I decided to go through and list station to station's favorite and most memorable 90 videos from the nineties. All are memorable, some were acclaimed, others forgotten, and some songs I really haven't bothered to listen to in years. But I went back and watched these ninety, I'm sure they belong in some shape or form...I'm sure I forgot some as well. That happens with lists, but I'm sticking to these top videos of the nineties. Enjoy!
#90 Pearl Jam-Do The Evolution
1998
When news was out that Pearl Jam was actually releasing a video with a song for the first time in several years, it was almost like the announcement of a Led Zeppelin reunion. Everyone I knew who was a PJ fan was a buzz with the band having a video released for the menacing "Do The Evolution" from their album "Yield". The animated video did nothing to squash expectations with its vision of everything that has, is, or will ever be evil in the world. The evil? A smiling woman who dances her way through the evolution of destruction on earth (there's even a little girl running through a field and destroying an ant hill). Anything you've ever feared of new world order, well it's right here in a four minute clip. Not sure they could have achieved that with "Hail, Hail."
#89 Lucas-Lucas With The Lid Off
1994
Who is Lucas? Why is operating with his lid off? These are questions that surrounded bar discussions in 1994 as Lucas' video "Lucas With The Lid Off" circulated on MTV airwaves. It's not like anyone had ever heard of him. He could be, perhaps, the most out of nowhere sensation who sort of had a big hit based on an intriguing one shot video shot in black and white that followed Lucas around from set to set. The money shot: with his back to the camera where he turns around and says "Whatever bubbles bubbles up." You almost felt like you could get a hold of this guy for a motivation speech, because he was operating with the lid off. An always intriguing watch. Lucas went on to become a pretty successful producer and songwriter it appears.
#88 Warrant-Cherry Pie 1990
Just a couple months earlier and this would've maybe been in the eighties countdown. But alas, Warrant was around in 1990, and, the self titled video from their second album conjures up more sexual innuendos than I even remember from before. It's all tongue and cheek right? The pie falling in model Bobbi Brown's lap, the five band members shooting the water hose, the pie flying at a smirking Jani Lane's face at the end of the video. It's a song you can't help but think of the video anytime you hear it. Warrant succeeded in making the most sexual, kitschy video of the decade and probably of all time. This, of course, is more memorable than favorite. Good work guys.
#87 Mercury Rev-Opus 40 1999
I'd heard of Mercury Rev as a buzz band off and on through the nineties but it took to the end of the decade for me to go "Hey, who's the guy in the astronaut suit with the strange long fingers and the mournful voice?" That would be Jonathan Donahue watering and nurturing the model in the sequence dress who he serenades in this beautifully, bizarre video. Besides the freakishly fingers Donahue sports, his band mates lighting the sparklers at the end followed by the supermodel holding her own that light up Donahue's eyes stands as the most magnificent images in the video. Fortunately, a couple years later, I picked up "Deserter's Songs" and it's also full of beautifully strung songs (including guest appearances from Garth Hudson and Levon Helm from the Band) along with "Opus 40".
#86 PJ Harvey-Send His Love To Me 1995
For videos, PJ Harvey's "Down By The Water" and "50 Ft. Queenie" may make a lot of lists but the video that caught my attention was for "Send His Love To Me". The acoustic guitar strumming always gave a dust bowl, southwest feeling to it and having Harvey walk out of her house and across the desert with the wind howling fits the song perfectly. Cutaway images of items strewn in the trees and cactus adds to the intrigue. And why she is carrying a man's pair of shoes the whole video until the end when she throws them down and dances around them is open for interpretation. Did she kill her man? Or does she miss him that much she's doing a rain dance to get him back? With Harvey, I'm going with the former.
#85 R.E.M.-Electrolite 1997
Taken from the criminally underrated "New Adventures in Hi-Fi", the video for "Electrolite" got little play at the time of release. But the few times I did see it paints memories of a video where I wanted someone to turn the camera right side up in the first verse, people chained to various items and each other in the second verse, and the band riding around in dune buggies in the third verse. It's R.E.M., the whole video is good fun (Mike Mills with a key-tar!). It might hold a place in my heart where Bill Berry left the band soon after as well.
When the ego landed in the States in 1998, we were treated to the U.K.'s biggest sensation...Mr. Robbie Williams (formerly of British sensation group, Take That). For most, like myself, "Millennium" was our first vision of Williams. In the video, he pays tribute to James Bond movies (a good enough reason to include this in the list) as the egocentric who has the ladies and the luck of the roulette wheel...with the most gigantic grin you could ever expect. True Williams may have never had a lengthy stay on the charts in the States, but his popularity elsewhere has been enormous. At least we have those gold curtains behind the playboy to remember his quick trip here. Don't deny that groove.
#83 Metallica-The Memory Remains 1997
There are three things that qualify this for the list. One: Watching Metallica rotate around on a giant swing defying gravity is pretty cool. Two: Listening to this song thirteen years later, it really rocks better than anything the band did in the mid-nineties with a kick-ass chorus, Three: If you're Metallica and including Marianne Faithfull in your songs and videos, you should get some sort of nod. Watching her crank the street organ is a treat and the video still looks like a keeper to me. I'll take this over watching "Enter Sandman".
I remember this Spike Jonze co-produced video more for the endless skateboarding clips and Sonic Youth just hanging out and playing in someone's living room. And that girl who just gets up and does the way too-cool-to-dance-dance in front of the band in the first chorus. I used to think it would be cool to hang out in a house where Sonic Youth were ripping it up in the living room. After watching again, it sill would be cool. Now some history I didn't know. The song and video is dedicated to a roadie for Black Flag, John Cole, a victim of an unsolved murder in 1991. The actor who plays Cole in this video...yes, that is Jason Lee's dead body they find. 100% just got more intriguing.
#81-A Tribe Called Quest-Scenario 1992
Throw all notions out about who you think the best superband is of all time. Designate that notion to just one track as A Tribe Called Quest is joined by an all star cast of New York's finest hip-hop artists from the late eighties and early nineties. Watching the video, a picture is painted of a posse including Spike Lee, Busta Rhymes, Redman, Fab 5 Freddy, members of De la Soul and other characters that time has let slip by. It's a reminder of everything great about hip-hop power in NYC at that time(just watch the short live snippet in the video as the posse works the audience) and the edit board featuring clips with what now looks prehistoric. And in less than a year...that power shifted to L.A.
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