of a run on this list. Within four years the same band would hand their videos to Jonathan Glazer (#38) and Grant Gee (#78) and get two of the decade's most-cited clips; Creep is the baseline they started from. No awards for the video are on record.

Richard Ashcroft walks down Hoxton Street towards the camera, shoulder-first through everyone in his way, and never breaks stride — the band fall in behind him at the end. It descends from Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy (#98) — one continuous walk, shot six years earlier by Baillie Walsh — but reversed: hostile instead of oblivious. Stern shot Firestarter (#99) the year before and Teardrop the year after. The song's royalty saga is a separate story; the video's is that it made a walk into an attitude.

Jay Kay glides across a room whose floor seems to slide beneath him while the furniture stays put. The trick is the opposite of what it looks like: the floor is still and the walls and camera move, on a set built to be pushed around. No digital effects — which is why it won Best Special Effects. Glazer, a British commercials director, took Video of the Year with it and then made Karma Police (#38) and, four years later, Sexy Beast. The Grammy Jamiroquai won that season was for the song, not the clip.

The song is about Jeremy Wade Delle, who shot himself in front of his class in Richardson, Texas, in 1991. Pellington staged it with a boy actor, biblical text cards, and Eddie Vedder's face filling the frame; MTV cut the final shot, which left many viewers believing the boy had shot his classmates. It swept the 1993 VMAs. Pearl Jam refused to make videos for years afterwards, which is part of why this one carries so much weight. Note on the source: the official versions of this clip cannot be embedded, so the copy playable here is a fan upload of the uncut edit.

Two stories — a drug deal that ends in a shooting, a one-night stand that ends in an HIV diagnosis — framed by TLC performing as figures of liquid water on the ocean, rendered in CGI that still reads. F. Gary Gray, twenty-five, had made It Was a Good Day (#71) for Ice Cube two years earlier and would release Friday the same year as this; he later directed Straight Outta Compton. Waterfalls took Video of the Year.

Mark Fenske came from advertising, and the video looks like it: a series of everyday images with white text cards — "Right now, someone is …" — over the top, the band mostly absent. It beat Smells Like Teen Spirit (#4) and Give It Away (#39) at the 1992 VMAs, which is the clearest evidence on this list that award juries and history disagree. It is still copied every time a brand wants to look thoughtful. Van Halen's only entry.

Alicia Silverstone gets a tattoo, a navel ring, catches her boyfriend (Stephen Dorff) cheating, is mugged by a young Josh Holloway, and ends the clip standing on a bridge rail. Marty Callner, Aerosmith's house director, made three of these with Silverstone in a year — Amazing (#43) and Crazy (#49) followed — and Amy Heckerling cast her in Clueless after seeing this one on MTV. It won Video of the Year in 1994. Callner returns at #43, #49 and #60.

A block party in Washington Heights, split down the middle of the frame: 1967 on one side, 1998 on the other, Lauryn Hill performing in both eras at once, with the crowd, the cars and the clothes changing at the seam. Big TV! is the London duo Andy Delaney and Monty Whitebloom, better known for Seal's Crazy. It took Video of the Year in 1999 — the second R&B video to do so in five years after Waterfalls (#20).

No concept: the band in the studio recording the song, cut from the footage Adam Dubin was shooting for the documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica. It is here for the same reason as Creep (#16) — one of the most-viewed videos of the decade, the image of the song for anyone who learned it on guitar — and as the counterweight to Enter Sandman (#53), the Wayne Isham concept clip from the same album. Metallica made both in one year; the plain one lasted longer.

A woman drives through a snowbound landscape, and every passenger is her. Stéphane Sednaoui — a French fashion photographer whose Give It Away (#39) had won two Moonmen four years earlier — put Alanis Morissette in the driver's seat and then in the back seat, the passenger seat, out of the window, each version in a different mood, arguing and singing with the others while the road goes on. It's the simplest concept on this list and one of the most copied, because it solved a problem every singer-songwriter video has: how to show one person's interior life without a plot. By the time Jagged Little Pill had sold its tens of millions, this was the image people had of her. Three Moonmen in 1996. Sednaoui returns with the Chili Peppers at #45.

A living-room set hung with paintings, the band playing, Linda Perry in a top hat and goggles singing the chorus straight into the lens. Nothing about it announces itself as a landmark, which is why its numbers are hard to explain: more than two billion views, among the highest of these hundred. It is on the list as the purest case for the recognition half of the method — a video that became a decade's shorthand without a director's concept, a budget or an award.

The "Torrance Community Dance Group" performing an amateur routine in a cinema queue, led by a man in a beard and headband called Richard Koufey, until a theatre employee turns the boombox off. Koufey is Jonze; the group are his friends; the camera is a handheld camcorder; the crowd is real. Jonze made it with Roman Coppola. It won Best Direction in 1999 — the award Sabotage (#3) had been denied five years earlier, for a video with the same principle taken further: no crew, no set, no permission, one idea. Jonze's third entry; his fourth is #82.

Bayer shot the band in Ireland and cut real footage of British soldiers and children in Belfast against Dolores O'Riordan, gilded and standing before a cross, surrounded by silver-painted boys. The song was written after the 1993 Warrington bombing; the video took its politics literally. Three years after Smells Like Teen Spirit (#4), Bayer was still working in the same register — real people, real places, a performance that breaks through the frame. The Cranberries' only entry.

The five of them in white, in an empty terminal at LAX, then in front of a hangar full of screaming fans. Wayne Isham — the man behind Bon Jovi's arena videos in the 80s and Enter Sandman (#53) — filmed it with the same wide-screen sincerity he brought to rock, which is why it doesn't date the way most boy-band clips do. The Grammy nomination that season was for the song. Isham has four entries here (#41, #53, #57); this is the one that ran on TRL every afternoon of 1999.

It opens on a rotting orange — the Tragic Kingdom cover — and then tells the story the band was living: photographers who only want Gwen Stefani, a magazine cover that crops the other three out, a rehearsal that turns into an argument. Sophie Muller, who had built her reputation on Annie Lennox and Sade, gave No Doubt a video about being a band whose singer had become a star, and it won Best Group Video — which is either irony or the point. Muller's only entry on this list.

# Tier 3 — 31–70

The label wanted an animated superhero concept; Dick has said his own treatment was no better; the school uniform was Britney Spears's idea at a fitting, and the outfits came from Kmart. Shot in a real high school corridor and gym, it is the most recognisable image in late-90s pop, and the video that sent Dick — the man who had filmed Guns N' Roses a decade earlier — into a second career with teen pop. Four nominations, no Moonmen, over a billion views.

Beck directed it himself: a pastiche of 1960s television, bandstands, go-go dancers and variety-show staging. It won Best Direction at the 1997 VMAs — the year the award's nominees included Hype Williams, Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer and Dayton & Faris — the only artist-directed video on this list with a Moonman for directing.

Bryan Adams performs in a forest setting intercut with footage from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The director is Julien Temple, who had made The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle with the Sex Pistols and Absolute Beginners — an unlikely name for a Kevin Costner tie-in. It is here on recognition: sixteen weeks at number one in the UK, and a video that still passes a billion views. No award record for the clip.

In an animated wasteland drawn by Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, a guard's gun goes off by accident; the bullet crosses into the live-action world, travels through it in slow motion, past Korn, and comes back to be caught by a girl who returns it. The live-action passages were directed by Dayton and Faris, three years after Tonight, Tonight (#9). Nine VMA nominations, two wins, and the Grammy.

Kohr shot Green Day in an abandoned mental institution, on black-and-white stock, and had the colour painted in afterwards — the sickly greens and pinks are hand-applied. Nine nominations at the 1995 VMAs; it won none, losing Video of the Year to Waterfalls (#20).

A filmed concert, nothing more: the band on stage at Brixton, the crowd given free T-shirts reading "AC/DC — I was Thunderstruck" with the date on the back, so that every wide shot is a wall of the same logo. Mallet's instinct with AC/DC went against everything MTV rewarded — no concept, no story — and it produced the most-watched clip in their catalogue, past 1.7 billion views. The song is what people remember; the video is what they see when they do.

A monochrome performance clip — Liam Gallagher seated, the band around him, a few staged oddities — by the director who would shoot ...Baby One More Time (#31) three years later. Oasis never made a video that stood on its own as a piece of filmmaking, and Wonderwall isn't one either; it is on the list because the song's reach turned this ordinary clip into one of the decade's most-played. No award record.

A car follows a man (Hungarian actor Lajos Kovács) down a night road, slowly, while Yorke sings from the back seat; the man stops, strikes a match, and the petrol trail the car has been leaking runs back to it. One idea, one location, no cut that isn't necessary. Four nominations in 1998, no wins — Madonna's Ray of Light (#8) took the directing award that year. Radiohead's second of three entries.

The band painted silver from head to foot, in black-and-white, in the desert, doing what looks like a ritual for a religion nobody has explained. Sednaoui was a French fashion photographer making early videos; this one got him six VMA nominations and two wins, and set the template — bodies as sculpture, no set — that Red Hot Chili Peppers returned to with him eight years later on Scar Tissue. The first of three Chili Peppers entries.

An old man in a Santa hat on a cross, a girl in a Ku Klux Klan robe reaching for foetuses in a tree, a poppy field, a hospital bed. Kurt Cobain wrote the treatment and drew the storyboards; Corbijn — Depeche Mode's creative director at the same moment — has said it was the video he was least involved with, ideas-wise. Kevin Kerslake, who had made Nirvana's previous four videos including Come As You Are (#47), sued over the concept and settled. Two Moonmen in 1994.

Concert footage of the band intercut with newsreel — the building of the Berlin Wall, the crowds on it in 1989, lighters held up in the dark. The song became attached to German reunification, and the video made the attachment literal. The credit is Isham's, confirmed by IMDb's full credits and a Rolling Stone oral history of the song.

Dr. Dre and Snoop back together for the first time in years, on the streets of Los Angeles, with Hype Williams's wide lenses and bounced light. It has no award record, but it has 1.7 billion views, and it opens the run of Williams clips that make him the most-credited director here.

Alicia Silverstone and Jason London — fresh from Dazed and Confused — as two kids who escape into virtual reality, one of them in a head-mounted display: motorbikes, a skydive, a biplane, and neither of them realising the other is plugged in too. It is the early-90s idea of the future, filmed for a band that had been around since 1970, and the middle panel of Marty Callner's Silverstone trilogy for Aerosmith, between Cryin' (#22) and Crazy (#49). Aerosmith's second entry.

The first of three Morahan videos built around Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour — a relationship on the edge of a cliff, a fight over a gun, a grave with Rose's own name on it. November Rain (#6) and Estranged (#96) followed, each larger than the last; this is the one that established the scale. No award record.

Eight years after Give It Away (#39), the same director took the same band back to the same desert — this time in a 1967 Pontiac Catalina convertible with John Frusciante, newly returned to the group, driving. Where the earlier clip was ritual, this one is aftermath. No award record for the video; the song's Grammy was for the song.

Gahan in a crown and ermine, carrying a folding chair across mountains and coastlines, looking for a place to sit. Corbijn had been Depeche Mode's photographer since 1981 and by now their de facto creative director; he shot the video himself. No award record, half a billion views.

A studio piece: the band seen through a curtain of falling water, Cobain swinging on a chandelier, a dog, a revolver sinking — Cobain's face mostly obscured. Kerslake made four Nirvana videos in a row after Smells Like Teen Spirit (#4); this was the first, and the one where the band's refusal to be looked at became a visual style rather than a problem.

A Mad Max pastiche set in the year 2095: Tupac and Dre in a desert compound, cages, dune buggies, a Thunderdome fight. It was Tupac's first single after leaving prison and the video that reintroduced him; Williams shot it as a movie trailer for a film that didn't exist. Nominated for Best Rap Video in 1996, losing to Gangsta's Paradise (#61).

Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler cut class, drive off, shoplift, and end up in an amateur striptease contest, with the band's performance cut in between. The third and last of Callner's Silverstone trilogy after Cryin' (#22) and Amazing (#43), and the one that made Liv Tyler famous. No award record.

Silver catsuits, a chrome spacecraft interior, the three of TLC filmed in Williams's wide-angle close-ups — the FanMail aesthetic made literal. Six nominations at the 1999 VMAs and a win for Best Group Video, four years after Waterfalls (#20) took Video of the Year. Williams was nominated for Best Direction the same night and lost to Spike Jonze's Praise You (#27).

The Fugees sit in a movie theatre watching footage of themselves on the screen, Lauryn Hill singing Roberta Flack's song from the stalls. It won Best R&B Video in 1996. Hill's solo entry is Doo Wop (That Thing) (#23), the video that won everything.

The running man, the bump, the parachute trousers, and the dance that became a name. Wainwright, an English director, filmed the routine straight — the dance is the only thing anyone remembers. Two Moonmen in 1990, nearly a billion views.

A boy's nightmares — a truck, snakes, a fall, drowning — cut against Metallica performing, at a pace that was fast for 1991. It won Best Metal/Hard Rock Video in 1992. Isham had spent the 80s making Bon Jovi look like a stadium; here he made Metallica look like a horror film, and then made I Want It That Way (#29) and Livin' La Vida Loca (#57) look like pop. Compare Nothing Else Matters (#24), the same album's other video.

Camitz's plan was a single unbroken take of the group taking over a building in Barcelona; the permission collapsed days before the shoot and the production moved to the empty Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras. The result looks like one take: five women running through corridors and a dinner party, and it introduced the Spice Girls to the world in under four minutes. Camitz's first video; Best Dance Video in 1997.

The year after Boyz n the Hood made him the youngest Best Director nominee in Oscar history, John Singleton was hired to make a nine-minute Egyptian court drama for Michael Jackson: Eddie Murphy as the pharaoh, Iman as the queen, Magic Johnson as a courtier, and Jackson as a hooded sorcerer who turns to sand and dust when the guards get close. It's the third of four Jackson entries here (#5, #14, #62) and the one that most clearly shows his method in this decade — hire film directors, not video directors, and let them make a film. The throne-room dance sequence is the set piece — a full ensemble number staged for the camera the way Jackson had done since Thriller.

Marie Fredriksson at a piano and Per Gessle on guitar in a warehouse, intercut with scenes from Pretty Woman. Nothing in the staging explains the numbers — a billion views — except the film and the song. Roxette's only entry; the list's other Swedish video is at #100.

A nightclub, a car, a woman in red, and Ricky Martin dancing in a way that made 1999 briefly his. Six nominations and two wins at the VMAs, the same night Isham's I Want It That Way (#29) took Viewer's Choice — the director had two of the year's biggest pop videos at once.

A neighbourhood of grinning families with digitally stretched faces goes about its day while the sun turns into a black hole and pulls it all upward; the band plays in a field. It won Best Metal/Hard Rock Video in 1994. Soundgarden's only entry.

A day in the life of a carload of bored suburban teenagers — a house party, a convenience store, a wrecked bathroom — with the band appearing only as extras. Made months before Tonight, Tonight (#9) by the same team, and the opposite of it: no sets, no costumes, one Dodge Charger.

A love triangle acted by Keri Russell, Carla Gugino, Jack Noseworthy and Jason Wiles, with the band performing in between. Bon Jovi made almost all their videos with Wayne Isham; this is the exception, by Aerosmith's house director, and it has passed 1.2 billion views. Callner's fourth entry (#22, #43, #49).

Michelle Pfeiffer, still playing her Dangerous Minds teacher LouAnne Johnson, sits across a table from Coolio in a darkened classroom while he raps at her; the film footage does the rest. Fuqua, six years before Training Day, made the tie-in video that wasn't just a trailer. Two Moonmen in 1996 and two billion views; the Grammy that season was for the song.

Lee shot one version in Brazil — the Pelourinho in Salvador and the Dona Marta favela in Rio, over the objections of local authorities — with the Olodum drummers, and a second in a prison with real footage of police violence cut in. Lee had sought Jackson out himself. Neither has an award record; between them they have 1.4 billion views. Michael Jackson's fourth entry, with a fourth different director.

Lene Nystrøm and René Dif as Barbie and Ken in a pink plastic world, with visual nods to Sabotage (#3) and The Flintstones. Mattel sued and lost. No award record, 1.7 billion views.

Dave Grohl and a woman fall asleep; his dream and hers bleed into each other; a pair of intruders threaten her and Grohl's hand grows to the size of a door to fight them off. Gondry — who would get his own Directors Label volume in 2003 — built it with camera tricks rather than computers, which is why the hand still looks right. Two nominations in 1998.

Madonna in black on a desert floor, splitting into copies of herself, dissolving into ravens and a black dog. Cunningham had made exactly one famous video — Aphex Twin's Come to Daddy (#88) — when she hired him on the strength of it. The special-effects Moonman went to this rather than to the same year's Everlong (#64).

Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt at a single microphone, acoustic, monochrome, nothing else. Dayton and Faris — who five years later would build a 1902 moon for Tonight, Tonight (#9) — shot it with no embellishment at all, and it became the MTV staple of its year. The earliest of their four entries. No award record.

John Rzeznik in a tower room watching the city through a telescope, the band playing on a road by a tunnel, and Nicolas Cage's film in the gaps. Nancy Bardawil's clip is on the list on reach — 800 million views — and as the survivor: the film is barely remembered and the song has never left the radio. Larry Fong, the cinematographer, later shot 300 and Watchmen.

The band plays in the Minneapolis Armory in front of NASA banners which fall, mid-chorus, to reveal a shuttle launch pad from Armageddon; Liv Tyler is in the film clips, her father on the soundtrack. Francis Lawrence, later of I Am Legend and The Hunger Games, won Best Video from a Film with it — Aerosmith's fourth entry, and the only one not directed by Marty Callner.

Blackstreet and Dre in Williams's saturated colour and low angles. Two nominations in 1997. The video is here because the song crossed every format that year, and because it shows Williams's method before it became a signature — the wide-angle close-up, the primary colours — that No Scrubs (#50) and The Rain (#84) would push further.

Vanilla Ice in the striped jacket and the flat-top, dancing on a rooftop and in a dark warehouse with a crew behind him. It is not here for the filmmaking. It is here because for a year it was everywhere, because it is one of the most-parodied clips of the decade, and because the recognition half of this list would be dishonest without it. Greg Synodis's credit was queried during verification and stands — IMDb and IMVDb agree.

# Tier 4 — 71–100

Ice Cube drives through his neighbourhood on a day when the pager doesn't buzz and the police don't stop him, and the video simply follows. Two years later Gray made Waterfalls (#20) and Friday. No award record. Ice Cube's only entry.

A family watches television and Eminem is on every channel, in a run of costumes and impersonations. Atwell went on to direct most of Eminem's videos; Dre co-directed this first one.

Chris Isaak and Helena Christensen on a black-sand beach in Hawaii, in black-and-white, photographed by Herb Ritts as if for a magazine. The beach, Kamoamoa, was covered by lava from Kīlauea not long after. Three Moonmen. Note the scope rule: the video, not the song, sets the date.

Two teenagers slip out of camp at night to meet; Mariah Carey sings from a tyre swing. She directed it herself — a claim that she shared the credit was checked against IMVDb and rejected. No award record; 465 million views.

The Hailey brothers, formerly of Jodeci, singing a wedding song; the video is a performance clip with a romantic frame, and it is here because the song became the decade's default first dance. Schwartz's credit is confirmed by IMDb and IMVDb.

Gideon was one of Tom Morello's guitar students with a camera; the video is the band on two small stages, and the song's final minute made it unbroadcastable in America. Rage Against the Machine's only entry.

Anthony Kiedis walks the streets of Los Angeles in slow motion while Frusciante plays on a pedestal against a backdrop of sky. Van Sant had made Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho before this. Viewer's Choice in 1992; the Breakthrough award that year went to the band's Give It Away (#39), not to this.

Thom Yorke's head in a glass dome, the dome filling with water, the camera never cutting away. Gee's references were 2001 and childhood memories of escape acts; It was filmed at high speed and slowed down, so the seconds Yorke spends under water last longer on screen than they did on set. Radiohead's third entry.

Two women in adjacent apartments discover they're dating the same man (Mekhi Phifer) and unite against him. Kahn had made Everybody (#87) the year before and would make Toxic six years later. Nominated for Video of the Year in 1998.

A funeral, a church, a hooded figure collecting souls through Cleveland who is revealed at the end as an angel. Written for Eazy-E, the video was the group's elegy and a Video of the Year nominee.

A girl in a bee costume (Heather DeLoach, ten) tap-dances, is laughed at, wanders a city, and finds a field of people dressed like her. Bayer shot it the year after Smells Like Teen Spirit (#4); the Bee Girl outlived the band. No award record for the video.

Charles, a man with a dog's head and a leg in plaster (Tony Maxwell), carries a boombox playing the song through Manhattan, is mocked by children, and can't take the boombox on the bus. Jonze's fourth entry, and the quietest — titled Big City Nights. A claim that Daft Punk co-directed was checked and rejected.

Robots, skeletons, synchronised swimmers, mummies and athletes circle a set — each group moving to one element of the track, so the choreography is the arrangement made visible. Gondry's second entry (#64) and the clearest statement of his method: a rule, followed exactly.

The inflated black suit, the fisheye close-ups, Missy Elliott filling the frame like a balloon — the first of her videos with Williams, and the one that made both of them a brand. Three nominations in 1997, including Best Direction, which went to Beck's The New Pollution (#32).

Fiona Apple, melancholic and in various states of undress, in a video about voyeurism and adolescence that puts its audience in the voyeur's position. The New Yorker wrote that she looked "like an underfed Calvin Klein model", and the clip became a reference point for 90s heroin chic. Harris Savides, who lit Closer (#11), shot it and won the Moonman for cinematography. Romanek's third entry, after Closer and Scream (#14).

The song's rise-from-nothing story staged literally, from the block to the mansion. Combs directed it himself. The first of two Biggie entries (#92).

Five boys stranded at a mansion for the night become a werewolf, a vampire, a mummy, a Phantom and a two-faced man. Kahn's Thriller homage was his breakthrough, and the Backstreet Boys' first Moonman. His other entry is The Boy Is Mine (#79).

Children with Richard D. James's face terrorise a council estate; an old woman's dog; a screaming creature emerging from a television. Cunningham's first video for Aphex Twin, shot where Kubrick shot A Clockwork Orange, and the reason Frozen (#65) exists. Per this list's rule, one Aphex Twin entry — this one, not Windowlicker.

A run of dance set pieces around Will Smith on the Las Vegas Strip. Five nominations, one win. Williams's sixth entry.

Sir Mix-a-Lot rapping on top of an enormous sculpted rear end, in a video MTV would only play at night. Adam Bernstein — later a television director on Breaking Bad and Fargo — was nominated for Best Direction against Sednaoui and the eventual winner Right Now (#21). The song won a Grammy; the video is why it's still quoted.

Pope had directed The Cure since the early 80s and would still be filming them at their fortieth anniversary; this is the sunniest of the lot — the band on a bright set, pratfalls, a song that sounds like a different group wrote it. On the list as the 90s entry of one of the longest artist–director relationships in the form.

Puff Daddy and Mase in reflective suits inside a fisheye, a golf tournament, and Biggie only in archive footage — he had been killed in March. Williams's seventh entry; the "shiny suit era" of late-90s hip-hop is usually dated from this clip.

Filmed largely from the air: Robbie Williams walks a wide empty beach, kicks a football, rides a motorbike with a woman on the back while a helicopter circles overhead, all in black-and-white. Vaughan Arnell went on to direct a long run of Williams's videos — this is where the relationship starts, and where a fourth single from a debut album became the song that outlived every other one on it.

Meat Loaf as a beast on a motorbike, a mansion, a chase, a woman who sees past the face — a Beauty and the Beast retelling by Michael Bay, then a commercials and video director, two years before his first feature. Over seven minutes long.

Stilts, dental braces, prosthetics, jump-cut stop-motion: the Toronto photographer Floria Sigismondi gave Manson his look in one clip, and was nominated for art direction and effects the following year. Her later features include The Runaways.

The end of the Morahan trilogy after Don't Cry (#44) and November Rain (#6): a mansion raid, a tanker, Axl Rose walking off a ship into the sea and swimming with dolphins. It cost more than November Rain and made less sense, which is roughly how the band ended too. No award record.

Tony Kaye, five years before American History X, put the photographs and names of missing children over the band's performance, in the style of the milk cartons. Some of the children were later found. A claim that it won Best Alternative Video in 1994 was checked and is false — Heart-Shaped Box (#40) won.

Shara Nelson walks and sings; the camera walks with her; the street goes about its business; Massive Attack appear behind her, out of focus, twice. Six years later Bitter Sweet Symphony (#17) did the same thing with the hostility turned up. The single-take myths around this clip are dealt with in its Story Behind. No award record.

Keith Flint in a tunnel, in black-and-white because colour wasn't in the budget, doing the dance that made him the face of British rave for the rest of the decade. Its Top of the Pops debut drew complaints from viewers. Stern's second entry (#17); no award record.

Nina Persson drives a 1974 Cadillac Eldorado down a desert road with no hands, standing up, on the roof, ramming whatever she meets, until the ending — and there are five of them. Åkerlund made it the same year as Ray of Light (#8). The list closes here on purpose: a Swedish director, a Swedish band, and the last video on the site's editor's own list of the ones that mattered.