This video was directed by Anton Corbijn. If you were a rock star in the 90s, Anton Corbijn probably directed a music video for you.
In this video, a young man (George Clemens) discovers that Metallica is inescapable. Even on television, every channel features either a show or a commercial that features the members of the band. For someone who has access to 24-hour Metallica television, the young man doesn’t seem to care about much. Not even his girlfriend can get much of a response from him. He would rather just fantasize about monsters fighting.
In today’s music video of the day, Genesis takes us on a tour of Los Angeles in 1980 and pays tribute to the Beach Boys. Technically, the video is actually about Phil Collins wearing a Hawaiian shirt and driving around the city and searching for his girlfriend but mostly, that was just an excuse to show off Los Angeles.
This video was directed by Stuart Orme, who directed several videos for both Genesis as a group and Phil Collins as a solo act.
Like Suzanne Vega’s Luka, this song is about a woman realizing that a child who lives in her building is a victim of child abuse.
This video is one the many video to have been directed by Matt Mahurin. Matt Mahurin is one of those all-purpose music video directors. Since the 1980s, he’s done videos for everyone from U2 to Peter Gabriel to New Kids On The Block to Marilyn Manson. He also directed the video for Bush’s Everything Zen but let’s not hold that against him.
Today’s music video of the day is an early one from Van Halen. Coming from 1981, this video was a product of the time when videos were usually performance clips that focused on showing off the skills of the musicians.
As with all of the early Van Halen videos, this one balances the technical skills and talent of Eddie Van Halen with David Lee Roth’s sense of showmanship. David Lee Roth and Van Halen had their conflicts but they were always at their best when they were performing together.
Director Bruce Gowers, who died in 2023, started directing music videos in the 70s and worked with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Queen to Journey, Michael Jackson, Toto, and Rod Stewart. He was one of those directors who worked every everyone who was anybody. He also directed a lot of television, doing countless MTV Movie Awards ceremonies and also working as a director for American Idol.
Shot in an around Paris, the music video for Depeche Mode’s Strangelove was considered to be so controversial that MTV refuses to broadcast the original version. The band offered up a re-edited version, in which some of the shots of the two models were replaced with shots of the band.
Director Anton Corbijn needs no introduction. Along with being a renowned photographer who has been responsible for countless album covers and music videos, Corbijn has also directed films like The American, Control, and A Most Wanted Man.
The Reaper is busy in today’s music video of the day. The Reaper collects souls, many of whom are friends and family of the members of Bones Thug-n-Harmony and takes them to the mountaintop. Everyone’s entering the afterlife with Eazy-E.
I remember this video was huge for a while in 1996. You could not turn on MTV without seeing Eazy-E ascending into the afterlife. (Once I learned that Bone Thugs-n-Harmony were proteges of Eazy-E’s and signed to his label, Eazy’s inclusion in this video made much more sense.) At the Video Music Awards, Tha Crossroads was nominated for Best Rap Video but lost to Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise.
There is some online confusion as to who directed the video. Wikipedia says Vaughan Arnell. The IMDb says Michael Martin. I am going with the IMDb on this. Martin is also credited with doing videos for Outkast, N.W.A., Jodeci, and LL Cool J. He directed the the films I Got The Hook Up and Da Game Of Life.
This music video features Anthrax doing what they did best, rocking it. Like many of the older metal bands, Anthrax usually kept it simple when it came to their music videos. Instead of going for gimmicks or a lot of bells and whistles, they just picked up their instruments and played as fast and as loud as they could. It’s not a bad approach. Though this video does feature clips of cattle and construction, it still puts the band front and center.
The song was recorded and this music video was shot during the time that John Bush was lead singer of the band, replacing Joey Belladonna after the latter was fired. Belladonna, of course, would later rejoin the band.
Director David Hogan has done videos for everyone from Blues Traveler to BareNaked Ladies to Shania Twain. He also directed Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire and served as a 2nd unit director on films like the third Alien film and Batman Forever.
Animal is a song that took three years for Def Leppard to complete. The band started work on the song in 1984 with producer Jim Steinman, who is best known for his collaborations with musicians like Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler. Steinman’s orchestral style proved to be a poor fit with Def Leppard’s more straight forward sound. After realizing that Steinman wasn’t going to work out, the band brought in Mutt Lange, who was able to get the sound that the band wanted.
Though the band had already found success in the United States, Animal was the first Def Leppard song to became a hit in the UK. Not only did it reach No. 6 on the UK Single Chart but it also scored the band their first invitation to perform on Top of the Pops. (For the benefit of our American readers, that was, back in the day, a big effing deal.)
The video finds the band working and performing in a traveling circus. The video was directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin, both of whom have directed videos for several different artists. Along with directing several other videos for Def Leppard, Freel and Pellerin have also worked with Metallica. On his own, Freel has done videos for Roxette and Faith No More. Pellerin, meanwhile, directed the films, Laserhawk, For Hire, Daybreak, and The Clown At Midnight.
Through the Shattered Lens 