Best of '15: Music Videos of the Year
Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 10:15AM
NATHANIEL R in Björk, Madonna, Missy Elliott, Shia Labeouf, Taylor Swift, Year in Review, dance, music videos

We'll begin our daily year in review partying with some music.

The best music videos are like short films. Or, rather, all music videos are short films. The best of them can give cinematic thrills, though. Not that you'd want two full hours of most of them. Still and all, here are 15 favorites of the year. Apologies to two tremendous auteurs who dabbled in music video this year (P.T. Anderson with Joanna Newsom and Xavier Dolan for Adele) but if you're a legit auteur with great films under your belt, expectations run too high to excited when the video is only "good".

Disclaimer: Endorsement of videos is not neccessarily endorsement of songs though it helps, sure.

Suggestions for what we missed are welcome in the comments since it's easy to miss great ones if a less than spectacularly popular artist makes them...

15 BEST MUSIC VIDEOS OF 2015
(after the jump)

15 "Living For Love" -Madonna
(February 2015) For fully committing to its minimalist concept, but heightening it with subtle superhuman magic, sharp rhythmic editing, and minotaur eroticism. And making the most of an unusually small budget as Madonna videos go

14 "Glass and Patron" - FKA Twigs
(March 2015) For being inexplicably eery (those Lynchian trees, that uh... rainbow birth) and for its catwalk voguing aggression.

13 "Bills" - LunchMoney Lewis
(February 2015) For being such a throwback to old school videos in which popstars had fun literalizing their lyrics

12 "I Really Like You" Carly Rae Jepsen
(March 2015) For both concept and vessel -- the definition of "likeable" himself, Mr Tom Hanks. It doesn't even matter that he's bad at lipsynching.

11 "Lionsong" Björk
(March 2015) The Tilda Swinton of pop stars. Or is Tilda the Björk of movie stars: forever colorful and alien, always hypnotic.

10 "All Hands on Deck" - Tinashe
(April 2015) 'They've got choreography!' We're suckers for a good boxed up dance routine. (See also Madonna's Human Nature and #1 on this list)

09 "Bad Blood" Taylor Swift feat. Kendrick Lamar
(May 2015) For being terrible and great simultaneously, knowingly exploiting the 'music video as commercial' aspects of the art form until it's only a sales pitch. It's forever selling its non-existent self (and the 1989 album, natch)

08 "Freedom" - Pharrell Williams
07 "Alright" - Kendrick Lamar
(July & June 2015) Neither of these videos could be called subtle with a straight face but social messages shouldn't always be. Pharrells goes full color with cosmic A.D.D. and Malick & The Masses pastiche. Kendrick's opts for beautiful black and white with a touch of transcendence (cue flying) and a killer ending.

 

06 Tame Impala "The Less I Know the Better"
(November 2015) What to say other than... WOW.

05 "I Feel Love (Every Million Miles)" - The Dead Weather
(August 2015) The very best of the minimalist school of music videos this year, hypnotic in its Sisyphian repetition.

 

04 "Ghosttown" - Madonna
(April 2015) Madonna survives everything. Even the apocalypse.

03 "Where Are U Now" Skrillex & Diplo feat. Justin Beiber
(June 2015) There's often nothing as cooly synthetic as dance music but watch how the crowd-sourced (?) drawings humanize and mock and worship and fuss on and over the artifice of music and stardom.

 

And finally...

The only two videos I watched an obscene amount of times this year. I would legit like to hand them tiny little Oscars for their achievements.

02 "Elastic Heart" - Sia
(January 2015) Kinetically wondrous (especially for fans of modern interpretative dance), gloriously resonant (Caged by our emotions -- aren't we all?), and deeply committed (Shia Labeouf is our favorite genuinely insane male actor.)

 

 

01 "WTF (Where They From)" - Missy Elliott feat. Pharrell Williams  
(November 2015) I'll let Nick describe this one since he nailed it last month on Twitter...

Missy was from Mars way before Damon was. Missy's Puppets > Kaufman's Puppets. Missy's Force has Awakened. Holiday movie season ends today.

— Nick Davis (@NicksFlickPicks) November 13, 2015

 

 

Finis.

Which music videos did you love the most this year ... and which of these would make the best feature film if it were blown up with 85 more minutes?

More Year in Review
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Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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