Bon Jovi

Bon Jovi kept the same director for fourteen years. Wayne Isham shot Livin' on a Prayer in 1986 and It's My Life in 2000 — the band's two most-watched videos, made at opposite ends of a career, by the same man. In 1991 MTV gave its Video Vanguard Award to the band and to Isham together, which is an unusual way to hand out a prize and says most of what needs saying about the arrangement.

Eleven of the videos on this page are his. The early ones share a visual grammar: arena performance opening in black and white, backstage footage cut into the song, the band shot from below, crowds in silhouette, a camera that moves like someone is running with it. It is the look most hard rock reached for in the second half of the eighties.

What makes the run odd is what Isham was doing elsewhere. He directed Metallica's Enter Sandman. He also directed Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way, *NSYNC's Bye Bye Bye and Ricky Martin's Livin' La Vida Loca. The same eye that gave arena rock its language went on to hand the boy bands theirs — and with sixty-nine videos here, he is the second most prolific director in this archive.

Bon Jovi's videos tend to get filed under one decade. They were made across three, and mostly by one person.