I never had cable, but I remember seeing Digging in the Dirt by Peter Gabriel and being very impressed with that.
Tool, Sober is a beatiful piece of claymation. As is the one with the baby thing in the box. (Is it Prison Sex)?
Most Weird Al videos manage to pack in even more laughs than the songs alone.
You may laugh, but…Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” video is, in my opinion, a work of art. Seriously, you have to see it.
Yep, that’s Prison Sex. The first time I saw it (on MTV Latino of all stations) my jaw dropped when I realized they were playing the song unedited. I didn’t expect to hear “Blood, shit, and cum on my hands…”
Is it the one where the band is in house-drawn cart and they used filmed 2-D cut-outs? If so, it’s called “Trouble”.
Yes, NDP, and thanks. I think I’m always so distracted by how cool everything looks I never check the name of the song. And since MTV mostly shows, well, shows when I’m around I don’t have a lot of opportunity to look. It reminds me of the Jimmy Eat World video; is it “Sweetness”?
Chemical Brothers “How Does It Feel Like” -Visual poetry. Normal shots of the lead actress are cut with kaleidoscopic shots of other actresses made to resemble her, enlarged cardboard photos of her, etc. * I am likely wrong on the song title.
NIN “Ummmm…Y’know the song 'I wanna F*ck you like an animal! I wanna feel you from the inside!” Surreal. Images are variously-genteely polite, offensive, disturbing, morbid, sexy and more. I saw an interview it Resnor in which he mentions that rather than pixelation or blurring, they censored the video by adding the “scene missing” shots. Until that moment, I thought that they were part of the original video concept. The missing scenes add greatly to the feeling of confusion and disorder-as though the video would make sense if you could only put all the pieces together.
Bjork "All Is Full Of Love"
I don’t know if this was ever shown on MTV. I saw it on Sci-Fi’s Exposure. It’s a cgi about a factory assembly line that makes Bjork droids. One droid gains consciousness while on the line. She assembles another droid and the two explore eachother. The sight of cyberBjork getting Sapphic with an identical cyberBjork is quite memorable by itself. BUT, the amazing thing is the sense of purity and innocence the images convey. Yes, their open-mouthed kissing while one droid’s hand moves to the others bikini zone. But they do it without fear, shame, or lust. Imagine Adam and Eve before the fall. This video is both a great work of art and incredibly sexy.
** I suspect this one is Tool “Sober”** the stop motion video with the little brown guy in the abandoned house. He keeps searching for a box under the floor, not realizing it’s just out of reach. His chair rises into the air then slams to the floor, splitting his head open and killing him.
** I don’t know the band name, but I think the song was “Wild Boys”**
The images of greasy rain, and a firebreathing disembodied head have stayed with me through the years.
Yes. And it’s the same director: Tim Hope.
Really? You’re talking to me, right, NDP?
Is this Duran Duran or am I coming down with a fever? I feel a little warm . . .
I personally have always loved You Might Think by the Cars - a true classic - so darn cool.
Susan
First video I thought of when reading the thread title was Just from Radiohead. Probably my all time favorite.
Yes. (Should’ve included your quote but I didn’t think another post would come in ahead of me.)
The Three Pigs by Green Jello!
Also, does anybody remember the video for Lucas With The Lid Off? Seems like they did the whole thing with one shot. Meaning there were no cuts to different camera angles or anything, so they had to get a complete, perfect take.
It’s Let forever be. I agree, great video 
I’m also one of the many people who immediately thought of Just by Radiohead.
Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden possibly the best video I have ever seen. It, of course, was banned from MTV - we found it on Kazaa. Check it out.
or you can download it here
Third one down
Sigur Rós, Vidrar vel til loftarasa (good weather for an airstrike). Best video ever.
The song is beautiful, and the images just go with it perfectly. A man grabs a ragdoll from a boy and throws it in a rain soaked alley, dragging the boy away while he looks back. We then see the boy playing soccer, as the children are brutalizing each other the parents cheer them on…
I only saw it on MTV once, but it was very cool.
1- Do you mean Green Jelly? (I’ve heard of Jelly, but not Jello, but I could be wrong.)
2- Tom Petty’s You Don’t Know How it Feels was also done in one take, with Tom in the foreground and all kinds of shit happening behind him.
Weird Al does great videos, gonzoron, good pick. He directed Ben Folds’ “Rockin The Suburbs”, which I really enjoyed. My favorite part was when Al cameos as the “producer with computers” that fixes all Ben’s shitty tracks by playing with some sliders in the control room labeled “Sucks” and “Rocks”. And the music goes from sounding tinny and hollow to normal like the song.
Oh, and the Everybody Hurts video–really cool. They rented out a highway in San Antonio IIRC for a couple days to film that. It was directed by Ridley Scott’s brother Jake.
I’ll second the Foo Fighters as having great videos. I loved the “Footos–the fresh fighter!” parody in “Big Me” and I really dug “Learn To Fly”, especially how the band played everyone on the plane. Pop-Up Video said they got the idea when a couple of baggage handlers got busted for dealing drugs.
One last thought–no one’s mentioned Blur’s “Coffee and TV”? Great animation.
New Order’s “The Perfect Kiss” video for being so quintiessentially New Order. They look bored out of their minds while they churn out the best song ever written by anyone anywhere. Same goes for Felt’s “Primitive Painters” video.