Martha, My Dear: ILM's All-Time Video-Poll Results Thread

just rewatched 2pac/scarface 'smile' and was curious who directed it.

Paul Hunter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hunter_(director)

forgot about usher 'my way'. also that black eyed peas 'joints and jams' was a fav of mine at that time.

paul hunter videography genuinely ridiculous

truly. we shoulda just polled him and hype williams videos.

Forgot another early one that I really enjoy: the Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash, though there are a few variants. It got a restoration that looked awesome when I saw it at MoMA's program celebrating the Stones' 50th anniversary, but I don't think it was officially made available for home viewing outside of its usage in the so-so Crossfire Hurricane documentary. The only place I can find it online is on Facebook, though you don't need an account to view it.

My unranked ballot:

Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love
Yo La Tengo - I'll Be Around
A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation
Ann Steel - My Time
Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy
Autechre - Gantz Graf
Beck - Deadweight
Björk - Human Behaviour
Björk - Triumph of a Heart
Cabaret Voltaire - Sensoria
Carly Simon - Why
Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be
Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar
Cibo Matto - Sugar Water
Cléo - Les Fauves
Cure - Close to Me
Daft Punk - Around the World
De La Soul - A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays
Deee-Lite - Groove Is in the Heart
Fall - Eat Y'Self Fitter
France Gall - Laisse tomber les filles
Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights (trees version)
Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights (trails version)
Kraftwerk - Musique Non-Stop
Kylie Minogue - Come Into My World
Lio - Sage Comme Une Image
Lucas - Lucas with the Lid Off
Madonna - Frozen
Mick Jagger - Memo from Turner
Moloko - The Flipside
Pet Shop Boys - Heart
Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
Portishead - Only You
Roisin Murphy - Overpowered
Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin - 69 année érotique
Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie and Clyde
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Spellbound
Sparks - When Do I Get to Sing 'My Way’?
Sparks - When I'm With You
Talking Heads - Love for Sale
Tears for Fears - Head Over Heels
Todd Terje - Inspector Norse
Moloko - Fun for Me
Oneohtrix Point Never - Problem Areas
Boards of Canada - Everything You Do Is a Balloon
Trans-X - Living on Video
Ronika - Wiyoo
Stice - Ollygoshawda
Scott Walker - Epizootics!

Thanks Clemenza, Viborg, anyone else with a role, co-voters! A sign of a comprehensive and significant poll is that some people are a bit miffed with the results. (If it wasn't comprehensive they wouldn't have heard of it; if it wasn't significant they wouldn't have cared.)

I will probably go through all of the top 100 at some point in the next month. Grateful that an all time video list finally happened here, and just as I was hoping, the stuff I haven't seen yet (so far) is all really bizarre and interesting. I wouldn't call a lot of these worthy of an all time list, but for me that's not really the point.

I totally forgot about that Hot Chip video. But it also reminds me of the Beach House video with Ray Wise that I was so sure would place.

I know the song, and I figure I must have seen some of the video at some point, but the revelation of the poll for me was "Unfinished Sympathy".

I was a #1 vote for "Sabotage" btw, didn't see the email. Given that my son makes me play him that video over and over again, it definitely has legs.

I feel like I could make a separate list of "movie scenes that I wish could be music videos."

Andy Warhol's Vinyl for Martha Reeves & The Vandellas' "Nowhere to Run"

James Benning's 11 x 14 for Bob Dylan's "Black Diamond Bay" (two scenes actually)

Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and GoodFellas for "Then He Kissed Me," "Mickey's Monkey," "What Is Life," "Jumping Jack Flash," "Atlantis" and probably many others

Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising for "He's a Rebel"

etc.

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" in this list is one example.
I feel like part of the attraction of scenes like that is that they're not independent works; the songs come in, blend with the movie and leave. Watching them on their own feels like it's inflating them somehow.

I've written a book on the subject (pop music in films), and my interest in the two subjects is connected I'm sure. (Another voter has also written a book on the subject...I won't link to his without checking.)

But then Kenneth Anger's use of the Paris Sisters' "Dream Lover" in Kustom Kar Kommandos strikes me as a special case because it's not an excerpt from the film, it's the entire film. I didn't vote for it bc I was trying to honor the distinction between that and videos that were made to promote a record, but I guess that is the principal difference between that and, say, Bruce Conner's film for "Mongoloid" by Devo.

the subterranean “video” has surely been seen by far more people than the entirety of don’t look back, and certainly passes the iconicity test (based on how often it’s been parodied and imitated)

it’s a bit different from scenes from narrative films that prominently use a song

To me, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" works fine as a (legitimate) standalone video. If Don't Look Back didn't exist, but MTV had existed in 1965, I could see where Dylan would have come up with exactly the same thing as his idea of what a video should look like.

(The "Like a Rolling Stone" video that I voted for, which was probably done six or seven years ago, I would love to know the extent of Dylan's involvement with that. Other than commissioning and ultimately approving it, my guess is nil--I just can't imagine him coming up with anything like what materialized.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2af69xt0VKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gib916jJW1o

I think Bob Roberts came out before "Subterranean" became an "official" video, so I vaguely remember being thrilled just to see the Don't Look Back sequence referenced. (Didn't care for the film at the time, got better when I watched it years later.) Looking at it now, it's just weird that the women look like the Robert Palmer women--reference overload.

Bob Roberts did it a few years after INXS iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQDzj6R3p4

The Maxell advert is one of the best TV adverts of all time. There’s another one which uses Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’ along same lines to diminishing returns.

That would be this, then. As with “Into The Valley”, I could never hear the track the same way again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KShjB5jyjM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lucero

realized while watching the video for the odb remix of "woo-hah got you all in check" that i love this dude's work, always creative if on a more modest level than say a hype williams, sucks he died so young. tha alkaholiks video he did ("the next level") is pretty much as good as "'93 til infinity"

oh yeah thats a good videography. he loved him some contrast.

kush is a GREAT video

this one too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5xJBKVGTGs

always loved the song/video for xzibit's "paparazzi"

xp lol

this is making me want to do a poll for just hip-hop music videos

would participate

after i finished my ballot i made a youtube playlist of it, then i had the bright idea to expand it to 100 places, so here's the finished product:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRIBtlBJdQ_IZV5yzhr1MnbzHhjbes9-

pretty proud of it, very rewarding project! i've wanted to do something like this since youtube first came into existence and now a majority of the videos have hd upgrades

that link doesn't work because of the weird hyphen at the end, so here's the real link:

brad's all-time top 100 favorite music videos ever

Good selecting. I'm happy anyone else has seen and loves "Y Control."

nice brad! lots of crossover with my favs

Totally forgot something I'm almost certain I would have voted for: Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." I think it was made a couple of years after Graceland; it starts with Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie. When Mickey Mantle shows up, it's as sublime a moment as Paul McCartney in "They Don't Know"--obviously Paul Simon's dream as a kid, to be pitching to Mickey Mantle, and suddenly there he is. Near the end, another sports icon.

I didn't vote in the Broadcast poll, because I really only remember (and love) "Echo's Answer," but I wish I'd known about this for the video poll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yEz1eZmUco

AV Club predictably making some eye rolling choices. https://www.avclub.com/50-greatest-music-videos-ranked-1850820669/slides/52

Very quickly scanning, but yeah. If you could generate a Masterpiece Theatre equivalent of a greatest-videos list, this would be it. (Which is not to imply that most of the famous ones here are boring but good--they're boring and bad.)