What’s the very weirdest music video you’ve seen? (Link required.)
I nominate “Vitas - Seventh Element”
Undoubtedly Frontier Psychiatrist, which takes its lyrics and instrumentation literally which manages to make it all the weirder.
In the early days of MTV (1981 to about 1983), videos like Gary Wright’s I Really Wanna Know You would transport me to another world — a weird world — and not just because I was an impressionable eleven-year-old. Others like this included the Tubes, Split Enz, and David Bowie.
David Hasselhoff’s Hooked on a Feeling David Hasselhoff - Hooked on a Feeling - YouTube
My all-time weird-favorite video is Blondie’s original video for Rapture.
Blondie - Rapture
I’m sorry that the audio is muddy. Any versions I could find with better audio cut off the weirdness at the end.
I just noticed the following comment on the youtube page: “The DJ at 1:54 is Jean-Michel Basquiat, the painter whose art work (called untitled) recently sold for 110.5 million. The most amount paid for any American art work.”
They later reissued the video cutting out most of the randomness and replacing it with scenes of old churches.
No contest here: “Leave It” by Yes, version 11.
At the time, I worked with a woman who I overheard several times saying, “There’s this video with these men, and they’re all flipping around…” Actually, IIRC 17 versions were made, and several others (which were devoid of special effects) did air on MTV but this appears to be the only one on You Tube.
ETA: Shouldn’t this thread be in Cafe Society?
Lawyers in Love
Jethro Tull – Steel Monkeyalthough to be frank a lot of the stuff from Crest of a Knave was a little strange in terms of the official videos.
Alice by Pogo
The reason why 17 versions of the video were made was it was supposed to be part of a contest by MTV where viewers would call in and spot the differences between the videos in return for prizes and cash. However, MTV cancelled the contest at the last minute and only one version of the video was aired.
“Electronic Supersonic”-Zlad. It has to be a put-on but it’s still weird.
I was unaware Johnny Weir had a musical career.
Some are hard to call. Lou Reed’s one for Modern Dance
is strange but it fits the artist and song pretty well. The first time I saw it after it was issued/released my first thought was that it was a sort of answer to “viaduct”.
Nirvana, “Heart-Shaped Box”
Pretty much anything by the Residents.
An example for the Academy’s consideration: Third Reich.
Weird Al Yankovic’s “Dare to be Stupid” is very self-consciously weird and hard to beat for sheer amount of absurdist random images.
One of my all-time favorites! It’s a “style parody” of Devo songs.
When this came out, I was writing for a music zine and another zine writer described it this way: “Did this band go out of the way to offend the highest number of people? Guess what? You can only say ‘fuck’ so many times before the shock value wears off.”
Yeah, I know I rarely use profanity in posts, but it was necessary in this case. And I happened to agree.
I didn’t know that. TYVM.
There was a “Making of ‘Leave It’” special that I vaguely remembered. The sound and video quality is very poor.