My kids love YouTube, and I encountered two videos recently that were both good songs with highly imaginative, entertaining animation: Daft Punk’s “One More Time” and Air’s “Sexy Boy.”
Of course another classic is a-ha’s “Take On Me”. Another interesting one, definitely weird and NSFW, is Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android.”
What are your favorite animated music videos? Especially ones with both a good song and good animated story.
On your mark, a music video created by Hayao Miyazaki for Chage and Aska, a Japanese pop duo. It’s not a conventional music video but more like an animated short which tells a story without dialogue but it’s excellent.
South African band Dear Reader:Great White Bear - especially the break at 2:45 and the ending Poor Leno - Röyksopp
and of course, any Gorillaz vid, but the first will do (although I think Feel Good Inc. is my favourite)
On that same note, Interstella 5555, the full length movie Leiji Matsumoto made for Daft Punk’s album Discovery. The first couple tracks were released as standard music videos, but the second half or so was only released in the full version. Awesome album, awesome movie, awesome (if very, very long) music video.
Just remembered two more (with the same, unusual sort of “animation” - not sure if this was included in what the OP wanted, but it does qualify as animation):
Oren Lavie : Her Morning Elegance (currently my favourite vid of all time!)
Another South African one: Goldfish - This is How It Goes. It predates the Oren Lavie but isn’t as good because it lacks a story, IMHO.
The Ghost of Stephen Foster by Squirrel Nut Zippers. It’s basically an homage to old black & white cartoons in general and the works of Fleischer in general.