In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Stéphane Sednaoui, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallström and David Fincher.
Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart (1990)
The song was accompanied by a psychedelic music video, with Deee-Lite, Q-Tip, Maceo Parker and Bootsy Collins superimposed over a cartoonish background of various shifting shapes and colors. The video opens and closes with quotes by the band: Lady Miss Kier has an opening dialog consisting of "faux-French" originally spoken in the song's AA-side, "What Is Love?",and the ending features Collins saying, "I just wanted you to know that groove is in the heart, and Deee-Lite have definitely been known to smoke... on stage, that is!" and Lady Miss Kier exclaiming "Deee-groovy!"
The music video was filmed at Universal Studios Hollywood in June 1995; directed by F. Gary Gray and features Ella Joyce, Bokeem Woodbine, Shyheim, Paul J. Alessi and Gabrielle Bramford.
The song and video tackle the issues of drug dealing and HIV, two problems plaguing the inner cities.
Mainly shot in Paris, the music video for "Nothing Compares 2 U" was directed by John Maybury. O'Connor's cry toward the end wasn't accidental: she stated on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s that it was caused by the lyric "All the flowers that you planted, Mama/in the back yard/All died when you went away," because she had a very complex relationship with her late mother, who used to abuse her in childhood.
The clip consists almost solely of a closeup on O'Connor's face as she sings the lyrics, sometimes with angry expression; the rest consists of her walking through an area of Paris, known as the Parc de Saint-Cloud. Towards the end of the video, two tears roll down her face, one per cheek. In the middle and at the very end of the video there is a shot from O'Connor's photosession for the I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got album cover.
The clip won three moonmen at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards: Video of the Year (O'Connor became the first female artist to be awarded with it), Best Female Video and Best Post-Modern Video. It was nominated for Breakthrough Video, Viewer's Choice and International Viewer's Choice during the ceremony. The video also became the subject for many parodies and spoofs, for instance Gina Riley's parody "Nothing Is There" on Fast Forward, referring to the fact that she was bald.
Mainly shot in Paris, the music video for "Nothing Compares 2 U" was directed by John Maybury. O'Connor's cry toward the end wasn't accidental: she stated on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s that it was caused by the lyric "All the flowers that you planted, Mama/in the back yard/All died when you went away," because she had a very complex relationship with her late mother, who used to abuse her in childhood.
The clip consists almost solely of a closeup on O'Connor's face as she sings the lyrics, sometimes with angry expression; the rest consists of her walking through an area of Paris, known as the Parc de Saint-Cloud. Towards the end of the video, two tears roll down her face, one per cheek. In the middle and at the very end of the video there is a shot from O'Connor's photosession for the I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got album cover.
The clip won three moonmen at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards: Video of the Year (O'Connor became the first female artist to be awarded with it), Best Female Video and Best Post-Modern Video. It was nominated for Breakthrough Video, Viewer's Choice and International Viewer's Choice during the ceremony. The video also became the subject for many parodies and spoofs, for instance Gina Riley's parody "Nothing Is There" on Fast Forward, referring to the fact that she was bald.
The music video (directed by Walter A. Stern) focuses on Ashcroft lip-synching the song while walking down a busy London pavement, refusing to change his stride or direction throughout (oblivious to what is going on around him).
He repeatedly bumps into passers-by (causing one young woman to lose balance and fall), narrowly avoids being hit by a car, and jumps on top of the bonnet of another vehicle stopped in his path (the driver gets out of her car and proceeds to pursue and shout at him, while he continues unflinchingly). At the end of the video, the rest of The Verve join Ashcroft, and the final shot sees them walking down the street into the distance. This then leads into the beginning of the video for "The Drugs Don't Work".
The video is often regarded as one of the best music videos of all time.
Ashcroft starts walking from the southeast corner of the intersection of Hoxton and Falkirk Streets in Hoxton, North London, subsequently proceeding north along the east side of Hoxton Street. The "pavement journey" format was inspired by the music video for the Massive Attack song "Unfinished Sympathy", in which Shara Nelson sings while walking through a Los Angeles neighbourhood
The award-winning Sophie Muller directed the promo video for the single, the concept of which was inspired by the film Cat Women of the Moon. The video featured Detroit and Fahey fighting over a comatose man (played by Dave Evans, former boyfriend of Fahey's Bananarama bandmate Keren Woodward.
The video won Best Video at the 1993 Music Week Awards and Brit Awards.
The video starts with a view of a calm night sky. A shooting star passes over a full moon and the song begins. The camera pans back into a large dark room. Detroit playing the lover is seen caretaking her man - played by Dave Evans - who is comatose and near death. Detroit sings her verse of the song. At the climax of the song, Fahey, playing a vampish angel of death, appears at the top of a staircase, wearing a sparkling catsuit. She sings her verse of the song and dances around in front of a bright light. Detroit tries her best to get the man to wake up, while Death slowly makes her way down the stairs to claim the man's soul. The two women begin fighting over the man, making it literally and figuratively a fight between life (Detroit) and death (Fahey). During their struggle, the man suddenly wakes up. Detroit embraces him. Death - disgusted by this - having failed to seduce him into her realm, walks back up the staircase to the light, presumably being the stairway to Heaven.
In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Stéphane Sednaoui, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallström and David Fincher.
Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart (1990)
The song was accompanied by a psychedelic music video, with Deee-Lite, Q-Tip, Maceo Parker and Bootsy Collins superimposed over a cartoonish background of various shifting shapes and colors. The video opens and closes with quotes by the band: Lady Miss Kier has an opening dialog consisting of "faux-French" originally spoken in the song's AA-side, "What Is Love?",and the ending features Collins saying, "I just wanted you to know that groove is in the heart, and Deee-Lite have definitely been known to smoke... on stage, that is!" and Lady Miss Kier exclaiming "Deee-groovy!"
OH ****!!!! MY JAM!!!!! I love this song SO MUCH!!!!
To shoot the music video for "Big Time Sensuality" Björk called upon Stéphane Sednaoui, that directed video for Madonna, U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sednaoui heard about Björk when he went to Los Angeles for the first time and declared to be fascinated by her music.
Björk personally wanted the director after seeing some photos of Kurt Cobain shot by him, that Björk recalled as being the only photos in which she saw Cobain "laughing out loud and dancing"
Sednaoui at first wanted to go to Iceland to shoot the music video, but the costs were too high for the budget. Björk explained the inspiration for the music video: "when you're living on the edge and it's about the courage to enjoy life". The director got the idea for the music video while he was in New York and realised that "it would work amazingly with the city. With all the big buildings and everything and her voice.
The iconic video for "Big Time Sensuality" was shot in black and white and features Björk dancing on the back of a moving truck slowly driving through New York City in the middle of the day. Björk appears on a white dress in her typical hairstyle. The video uses film effects like slow motion and fast motion. The version of the song used in the video is a remix by Fluke. This version is an edit of the full "Fluke Moulimix" that was longer than the edit provided for radio ("The Fluke Minimix").
The video helped Björk to be known in North America where it received heavy rotation on MTV channels, with many noting that the video was more known in the country than the song: "Few people know how the melody for "Big Time Sensuality" starts, but anyone who watched MTV in the early ‘90s could cheerfully belt out the single measure when she sings the words "Big Time Sensuality"
The video, directed by Kevin Godley, features Bono taking his wife Ali on a carriage ride along Fitzwilliam Place, and on to Lower and Upper Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin, enlisting various performers along the way in an effort to apologize to her. The performers featured include Riverdance, Boyzone, Steve Collins, the Artane Boys Band, and the Chippendales. The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr., Norman Hewson (Bono's brother), Dik Evans (The Edge's brother), and Ali herself appear in the video as well.
The video for "Unfinished Sympathy" was directed by Baillie Walsh, and filmed in January 1991 on West Pico Boulevard between S. New Hampshire Avenue and Dewey Avenue in Los Angeles, California.
Dan Kneece, SOC was the Steadicam Operator. Scott Ressler was the Focus Puller. John Mathieson, who later went on to shoot Gladiator for Ridley Scott, was the DP.
It features Shara Nelson walking along the sidewalk, unaware or uncaring of her surroundings, which includes drunks, gangs, bikers, disabled people and other; the three members of Massive Attack - Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall and Andrew Vowles - gradually start walking behind her. It was one of the earliest music videos to use one continuous shot.
The video was later paid homage to in the music video for The Verve's song "Bitter Sweet Symphony". The art director for the video was Leigh Bowery.
"Virtual Insanity" is perhaps Jamiroquai's best known music video. At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards in September 1997, it earned ten nominations, winning four awards, including "Breakthrough Video" and the "Best Video of the Year." In 2006, it was voted 9th by MTV viewers in a poll on music videos that 'broke the rules.' It was directed by Jonathan Glazer. The single was released in the U.S. in 1997. At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, Jamiroquai performed the song, recreating the famous floor moving concept with two moving walkways on the stage floor, going in different directions, for Jay Kay to use to dance on.
The video consists mainly of Jamiroquai's singer, Jay Kay, dancing and performing the song in a bright white room with a grey floor. Throughout the video, there are several combinations of couches and easy chair, which are the only furniture in the room. The video earned recognition from critics for its special effects: the floor appears to move while the rest of the room stays still. At some points the camera tilts up or down to show the floor or ceiling for a few seconds, and when it returns to the central position, the scene has completely changed.
Other scenes show a crow flying across the room, a cockroach on the floor, the couches bleeding and the other members of Jamiroquai in a corridor being blown away by wind. This became the second video released by Jamiroquai to be successfully done in one complete, albeit composited, shot, Space Cowboy being the first. In a short making-of documentary, director Jonathan Glazer describes how the four walls move on a stationary grey floor with no detail, to give the illusion that the floor is moving.
However, he does not state where the fourth wall is. In several shots, chairs or couches are fixed to the walls so that they appear to be standing still, when in fact they are moving. In other shots chairs remain stationary on the floor, but the illusion is such that they appear to be moving. The moving walls were not completely rigid and can be seen in some shots to wiggle slightly.
The video begins with the band members loading their silver car with recording equipment. Gwen Stefani stands in front of a damaged red car and sings. They drive away, with Tom Dumont , Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal sitting in the backseats. The band arrive at a building where Stefani enters the ladies' bathroom, carrying a boombox, and the rest of the band enters the gents', carrying speakers, instruments and electrical equipment. The ladies' bathroom is clean, brightly decorated and well furnished with flowers, fruit and two female assistants. The gents' bathroom is dark, dirty and bare-walled. The men set up and play their equipment in the gents' while Stefani sings in ladies'. Various men and women enter their respective bathrooms; the men use the urinals and the woman check their make-up, before dancing with the band. Eventually, the men take to lifting each other through the ceiling to get into the other bathroom and the video ends with everyone dancing together in the ladies'.