Tell me some music videos – any genre - that tell a story with an “O. Henry” sort of twist at the end.
For example, in Martina McBride’s “Concrete Angel,” the song tells a melancholy story of a girl who suffers. The music video interprets this song by showing us a sad little girl who is obviously a victim of physical abuse at home…
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… and is befriended by a little boy who makes her smile. That evening, though, her abuse takes a terrible turn and she’s killed. The boy is at her funeral, obviously sad… but then he turns away from the graveside and walks right through another mourner, revealing himself to be some sort of angelic or ghostly figure. He greets the girl happily and they run off to another group of children, obviously a sort of welcome-to-Heaven sort of thing. First time I saw the video, I did NOT see that twist coming at all.
What else is out there that will amaze me? (Or would have amazed me if you hadn’t already described it here, I guess)
Van Halen’s cover of “(Oh) Pretty Woman”: The storyline concerns a typical 80s video babe being held captive. A rescue is mounted by the various band members in stereotypical manly hero roles (Eddie - cowboy, Michael - samurai, Alex -Tarzan-like jungle warrior, I forget what Diamond Dave was). After her rescue, the titular pretty woman is revealed to be a guy in drag.
The video that someone put together for Procul Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale tells a story, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what story. Every time I think I have it figured out I get distracted by the fact that the woman in it is not Beverly D’Angelo and I lose my train of thought.
The first thing I thought of was Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.” The video is shot entirely from the point-of-view of a character on a wild night. We see them doing drugs, getting drunk, driving drunk, getting into fights, going to a strip club, and making out with a woman. The end of the video is the morning after. The character looks into a mirror, and we see that it’s a woman.
…the band Prodigy had a great music video with a twist with their politely titled song Smack my Bitch Up. The story follows the adventures of one person’s night on the town from a first person perspective: they get dressed, get drunk, get sick, gets into fights, commits vandalism, shoots up drugs, and act pretty much like a jerk. When the person gets home, it is revealed that…
…what the audience thinks is a guy acting like a jerk on the town is acutally a girl.
You can watch the video here: (Warning, Not Safe For All Workplaces, youtube link)
One of the great music videos never seen outside of New Zealand is Sophie by the now defunct New Zealand band Goodshirt. They had a number of catchy songs, but Sophie was their biggest hit: winning Single of the year and best music video at the local Tui Awards. The concept of the video is quite simple, but the execution is great. The video is well worth a watch as outside of New Zealand the video hardly got any airplay, and it only lasts 3 minutes and 45 seconds…
The video doesn’t quite have a twist in the sense indicated by the OP, but the video is a compelling watch with a funny double take at the end…
Was that a mid-80s one with her reading Tarot (“as I’m wondering through my playing cards”? I caught an ad for the show that was supposed to be on & never did see the whole thing.
The video for “Crazy Train” by Ozzie Osbourne tells the story of a flying polka dotted guitar flying along some train tracks, while Ozzy appears wearing a duster, apparently making weird faces because someone styled his hair like my moms.
This might not be precisely what the OP was looking for, but I consider a-ha’s video for “The Sun Always Shines On TV” to feature a definite twist. Everyone remembers “Take On Me” and how the waitress and Cartoon Boy overcome various obstacles to be together, presumably forever and ever. But in “The Sun Always Shines On TV,” Cartoon Boy is sucked back into Cartoon World.
Which is just one small iota of the Cartooniverse.
Cartooniverse
p.s. Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” is about a rich upper class girl who is interested in a downtown guy- him. He’s a grease monkey in the Sunoco station at Bowery and Bond in the lower east side of NYC, she’s a high-class girl from uptown.
Which is exactly who she is in real life, and who he is in real life. They shot the video about a year after they met. He wrote it for her.
Hoobastank’s video for The Reason shows the band planning and executing a complicated jewel heist of a local pawn shop. At the end, back at their lair, the police arrive.
The next video, Why Are you Running Away, is a prequel, showing the lead singer auditioning for the band and helping plan the heist. Only now, you realize that he was planted as an inside man by the police in the first place.
Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny (867-5309)”. The singer tells his therapist all about his obsession with Jenny and even gives him her number. Later, he goes to look throough Jenny’s window and sees her with the shrink. They have the police arrest him as a peeping tom.
