Martha, My Dear: ILM's All-Time Video-Poll Results Thread

I <3 that Grimes video... pretty sure it's the most "recent" vid I voted for

What are these results? Did music videos peak in 1981?

if you mean '91 (which seems like the rough median here) – then yeah, probably

I haven't dated everything yet, but I have a feeling Grimes is the newest video in the Top 40. As I posted in the intro, this did surprise me.

I've barely seen any music videos made after 1996 or so.

Lots of '90s stuff, so I'd even push that forward.

music videos as a format peaked with almost every rap video from '95-'99

I rarely watch new videos, even for artists I love. I just listen to the track.

whoever made the first video of bundled-up guys in NYC rapping in an empty lot deserves to win

That Grimes video must've had a budget of like $18. Was one of my top votes though.

How is that Joy Division clip a video tho? I feel like those votes were just people affirming that yes, they were a great live band.

got sick and failed to vote but enjoying the roll out! thanks clemenza!

Whoa, didn't even realize 'The Box' had an accompanying video. Love that track so hard.

Hasn't that Joy Division clip kind of been co-opted by the band as _the video_ for the song?

How is that Joy Division clip a video tho? I feel like those votes were just people affirming that yes, they were a great live band.

― enochroot, Thursday, March 17, 2022 11:13 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i feel like the image i associate with joy division, even more than their actual videos (cf. the "atmosphere" clip), is that performance

the band's youtube channel also insists it is the "official music video" which is hilarious

I'm gonna guess I'm the only one who voted for non-SLTS Nirvana.

That's the only straight-performance video that placed--a few others got stray votes. I brought up this point when first proposing the poll, and there was a definite tilt towards a separate poll for such things.

I can understand bending a bit here because a) as Brad says, it's identified as "the official video," and b) the circumstances of Joy Division's brief existence, and the scarcity of actual videos. There's "Atmosphere," there's something closer to a real video for "Love Will Tear Us Apart," there's a homemade one I nominated for "Disorder," and I don't know what else there is.

Plus Ian Curtis dancing.

(xpost) Close, but no.

I mean "Enjoy The Silence" is great but "Heart Shaped Box" is Anton Corbijn's best.

I came close to voting for Heart-Shaped Box (which did get a vote)--one of the videos I find unforgettably unsettling (and it passes the I-love-the-song test). Don't want to turn this into another Christgau-is-awful detour, but I remember him remarking that it was terrible in Pazz & Jop that year; I can see where someone might find some of the more grotesque imagery campy, but I loved it then and still do--often just for the band, like the part where Cobain's in the foreground and the other two are behind him, with Novoselic's arm around Grohl. That's a great image.

i picked "teen spirit" over "heart-shaped box" because i thought a lot about iconicity when picking my ballot, and there are few more immediately recognizable videos than that one. i think i regret that, though, since that "heart-shaped box" video is the exact right kind of disturbing (i do not relate to that morrisp post above at all haha)

I considered voting for "In Bloom" just becasue he makes such great faces in it. The Nevermind-era videos are classic just because he's so much smarter and funnier than their directors.

What are these results? Did music videos peak in 1981?

I think Eric H. was being facetious here, bc one might have feared the results would come out that way

xxp yeah i picked teen spirit over heart-shaped box for similar reasons re iconicity, but rewatching it now i regret it as well. heart-shaped box was one of the first songs i remember loving as a kid when it was getting played relentlessly on 99x in atlanta. i probably haven't seen the video since i was a kid and watching it now i realize its been firmly lodged in my subconscious the way things do when absorbed by the uncritical mind of a child that fully accepts whatever it sees and has already decided is cool. speaking of which, my ballot in general is heavily weighted towards videos that i absorbed in such a way

Similarly, I rewatched R.E.M.'s "Stand" video today (after voting for it last week), and I guess it's not necessarily as objectively great as I remember... its appeal was more rooted in being a preteen R.E.M. fan. It's still pretty good, though (and crazy how much it just looks like an episode of that show Pete & Pete, which the director would later work on).

(xxpost) You might be right (but wouldn't "didn't" be the word to suggest facetiousness?).

I still love the much-despised "Shiny Happy People" (even by the band itself) song and video.

Yeah! Same director

missed a few placements. titillation in music videos often feels so cheap, but idk if any piece of visual media has smoldered quite like "wicked game" before or since.

"Wicked Game" = not even the sexiest beach-set music video.

It isn't, but it has two of the sexiest people on the beach.

Horny-ass Wikipedia entry:

In the middle of the video, Christensen is seen only in her black lace bra and panty; other times, she wears only a men's white brief.

I feel sullied by the mental image of a Wikipedia editor hornily hyperlinking the word "panty"

is your world on fire

Go in and add a time-stamped link to the word "middle."

What a Wiki game to play

"Wicked Game" = not even the sexiest beach-set music video.

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Thursday, March 17, 2022 12:40 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah but herb ritts def directed whichever you think is the sexiest one

Oh, did he direct "I'm Still Standing"?

I've finally figured out the complicated world of hyperlinks. So I'll have that in place for the top 25--bold text, hyperlinks, everything.

Now go ahead and request one more thing. I dare you--I double-dare you.

nervous lol

total request dead

Sorry everyone, videos set on the beach have to have a shot of the singer/band performing while buried up to their necks in sand. This is known as the Huey Lewis rule.

I dare you--I double-dare you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IprBx1OlBk

I was thinking of a certain movie...

Sexiest beach video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaQLsAW188

xps 'losing my religion' had to be my REM pick, despite my not particularly caring about it as a kid, because it captures an aspect of my memory of the 90s in a way that few other 90s artifacts do. rustic, sepia earth tones, pseudo-historicity, a mystique of sophistication, it reminds me of the pier 1 imports my mom decorated the house with, intended to offer the feel of a place that had been lived in without the dust and dirt of a real old object, decor that in retrospect is imbued with melancholic longing or an ennui of emptiness, which i also associate with the song

Nice. Few huge surprises so far, in that I can readily recall the overall vibe of all but one of these videos from the titles. (I'd never knowingly seen the Orbital one, but I think I get the appeal.) Pretty sure I contributed points to four: Devo, Sparks, Massive Attack and Grimes. So w00t!

I was asleep through this day of results but thanks for accommodating our formatting requests!

Double lol to President Keyes' last two posts

My lol was for Keyes’ “I’m Still Standing” ref, just to be clear

Was any Duran Duran nominated? They were routinely said to have embraced the potential of the music video more enthusiastically than many at the time. And they spent notoriously large sums on them, etc. But I'm guessing the world and ILM have overwhelmingly moved on from that sort of shtick.