A Choir with 1,000 Singers Pays Tribute to Sinéad O’Connor & Performs “Nothing Compares 2 U”

in Music | October 26th, 2023

The build­ing that hous­es Dublin’s 3Olympia The­atre began life as Dan Lowrey’s Star of Erin Music Hall.

It has under­gone sev­er­al name changes over the course of its 145 years, and played host to dra­ma, opera, bal­let, films, ora­to­rio, pan­tomime, vari­ety shows, and world-famous pop­u­lar musi­cians like David Bowie, REM, Foo Fight­ers… and Dublin native Sinéad O’Connor, who arrived at the venue in 2011, uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly tot­ing her alu­minum foil-wrapped lunch.

Her fif­teen-year-old daugh­ter, Róisín Waters, sang back up.

Review­er Nico­la Byrne wrote in Gold­en Plec that “a sin­gle spot­light illu­mi­nat­ed O’Connor on the mid­dle of the stage, as she launched into “I Am Stretched On Your Grave,” a song she ‘Usu­al­ly ded­i­cates to any dead peo­ple that may be present:’”

With no instru­men­tal, all atten­tion was on that spot­light. If a pin had’ve been dropped in the Olympia, I would’ve known about it.

O’Connor ded­i­cat­ed that evening’s per­for­mance of “Noth­ing Com­pares To You” to her 7‑year-old son, Shane Lun­ny, who died by sui­cide in Jan­u­ary 2022, a year and a half before his moth­er also took her leave.

A few weeks ago, Nobu Adil­man and Dav­eed Gold­man, founders of Choir! Choir! Choir!, swung by 3Olympia The­atre, to lead a 1000-mem­ber strong spon­ta­neous choir of tick­et hold­ers in a mov­ing cov­er of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 You,” at the top of the page.

It was a mean­ing­ful way for fans to con­nect to an artist who spoke to them.

Choir! Choir! Choir! pre­vi­ous­ly paid trib­ute to David Bowie with “Space Odd­i­ty,” and Prince (com­pos­er of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 You)” with “When Doves Cry” not long after their deaths.

Pri­or to Dublin, Choir! Choir! Choir! hon­ored O’Connor with a sin­ga­long of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 You” at the Toron­to Opera House, in the town where their move­ment got its start.

Tick­et pur­chas­es ben­e­fit­ed CAMH: The Cen­tre for Addic­tion and Men­tal Health. Adil­man and Gold­man were joined onstage by the pro­duc­er of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” Chris Bir­kett, and Toron­to-based singer-song­writer Feist, whose first album pur­chase was O’Connor’s debut, The Lion and the Cobra.

“I remem­ber so clear­ly the first time I heard her at a friend’s house after school,” she told Index Mag­a­zine in 2005:

 She blew my mind. Her voice sound­ed like it was from anoth­er uni­verse. She rede­fined every­thing for me.

Turn­ing the clock back to 2016, we find Choir! Choir! Choir! par­tic­i­pants tack­ling “Noth­ing Com­pares 2” as a way of get­ting the jump on February’s most fraught hol­i­day:

Valentine’s Day kin­da sucks so last night, in antic­i­pa­tion, we cel­e­brat­ed EPIC HEARTBREAKS with the one and only Sinéad O’Con­nor. Props to Prince (yes, we know he wrote this amaz­ing tune!) for not tak­ing this video down in 7 hours and 15 days.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Sinéad O’Connor’s Raw Iso­lat­ed Vocals for “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

Sinéad O’Connor Makes Her First US Tele­vi­sion Appear­ance: Watch Her Sing “Mandin­ka” on Late Night with David Let­ter­man (1988)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The History of the Electric Guitar Solo: A Seven-Part Series

in History, Music | October 24th, 2023

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No instru­ment is more close­ly iden­ti­fied with rock and roll music than the elec­tric gui­tar, and no form of per­for­mance is more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the elec­tric gui­tar than the solo. You can hard­ly dis­cuss any of those three with­out dis­cussing the oth­ers. Hence the broad sweep of Axe to Grind, the new sev­en-part video series from Youtube music chan­nel Poly­phon­ic on the elec­tric gui­tar solo, a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that can’t be explained with­out telling the sto­ry of a vast swath of pop­u­lar music through prac­ti­cal­ly the entire twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and con­tin­u­ing on into the twen­ty-first.

Like any prop­er full-scope rock his­to­ry, this one begins with the blues, trac­ing the styl­is­tic devel­op­ments that emerged among gui­tarists on the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta with the advent of new tech­nolo­gies like elec­tric­i­ty.

Axe to Grind’s first episode cov­ers such ear­ly elec­tric gui­tar play­ers as Char­lie Chris­t­ian (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), Fay “Smit­ty” Smith, Mud­dy Waters, and Junior Bernard, who was “one of the first to real­ize that if you cranked vac­u­um-tube ampli­fiers up to max­i­mum vol­ume and played as loud as you could through them, the vac­u­um tubes would com­press the sig­nal so they did­n’t explode. The result was a new sort of grit­ty tone that came to be known as over­drive.”

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The sec­ond episode cov­ers the nine­teen-fifties and the rise of rock and roll itself, a broad musi­cal church that came to encom­pass musi­cians from Chuck Berry, Junior Walk­er, and B. B. King to John­ny Wat­son, Link Wray (who record­ed the only instru­men­tal song ever banned from the radio), and Bud­dy Hol­ly. Then comes the nine­teen-six­ties, the pow­er of whose transat­lantic pop-cul­tur­al explo­sion still comes through loud and clear in the elec­tric gui­tar solos on the records by the Rolling Stones, the Bea­t­les, Led Zep­pelin, the Byrds, Cream, Jimi Hen­drix, and many oth­er acts besides. The fourth episode, still to come on Youtube, is already avail­able on the sub­scrip­tion stream­ing plat­form Neb­u­la. How­ev­er you watch Axe to Grind, rest assured that it will leave you not just with a deep­er under­stand­ing of the elec­tric gui­tar solo’s evo­lu­tion, but a much deep­er appre­ci­a­tion of the “John­ny B. Goode” scene from Back to the Future.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn to Play Gui­tar for Free: Intro Cours­es Take You From The Very Basics to Play­ing Songs In No Time

The Evo­lu­tion of the Elec­tric Gui­tar: An Intro­duc­tion to Every Major Vari­ety of the Instru­ment That Made Rock-and-Roll

How Fend­er Gui­tars Are Made, Then (1959) and Nowa­days (2012)

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

Hear the Bril­liant Gui­tar Work of Char­lie Chris­t­ian, Inven­tor of the Elec­tric Gui­tar Solo (1939)

Behold the First Elec­tric Gui­tar: The 1931 “Fry­ing Pan”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch David Byrne Practice His Dance Moves for Stop Making Sense in Newly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

in Dance, Film, Music | October 19th, 2023

A new 4K restora­tion of Stop Mak­ing Sense debuted last month at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, then opened in the­aters around the world. The pro­mo­tion­al push for this cul­tur­al event start­ed ear­ly (as fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), and has involved the release of rarely-seen sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als cho­sen to delight Talk­ing Heads fans. Take the short video above, a com­pi­la­tion of video clips in which David Byrne rehears­es his dance moves in advance of the band’s 1983 Speak­ing in Tongues tour, four of whose shows would be com­bined, with the help of many col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ing direc­tor Jonathan Demme, into a seam­less, still-beloved musi­cal-cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence.

In a film full of mem­o­rable ele­ments, from the Pablo Fer­ro titles to the lamp to the big suit, Byrne’s dis­tinc­tive way of car­ry­ing him­self stands out. “His wide-eyed stare, jerky move­ments and onstage cool remind­ed many com­men­ta­tors of Antho­ny Perkins, star of Hitchcock’s movie Psy­cho,” Col­in Larkin writes of ear­li­er Heads shows in The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Pop­u­lar Music.

This elab­o­rate awk­ward­ness, so thor­ough­ly delib­er­ate-look­ing that it comes around the oth­er side to suavi­ty, may seem like a nat­ur­al expres­sion of his artis­tic per­son­al­i­ty. But as revealed by the video he shot of him­self try­ing out dif­fer­ent chore­o­graph­ic ideas — and even more so by the full 25-minute ver­sion, which fea­tures not just numer­ous VHS glitch­es but also the band’s back­up singers — it took tri­al and error to devel­op.

“The film’s peak moments come through Byrne’s sim­ple phys­i­cal pres­ence,” Roger Ebert wrote of Stop Mak­ing Sense upon its ini­tial release in 1984. “He jogs in place with his side­men; he runs around the stage; he seems so hap­py to be alive and mak­ing music,” and even “serves as a reminder of how sour and weary and strung-out many rock bands have become.” Though, when rock bands may be less strung-out but are cer­tain­ly no less weary, his restored per­for­mance is remind­ing count­less Heads enthu­si­asts why they got into the band in the first place — and no doubt giv­ing hereto­fore unini­ti­at­ed new gen­er­a­tions a few para­noical­ly exu­ber­ant, rigid­ly unin­hib­it­ed, and smooth­ly un-smooth moves to try out on the dance floor them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads: How the Band Went from Scrap­py CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Super­stars

David Byrne Plays Sev­en Char­ac­ters & Inter­views Him­self in Fun­ny Pro­mo for Stop Mak­ing Sense

How Jonathan Demme Put Human­i­ty Into His Films: From The Silence of the Lambs to Stop Mak­ing Sense

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Physics of Playing a Guitar Visualized: Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” Seen from the Inside of a Guitar

in Music, Physics | October 6th, 2023

Give it a chance, you won’t be dis­ap­point­ed. While the first 30 sec­onds of the video above may resem­ble an ama­teur iPhone prank, it soon becomes some­thing unex­pect­ed­ly enchanting—a visu­al­iza­tion of the physics of music in real-time. The Youtu­ber places his phone inside an acoustic gui­tar, then plays Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” against a back­drop of clouds and blue sky. Due to what Twist­ed Sifter iden­ti­fies as the phone camera’s rolling shut­ter effect, the actu­al waves of the vibrat­ing gui­tar strings are as clear­ly vis­i­ble as if they were on an oscil­lo­scope.

The com­par­i­son is an apt one, since we might use exact­ly such a device to mea­sure and visu­al­ize the acoustic prop­er­ties of stringed instru­ments. “A gui­tar string”—writes physi­cist and musi­cian Sam Hokin in his short explanation—is a com­mon exam­ple of a string fixed at both ends which is elas­tic and can vibrate.

The vibra­tions of such a string are called stand­ing waves, and they sat­is­fy the rela­tion­ship between wave­length and fre­quen­cy that comes from the def­i­n­i­tion of waves.”

Those with a physics back­ground might appre­ci­ate The Physics Class­room’s tech­ni­cal descrip­tion of gui­tar string vibra­tion, with sev­er­al tech­ni­cal dia­grams. For oth­ers, the video above by Youtube physics teacher Doc Shus­ter may be a bet­ter for­mat. Shus­ter explains such enti­ties as nodes and antin­odes (you’ll have to tell me if you get any of his jokes). And at about 2:25, he digress­es from his mus­ings on these phe­nom­e­na to talk about gui­tar strings specif­i­cal­ly, which “make one note for a giv­en tight­ness of the string, a giv­en weight of the string, and a giv­en length of the string.”

This is, of course, why chang­ing the length of the string by press­ing down on it changes the note the string pro­duces, and it applies to all stringed instru­ments and the piano. Oth­er fac­tors, says Shus­ter, like the body of the gui­tar, use of pick­ups, etc., have a much small­er effect on the fre­quen­cy of a gui­tar string than tight­ness, weight, and length. We see how the com­plex­i­ty of dif­fer­ent stand­ing wave forms relates to har­mon­ics (or over­tones). And when we return to the Metal­li­ca video at the top, we’ll have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how the strings vibrate dif­fer­ent­ly as they pro­duce dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies at dif­fer­ent har­mon­ics.

Shuster’s video quick­ly laps­es into cal­cu­lus, and you may or may not be lost by his expla­na­tions. The Physics Class­room has some excel­lent, free tuto­ri­als on var­i­ous types of waves, pitch fre­quen­cy, vibra­tion, and res­o­nance. Per­haps all we need to keep in mind to under­stand the very basics of the sci­ence is this, from their intro­duc­tion: “As a gui­tar string vibrates, it sets sur­round­ing air mol­e­cules into vibra­tional motion. The fre­quen­cy at which these air mol­e­cules vibrate is equal to the fre­quen­cy of vibra­tion of the gui­tar string.” The action of the string pro­duces an equal and oppo­site reac­tion in the air, which then cre­ates “a pres­sure wave which trav­els out­ward from its source.” The pres­sure waves strike our eardrums, our brains inter­pret sound, and there you have it.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metal­li­ca Plays Antarc­ti­ca, Set­ting a World Record as the First Band to Play All 7 Con­ti­nents: Watch the Full Con­cert Online

Jazz Drum­mer Lar­nell Lewis Hears Metallica’s “Enter Sand­man” for the Very First Time, Then Plays It Near-Per­fect­ly

Watch Metal­li­ca Play “Enter Sand­man” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Mil­lion in Moscow, Dur­ing the Final Days of the Sovi­et Union (1991)

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A BBC Science Show Introduces the Moog Synthesizer in 1969

in History, Music, Television | October 4th, 2023

In the fall of 1969, there were still a great many peo­ple who’d nev­er heard a syn­the­siz­er. And even among those who had, few would have known how its unfa­mil­iar sounds were actu­al­ly made. Hence the impor­tance of the seg­ment from the BBC pro­gram Tomor­row’s World above, which intro­duced the Moog syn­the­siz­er (orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by Robert Moog) to view­ers across Britain. Hav­ing come on the mar­ket four years ear­li­er, it would go on to change the sound of music — a project, in fact, on which it had already made seri­ous inroads, with such Moog show­cas­es as the Doors’ “Strange Days” and Wendy Car­los’ Switched-on Bach hav­ing already become cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na unto them­selves.

Man­fred Mann would also do his part to make an impact with the Moog. Call­ing him “the Moog pio­neer of rock music,” Fideli­ty mag­a­zine’s Hans-Jür­gen Schaal writes that “Mann lent his instru­ment out to be used to pro­duce the first Moog solo on a record by Emer­son Lake & Palmer. He even did the key­board work him­self on the first Moog solo by Uri­ah Heep.”

It is Michael Vick­ers, a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist vet­er­an of Man­n’s epony­mous band, who demon­strates the Moog for Tomor­row’s World by play­ing a vari­ety of melodies through it on a key­board — though not before plug­ging in a series of patch cords to cre­ate just the right elec­tron­ic sound.

Whether or not the BBC view­ers of 1969 had ever heard any­thing like the Moog before, they almost cer­tain­ly had­n’t seen any­thing like it before. Despite look­ing less like a musi­cal instru­ment than like a piece of mil­i­tary hard­ware, it actu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ed, like most tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, a step for­ward in ease of use. As pre­sen­ter Derek Coop­er puts it, the Moog “pro­duces sounds in a mat­ter of min­utes which would nor­mal­ly take radio­phon­ic experts with their com­pli­cat­ed equip­ment,” like the BBC’s own Daphne Oram or Delia Der­byshire, “days of work and mul­ti­ple re-record­ings to achieve.” Not that the aver­age hob­by­ist could afford the Moog seen in this broad­cast back then — nor, for that mat­ter, can the aver­age hob­by­ist afford the $35,000 a faith­ful re-cre­ation of it costs now.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Moog Demon­strates His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Moog Mod­el D Syn­the­siz­er

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Hear Glenn Gould Cel­e­brate the Moog Syn­the­siz­er & Wendy Car­los’ Pio­neer­ing Album Switched-On Bach (1968)

Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Demon­strates the Moog Syn­the­siz­er on the BBC (1970)

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Watch Com­pos­er Wendy Car­los Demo an Orig­i­nal Moog Syn­the­siz­er (1989)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stream Hundreds of Hours of Studio Ghibli Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax: My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away & More

in Animation, Film, Music | September 26th, 2023

The Boy and the Heron, the lat­est fea­ture from mas­ter ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, opened in Japan this past sum­mer. In that it marks his lat­est emer­gence from his sup­posed “retire­ment,” we could label it not just as late Miyaza­ki, but per­haps even “post-late” Miyaza­ki. But the film nev­er­the­less shares sig­nif­i­cant qual­i­ties with his ear­li­er work, not least a score com­posed by Joe Hisaishi. Since Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind — which opened in 1984, even before the foun­da­tion of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li — Hisaishi’s music has done near­ly as much to estab­lish the sen­si­bil­i­ty of Miyaza­k­i’s films as their lav­ish, imag­i­na­tive ani­ma­tion, and you can stream hun­dreds of hours of it with this Youtube playlist.

Each of the playlist’s 121 two-hour videos offers musi­cal selec­tions from a mix of Ghi­b­li movies, includ­ing Miyaza­ki favorites like My Neigh­bor Totoro, Por­co Rosso, and Spir­it­ed Away, and also the works of oth­er direc­tors: Yoshi­fu­mi Kondō’s Whis­per of the Heart, Hiro­masa Yonebayashi’s Arri­et­ty,  Gorō Miyaza­k­i’s From Up on Pop­py Hill.

If you’ve seen those pic­tures, these qui­et, often min­i­mal ren­di­tions of their music will sure­ly bring their ani­mat­ed fan­tasies right back to mind. Even if you haven’t, they can still ful­fill the func­tion promised by the videos’ titles of set­ting a mood con­ducive to study, work, or sim­ple relax­ation.

So beloved are Hisaishi’s scores, for Miyaza­ki and oth­ers (most notably come­di­an-auteur Takeshi Kitano), that it’s pos­si­ble to know the music long before you’ve seen the movies. And even in per­for­mances con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent from the ver­sions heard on the actu­al sound­tracks, they always sound imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able as Hisaishi’s work. Shaped by an eclec­tic set of influ­ences (born Mamoru Fuji­sawa, he took on his pro­fes­sion­al name as an homage to Quin­cy Jones), he devel­oped a com­po­si­tion­al style nei­ther strict­ly East­ern nor West­ern. The same can be said about Ghi­b­li movies them­selves, which often pos­sess both fairy-tale Euro­pean set­tings and Japan­ese philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings. Wher­ev­er you place your­self on the cul­tur­al map, you’d do well to make their music the sound­track of your own life.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

De-Stress with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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“Doctor, My Eyes” Performed by Jackson Browne & Musicians Around the World

in Music | September 14th, 2023

The music col­lec­tive Play­ing for Change is back. This time, they have Jack­son Browne per­form­ing his 1970s hit, “Doc­tor, My Eyes,” sup­port­ed by musi­cians from Brazil, Jamaica, India, Puer­to Rico, France and beyond. Browne is also joined by Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel, who played on the orig­i­nal 1972 song, and they still sound amaz­ing. Enjoy.…

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

“When The Lev­ee Breaks” Per­formed by John Paul Jones & Musi­cians Around the World

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

 

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The 50 Greatest Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

in Film, Music | September 14th, 2023

It’s not an espe­cial­ly straight­for­ward mat­ter to pin down when music videos first emerged. In a sense, the Bea­t­les were already mak­ing them back in the late six­ties, but then, MTV, where the music video as we know it rapid­ly took shape, did­n’t start broad­cast­ing until 1981. The very first video aired on the chan­nel, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Bug­gles, had actu­al­ly been made almost two years ear­li­er, in 1979. But that did­n’t stop it from doing a good deal to define the form that would, itself, define the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the eight­ies. Nor did it stop it from appear­ing, 40-odd years lat­er, on The AV Club’s list of the 50 great­est music videos of all time. They’re view­able as a Youtube playlist here, or you can stream them all above.

Not that it ranks espe­cial­ly high. In fact, it comes in at num­ber 50, lead­ing into a selec­tion of videos from artists pop­u­lar in a range of sub­se­quent peri­ods: Talk­ing Heads, George Michael, Nir­vana, LL Cool J, Brit­ney Spears, Tay­lor Swift. As the artis­tic ambi­tions of the music video grew, it reflect­ed not just a song’s cul­tur­al moment, but put sev­er­al such moments in play at once.

In Son­ic Youth’s “Teen Age Riot,” “a clip of Elvis Pres­ley is fol­lowed by space-jazz pio­neer Sun Ra; a snatch of under­ground com­ic book auteur Har­vey Pekar on Late Night with David Let­ter­man flits by.” For the “high water mark for kitschy 1990s irony” that is Weez­er’s “Bud­dy Hol­ly,” “Spike Jonze sets the video in the 1950s… but it’s the ’50s as seen on Hap­py Days, a sit­com that paint­ed a rosy pic­ture of the Eisen­how­er years.”

Jonze also draws inspi­ra­tion from sev­en­ties tele­vi­sion for the Beast­ie Boys’ “Sab­o­tage,” a trib­ute to the cop shows of that era that makes up for an appar­ent lack of bud­get with sheer humor and ener­gy (a reminder of the direc­tor’s ori­gin in skate­board­ing videos). I remem­ber my mil­len­ni­al peers get­ting excit­ed about that video in the 90s, as, in the 200s, they’d get excit­ed about Michel Gondry’s all-LEGO ani­ma­tion of the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl.” This was rough­ly when Brit­ney Spears was break­ing through to super­star­dom, thanks not least to videos like “Baby One More Time,” which com­bines the slick­ness of teen pop with the chintz of teen life. “The idea for Britney’s icon­ic school­girl uni­form and pig­tails came from the singer her­self: direc­tor Nigel Dick fol­lowed her lead, then had wardrobe buy every stitch of cloth­ing in the video from Kmart.”

This was also before Youtube, whose ascent made the music video more viable than it had been in years. The AV Club’s list does include a few videos from the past decade and a half— Bey­on­cé’s “Sin­gle Ladies,” Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” — but on the whole, it under­scores that there’s nev­er been anoth­er time like the eight­ies. That decade that went from “Ash­es to Ash­es” to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Relax,” “Mon­ey for Noth­ing,” “Walk This Way,” “Take on Me,” and “Rhythm Nation” — to say noth­ing of insti­tu­tions like Duran Duran, Madon­na, and Michael Jack­son, all of whom make the list more than once, but none of whom take its top spot. That goes to Peter Gabriel, whose stop-motion fan­ta­sia “Sledge­ham­mer” is MTV’s all-time most-played music video. “If any­one wants to try and copy this video, good luck to them,” Gabriel once said. He meant its painstak­ing pro­duc­tion, but he could just as eas­i­ly have been talk­ing about the place it attained in pop cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Hans Zim­mer Was in the First-Ever Video Aired on MTV, The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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