NPR Music - What are the greatest videos of MTV’s golden era?

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Reports from late last year about the demise of MTV were overstated; but it got us thinking about the network’s legacy and most memorable moments. So, on this episode, we remember the best of MTV with a list of our top 20 videos from its golden era.If you’re listening on Spotify, tell us your favorite classic music video in the episode’s comments. You can support the show by leaving a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or just tell a friend!Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

So at the end of this past year, I was seeing, I started seeing these headlines, you probably saw them too, that said that basically MTV was over. That after years of drifting away from showing videos, it had finally decided that it was just going to stop broadcasting any music videos at all. I feel like that we've been seeing this exact headline for 30 years. I know. I mean, we've certainly been moving in this direction. but the story was that the parent company Paramount had completely pulled the plug on music videos once and for all. In some cases, there were these stories.

I saw one headline that said, after 44 years, MTV is officially dead. And I was completely shocked. I mean, I knew that... Where am I going to see 120 hours of ridiculousness? Ridiculousness. The problem with all of this is it's not true. Not entirely true.

What really happened is MTV has shut down about a half a dozen, five or so of its music channels in the UK and Europe. They did go dark on December 31st. But in the U.S. and Canada, not a lot has changed, at least yet. You can still get videos on the MTV Classic channel. The MTV flagship channel, the main MTV channel, best I can tell if you go and look at the, it'll show you like the TV guide for what's showing.

It's nothing but ridiculousness. I literally say ridiculous, ridiculousness, ridiculousness. Ridiculousness. And I did a count at one point during one of the many, many, many pieces I have done for NPR over the years about the death of MTV. Right. And one of the last times I did one of those pieces, I counted, and there are 168 hours in a week, and 110 of those hours were taken up by ridiculousness. Oh, my gosh. I've never even seen that show.

I literally thought you guys were using ridiculousness as sort of a general term. Well, so that's the flagship channel. MTV, too, as far as I can tell, it only shows the Wayans Brothers, the French Prince of Bella era and Catfish the TV show. The MTV Classic Channel, though, it does show lots of videos. That said, it's, honestly, it's very hard to get a clear picture of exactly where things stand. I asked NPR music reporter Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento to kind of poke around and see what she could find out. And the long and the short of it is that Paramount is reviewing its portfolio,

but there are no specific plans to either in videos or bring them back. I actually saw one story this week that said David Ellison, the head of Paramount, was like he wants to bring MTV back, according to at least like the Hollywood reporter. Well, there is definitely a push in this country to make it the 1980s again. Yeah. Steven throwing fastballs, throwing heat here. So true. So true. So very much up in the air.

But this got us thinking about what a huge impact MTV has had on our lives, especially early on on the industry, on bands, just big influence. And we thought, while we still can, let's celebrate MTV on this episode. Of all songs considered, I'm Robin Hilton, NPR Music's Ann Powers, Stephen Thompson here. That was a very long setup. That was a very long intro. It's kind of like, have you ever watched a movie and then like 15? minutes into the movie, they suddenly drop a title card.

Well, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to make a list of our top 20 videos. We can call these the greatest videos, the most influential, the most groundbreaking, whatever, maybe ones that just meant a lot to us. We can take turns here. We'll each add a video to the list, and when we hit 20, we'll just stop. I cannot tell you, dear listener, how haphazard this process is. You know, I just had to sit down for five minutes and open up my memory bank because MTV

Definitely was formative for me. Oh, me too. Oh, absolutely. Massively. Like, yeah, it took me five minutes to off the top of my head make a list of about 30 videos that we could choose from. I will say that I think that there are five videos. I counted five. Five videos that we just don't even need to bother to mention because they're so indisputable.

I want to stress up front. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Robin, but we have to stress up front. This is not a discussion of the greatest music videos. all time. Right. No. Before you sit down at your keyboards, like, how could you forget single ladies parentheses, put a ring on it by Beyonce? How dare you? Which maybe we will talk about, because it's a great video. This is, we're specifically talking about MTV. And I think it's fair to say, we're pretty specifically talking about early days of MTV. Well, I think maybe, I think of the era beginning, certainly in 1981 when it first goes on the air. I think by 2000, 2001, I think we're done.

Okay. I'm thinking of the era where you could just turn on MTV. like you would turn on the radio and maybe you'll find something because it's just showing stuff all the time. All right. So the five videos, five videos that I think we don't even need to bother to mention. Number one, and these aren't necessarily ranked, but number one, thriller, we don't need to mention thriller. Everyone knows thrillers amazing. Exactly. Take on me. Great choice.

Sledgehammer. Yes. Sorry. Groundbreaking sledhammer. All right, here's where we might split these last two. I'm going to say money for nothing. Oh. It was groundbreaking digital animated video for its time.

It included the sting feature, which was crazy at the time, Stinging, You know, Mom, MTV. I'm going to say that one. And then I'd say number five, I would go with Video Killed the Radio Star. There are better videos. That's the first equals best. Yes, exactly. That's the first video ever played on MTV.

Yeah, you have to include it whether it's great video or not because it's too important. It's like the title track of MTV. I do think before we do this, since Robin just listed. what he considers the five greatest, we should go around the table. What is your personal greatest? What would you say is the greatest? Well, let's start with that because those will go on this top 20, right? Okay.

Yeah, my number one video, you mentioned it in that list. For me, the number one best video of all time is Take On Me by AHA. Not only is it a great song, not only is it full of 80s signifiers. It still looks amazing. It has this interaction of, like, video and pencil drawn animation. that still looks incredible. And as far as, you know, we're going to be talking a lot, I think, about our childhoods and our teen years here. I wanted to look like Morton Harkett more than I wanted anything else in the world.

And I still sort of suck in my cheeks when pictures are taken of me to try to create the illusion of, to try to create the illusion of cheekbones. I didn't realize that you were doing. So that I could look like Morton Harkin, so that I could look like Morton Harkett of a. That's funny because that whole idea of I wish I were that person in the video came up many times for me when I was looking through this. Oh, absolutely. But now you've got me. I never felt that way.

I never knew. I knew I went. When am I going to be Janet Jackson? It's just not going to happen. Well, now you've got me rethinking the top 20 here. Why don't we just throw these five that I've mentioned on the list. We don't need to go any deeper on that. And we'll add 15 more to it.

How about that? Okay. All right. All right. Anne, you're up. What do you want to add to the list? Well, I feel like mine is a big departure from what you. you were saying, Stephen, because it's really not about visual innovation, but it is about

the most compelling performance and the most compelling image on MTV ever. And that is Sheney O'Connor's video for nothing compares to you. You took one of my picks. Yes. It's been seven. Your love. Your love. First of all, Shnade is my girl. I mean, RIP, love you forever. Second of all, that video directed by John Mayberry, who went on to make films about Francis Bacon and Dylan Thomas, really notable British film director. It's as simple as it gets, but man, it shows you how simplicity can be so radical, right? And so effective. It's nothing but, well, essentially nothing, but a super tight close-up of her face as she's singing the song.

Exactly, and those eyes, they suck her eyes. She's like strolling through a park, I think, in Paris, something at some point, but really it's just that. How much that tight close-up on her face sells that song and that performance, and how much the two are intertwined in a way that when you hear nothing compares to you on the radio, you picture Sheney O'Connor's face as she sings it. Like, that video does so much work with such, as you said, simplicity. Won three MTV Awards, including Video of the Year, video of the year. You know what she was up against that year?

1990. Vogue. Oh, Vogue by Madonna. She was up against Madonna's Vogue and still won video of the year. And that's fascinating because Madonna's Vogue is also a close shot. I mean, part of it, it's also got the dancing, but it's got the close-up shots of Madonna's face. Well, that was a huge one for me. It was definitely on my list as well. And that was a, I remember where I was when I first saw it video. It was 4.30 in the morning on a little black and white TV. that we kept in the studio at the radio station, the member station where I worked at, showed up to do the newscasts first thing in the morning. I turned on the TV that was on,

and it immediately captivated me. All right, I'm going to add one right here at the top because if I don't, someone else is going to take it. And I want to be the one who picks it. Rhythm Nation, Janet Jackson. Five, four, three, two, one. So shot in black and white, in this steamy industrial sort of factory or warehouse or something.

It's Janet, her dancers. They're all dressed in these black military uniforms. It's very dystopian. There's some kid who's watching from kind of in the shadows the whole thing. I think to this date, greatest dance video of all time. I have pulled this video up just to show my kids like, you know, you want to see great dancing. Watch this Janet Jackson video from 35 years ago.

Do you guys then do the dance? Do you make them do the... Five, four, three, two, one. Best moment. I struggle to pick the best moment, but it's either that first drop when they first kick into the dancing. Absolutely. Or that little breakdown at the end where it's just kind of an instrumental. I love it.

And I'm so glad you picked that one because dance is so key to music video. It's so key to early MTV. I mean, we love the narrative ones. We love the animated, et cetera, the sledgehammers, and the aha. But if you want to know about dance and how music and dance intersected in the 80s and the 90s, this is where you're going to find the masterclass, the lesson, the encyclopedia. Do you all remember when you first saw MTV, like the very first time, you heard of it and you turned it on and saw it for the first time? Literally one of the most formative moments of my entire youth. So MTV was born on my ninth birthday.

That's right, August 1st. August 1st, 1981. My family got cable in 1983. And I remember, like, hungrily turning on, you know, like flipping stations of this incredible new banquet of TV programming that I suddenly had access to. Hitting MTV for the very first time. And hitting Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. That is the first by the Dyrhivics. First video I ever saw.

I was 11 years old and I basically immediately became obsessed with pop music. Oh, really? Absolutely. Soon thereafter, I mean, I have an older sister. She played a lot of the Ramones and Blondie

and all the, I was surrounded by great music as a little kid, but it wasn't mine. And watching MTV, it suddenly became mine. Well, that's the thing. MTV got me into so much stuff that I never would have gotten into. So much stuff. And I immediately gravitated to, to every Sunday I started listening to Casey Kasem's American Top 40,

followed immediately by Rick D's weekly Top 40. Of course. I transcribed them in spiral-bound notebooks, which I still have. Oh, my gosh. And it'd be like Phil Collins, in this like cursive handwriting I no longer have. Phil Collins, comma, separate lives featuring Marilyn Martin, you know, just like would like painstakingly transcribe the artist and song title. I currently write about the billboard charts for NPR.

I mean, this was deep. It was all laid out in front of you, Stephen. It was all laid out in front of me the second I turned on MTV in 1983 and saw sweet dreams are made of this by the Eurythmics. Okay, I have a great origin story, too, but it's very different from that. December 7, 1982, I guess is when it was. There was this thing called the 1983 Wave Spectacular. There was a concert. There was a big festival and like Wall of Voodoo played and Oingo Boingo.

And so I was, I guess, like in high school, right? And walking to the arena to see the band, we walked through this corridor. And in the corridor were all these TVs. And they were showing the very first preview iteration of MTV. Man, I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous that you've got to hear those. You're so jealous that I'm so old. You got to hear.

Well, you also lived in the Seattle area. I lived in Iola, Wisconsin. That's true. Like at the nearest college radio station, WWSP and Stevens Point, was just outside my reach. Yeah. I mean, that was my experience, too. Mine's closer to Stevens in the MTV had been around for a little while, what, a couple years or so, a year and a half, but before it ever got piped into my town via cable.

However, in 1981, not long after it launched, I went to a relatives, like an aunt's wedding in Kansas City and we stayed at a hotel. City, yeah. Yeah, and the hotel had MTV, and I remember my brother and I, like, sprinting to the television we got in the room and turning it on because we thought, I bet they have MTV here, this thing we'd been hearing on. And I remember my first video, too. It was Tony Basil. Mickey.

Mickey, for sure. We thought we had landed on another planet. It was unbelievable. It was just such a lifeline. I mean, it just, it connected, especially, I don't think people really. think that much about isolated towns and communities where you just, you only got what was on the radio and the radio was usually like where I grew up. It was like Christian contemporary or country. There was a top 40 station that we could kind of get in, you know. And this was everything about it was

mind-blowing because not only did I start hearing all of these songs for the first time, I started seeing what the artists look like. Yes. Well, that makes me want to share another one of my favorites for our list. This is kind of a left fielder, but I wanted to nominate brass in pocket by the pretenders. So that video was like the seventh played video on MTV. You know, it was like number seven in the lineup or something. She plays a waitress. Chrissy Hyde plays a wageress. I remember it, yeah.

Yeah, and then the band, and she's singing this song, which is all about, like, I'm special, please notice me. And so it's very simple. It's like just a little scenario acted out, but also such a great song. I didn't realize that was one of the very first videos. Did you say it was really like in the first ten? Yeah, it was in the very first playlist because the song predated MTV, you know? Yeah, yeah, that was true of a lot of those very first videos.

But the thing that is really cool about that video and why I'm totally happy to see it on the list is It was one of the early examples of storytelling in these videos that you're getting an entire little movie in about three minutes. Yep. Yep. Stephen. I'm going to pick a song here, but I also want to pick a topic. Okay. And that is portraits of masculinity. Are you going to go with white snake?

Extreme more than words. In the 1980s. And what sort of models of masculinity were available to pockmarked 13-year-old? boys watching. Oh, please pick Motley Crew. So I'm just going to list several of the luscious weirdos that you had from

which you could take your pick, right? You could be David Lee Roth, fun-loving horn dog. Yes, definitely. You could be Tom Petty, kind of top-headed... Mad scientists. Yeah, mad scientist. You could be... Can I just say quickly,

every single touchstone you're saying, you said Tom Petty and you said top-headed, said, Don't come around here no more. And Angis said, mad scientist and I thought, she blinded me with science, Thomas Dolby. Oh, there you go. You know, you certainly had your male sex symbols, you're George Michaels, your Simon Labon's. But also your dudes from ZZ Top. Yes.

You're Stephen Tyler from Aerosmith. I want to talk about Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love. Oh, well, that's definitely classic. I knew someone was going to go with this one. You can't sleep. You wanted to be Mr. Swave in a suit. Right. It was so cool.

Right. This was a picture of suavity. You know, you had, and there were many pictures of suavity, right? There was Robert Palmer. There was Brian Ferry. There were Simon Laban. There were many, many versions of that, none of which I could possibly attain at any point in my entire life.

But that is absolutely a part of growing up on these videos and having this channel beaming those images into your life. I think that you make a really good point, which was having this outside world piped into my world made me realize just how empty my life was and how there was this whole universe that I wished I could live in and be. And I can think of no video that made me feel smaller and make me want more than George Michael's Freedom 90. Oh, my gosh. Oh, well, of course. Yes, it has all these supermodels lip-syncing to George Michael's song, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Vanjolista, Christy Turlington, and Tatiana Petit.

And they're all in the most amazing apartment you have ever seen in your life like a big, giant Gothic loft apartment. You assume it's in New York or some exotic place that I'd never been. And it's worth noting that this was coming right out of the 1980s, a decade that I had not really liked that much. And I especially had not liked Wham. And here's George Michael basically saving pop music for me and signaling this whole new era. Because the song is also incredible.

It's a great song. Did you go back and appreciate Wham? No, I still don't care for Wham. All right. One last bit of trivia about this video. You know who directed it? Herbert's, no. David Fincher.

Oh, right, David Fincher. Well, that's it. I'm so glad you brought that up because so many notable film directors directed videos, you know. It's like I mentioned John Mayberry. I mean, it's so many people who went on Spike Jones, you know, Michelle Gondry, et cetera. There's so many, so many of them. And yeah. All right.

Keep going, Ann. Well, Bjork has got to be on this list because she is one of the greatest artists of the video. age and one of the most innovative. And she worked with so many great directors. I could have picked all this full of love directed by Chris Cunningham, where Bjork is a robot making love with herself. But instead, I am picking human behavior. Human behavior, directed by Michelle Gondry, also went on to a distinguished film career. It was inspired by the 1995 Soviet animated film Hedgehog in the Fog.

and it depicts this crazy puppet-like bear who not only is in a little war with a hunter, but eats Bjork, consumes her. She sings part of the song in the bear's stomach. It's kind of, you know, so Bjork in that it's both magical and you want to enter that realm, but in her Icelandic way, she's always like, look, bears are cool, but they will eat you.

And I think that's an important message. And it was beautifully shot, too. Gorgeous. That song, that whole album that's from, what was that, like, 93? Yes, it was 93. Yes. Stephen. I want to talk about Twisted Sister.

Oh, God. Okay. And I specifically want to talk about the twin videos for, we're not going to take it, and I want to rock. Now, these videos both contained the actor Mark Metcalfe, who played Douglas C. Niedermeyer in Animal House. Right.

And whose kind of thing as an actor was kind of this like sputtering authority figure. Pass the carrots, please. And the visuals, you know, from these videos are seared into my brain in a way that, like, I will forget, you know, in my old age, I will forget members of my family before I forget the videos for we're not going to take it. and I want to rock. Okay, I was going to say you hadn't told us what the second one was yet. I want to rock. I want to rock. Well, that's the one that has the like,

what do you want to do with your life? What are you? And then Twisted Sister like blast through the wall. Oh my gosh, you guys. I just did not like Quisted Sister at all. It's so campy. You weren't 12, man. I think you're what, like three years old.

I got like two years on you. I thought it was just ridiculous. And I kind of. over the years come to appreciate D. Snyder a little bit more than I did at the time. That I think there's a lot more going on there. There's a lot more going on there. That's a very smart dude. Yeah. But I was not into it at the time at all. Now, I love the metal videos. Also, that makes me want to mention another great film director

who came out of the video age, and that is Rob Zombie. Check out his video for Dracula. Incredible. Presaged his amazing horror film director career that followed in the 2000s. So, Ann, you mentioned robots or earlier when you were talking about the Bjork videos, that made me think of one that I want to add to the list that had robots in it. I'm wondering if any of you can guess what it is if I just say it had dancing robots in it. If it's not Rocket, I'm leaving. It's Rocket. So Herbie Hancock, Rocket, this is from 1983 from his album Future Shock.

And basically, there are these robots, like partial robots, sometimes just legs. Like, do you remember there were this, like, mannequin legs that were walking in a circle? in the middle of the room. Yes. And then these other, oh, my God, it was creepy and also futuristic. And so amazing. I remember thinking, the future is now. And I just assumed like, all right, by the time I'm out of high school, we're all

going to have robots. Because there they are. And that was such an early one, too. I mean, that was like 1983. That was directed by Godly and Cream, by the way, who had found pop success as the band 10CC. But, yeah, I mean, that's a rocket. such an important song, too. I mean, that was this song that introduced scratching and hip-hop beats to so many people in the mainstream.

It won a ton of MBA. You keep saying MBA Awards, and that's like saying ATM machines. Yeah, I keep saying it. Did I say MVA awards earlier? Yeah, you sure did. Oh, MBA. VMAs. It's also VAMs. And it absolutely should have. It should have won all those awards. It won best concept video, best special effects. Yeah, incredible. Well, from the haunted,

uncanny landscape of Rocket, I want to take us into a video teeming with people. And this is a video for nothing but a G-a-thing by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg from 1993. Hey, Snoop! I missed a bomb.

One, two, three, into the phone. Snoop Doggy Dog and Dr. Dre is at the dough. Ready to make an entrance. So whack on the up. Before I have to pull the strap off the cut. Give me the microphone. first so I can bust like a bubble. Compton and Long Beach together.

Now you know you're in trouble because ain't nothing but a G thing. Baby. Too low down G so we crazy. Death row is the label that pays me. Unfatable, so please don't try to faint. That video is so cool. Like, it is just these guys

driving through South Central, going to a barbecue where people are playing volleyball. You know, then it turns into a night party. The cars, remember the lowriders? announcing in that video. Yeah. I just absolutely love the way that video introduces you to those of us who haven't, had not been to South Central L.A., like what life is like, you know,

just completely puts you into that milieu. Plus, I don't know. It's like Snoop, that was my first Snoop moment. And he, of course, has had his long and strange career, but definitely one of the most charismatic screen presences of hip-hop culture. And their MTV was so important for teaching us about, like, you know, all these dances, all these subcultures, stuff like that. Well, there's not so much the dancing, but the driving through L.A. Oh, my God, totally.

L.L. Cool J.'s going back to Cali. Yeah, completely. So many of those driving videos. Trooping, hanging out. Tone Loke, it was either Wild Thing or Funky Cold Medina. Funky Coal Medina is in the bar and they opened. No, wait, you know what? That's right.

Because in the bar, they're drinking the funky old Medina. And then in nothing but a G thing, there's a scene where somebody opens a fridge and it is just full of 40s, you know? And I, and like the kind of cold frost is coming out of the fridge. Amazing moment. All right. Stephen, where do you want to go next? All right. Well, you know, Anne keeps bringing up the importance of major film directors.

Yes, yes. I want to talk about Spike Jones. Oh, right. I wondered if someone was going to bring this one in. It's all right. the director of one of the all-time greatest videos. Robin, you could have named this and you're... Sabotage.

Absolutely. By the Beastie Boys. Oh, yes. When you were talking about kind of the Mount Rushmore of the greatest music videos of all time, this is absolutely up there. It is a perfect marriage of amazing song, hilarious, amazing visuals. It's kind of a parody of 70s cop shows.

You're Starsky and Hutch. It's like one long chase scene. One long chase scene set to a song that slaps about as hard as any song. in the 90s. Absolutely. And it's a perfect marriage of audio and visual. And, you know, it helped kind of portend Spike Jones's incredible film career.

One of the things I love about that video is that it looks like something that you would make with your buddies with your old VHS camera on a weekend. If your buddies were like, the moustaches. Yeah. If your buddies were incredibly talented. Well, I mean, because it looks so homemade. But it's also cheesy. Yeah.

It's super low budget. And it also comes off like they've just made it up as they went along, but it's so cool. Mike D. sliding across the hood of a car. That had to be so fun to make. Well, what I would pick from Spike Jones, and I'm going to put this on the official list we're putting together here, I'm going to go with weapon of choice. Yeah. So weapon of choice 2001.

To me, this is sort of the end. Yes, it's the Christopher Walken Dancing through a hotel lobby, Defined Gravity. it was an incredible video and it did debut on MTV but by 2001 or so I think we're getting to the point where everyone's starting to shift to watching everything online

you're not just putting on MTV to see what kind of discovery you can make as much as we were before reality TV shows and animated shows and all that sort of stuff have completely dominated the lineup by this point so it's a turning point for me

with MTV, but also one of indisputably of the greatest videos of all time. Early 2000, wasn't totally Request Live still going pretty hard? Yeah, it wasn't started in 97? Yeah, I mean, Total Request Live, you know, we are definitely

we are Generation Xers. We did not necessarily come up with Total Request Live, but Total Request Live was a huge pop cultural influence and had a lot of effect on the careers of a lot of boy bands. Oh my God, and a lot of, you know, Britney Spears and Christina. And, yeah, I was working at the New York Times at that time and the crowds that surrounded the MTV offices at all times

when they were shooting the show. Because, you know, remember, they would bring in kids to be the audience for this show. It was a huge thing. We should take a minute here just to kind of see where we are with the list because we've been throwing a lot of stuff out here. So we've got the first five that we mentioned,

Thriller, Take On Me, Sledgehammer, Money for Nothing, and Video Killed the Radio Star. Then we've got Nothing compares to you, Rhythm Nation, Brassin' Pocket, addicted to love, and George Michael's Freedom 90. That's 10. Then we've got Bjork's human behavior, twist-a-sister, we're not going to take it. I will allow you a tie for I want to rock. And then at 13, we've got Rocket, followed by nothing but a G-thing,

sabotage, and then weapon of choice. I just did. That is 16. So we've got four more slots. Oh, boy. It's impossible. You can't do it. You can't do it.

So many more to talk. All right, let me see if I can extend the studio. And we're just going to give everyone a tight hundred. Thank you. Thank you so much. But, Anne, that does mean we're back to you. And technically, we each kind of get one more pick. So what's your Sophie's choice pick going to be here?

I know you're going to just mention a whole bunch and then say, but I'll go with. I'm going to do the same thing, buddy. Frankly, it's, no, I'm just going to go straight to the obvious choice that I was going to pull out at the end like, dude, you forgot this and you are not going to, you're going to hate yourselves forever. Okay. Missy Elliott. I've been waiting to talk about Amelia. Oh, the rain.

Yeah. Missy my window. I'm super d'nog. Missy Elliott. Missy Elliott, Director Hype Williams, that crazy blow-up suit, she becomes the Michelin' Woman. This is a big, like inflatable. black.

Yeah, and it's shiny, like it's made out of plastic or something. Exactly. And apparently, when they were making the video, the suit deflated, and she had to, like, blow it up at a gas station. And Brooklyn, and then she couldn't fit in the car. So then she had to walk back to the set, like through the streets of Brooklyn in the suit, which you got to love that. That's amazing.

Got to love that. But, I mean, that's hype Williams, too. It's not just about the suit. Missy's delivery, but his, you know, he was one of the, he is one of the great video directors. And it's all that weird fish-eye lens stuff. I was just going to say, I remember her leaning into the camera and everything kind of warping the closer she got to the lens. Exactly. So it was funny, too.

But, I mean, just an incredible song. So cool. So innovative. Yeah. Yeah. Everything about it as well. Okay, Stephen. I am surprised we have gotten this far into the show without mentioning Cindy Lauper.

Oh, that's great call. Great call. Cindy Lopper, not only... But which, where do you even go? Oh, I'm going to go with girls just want to have fun. I knew it because of the wrestling connection. Am I right? Specifically, specifically this strange kind of fulcrum that Cindy Lopper sat at,

where she was an ambassador between pop music and pro wrestling. Like Captain Lou Albano played her dad in the video. She was really passionate about kind of bringing those two worlds together. but she was also an extremely innovative ambassador for incorporating and giving voice to queer culture. She's still great. But like in those early days of MTV, she was one of the major, major faces of the network and of music videos and of pop music. Girls just want to have fun has now kind of become one of these songs that just kind of gets played as 80s wallpaper. Exactly.

But that song, besides being a pretty unimpeachable pop song, she in the 80s was such a fascinating pop cultural figure. I mean, talk about Shebop. And what Shebop was Trojan horsing onto the radio. Yeah. I think she is such a massively culturally important and wonderful figure. She was like both the kind of tougher sister, not little sister, tougher sister of Madonna, and also like the culmination of a certain

artie girl New Wave style. I'm thinking about people like Lena Lovitch and Nina Hagen, you know, every city in America and England had that band that had those cool, weird, arty women in it. And Cindy like embodied all of that energy. Well, we're down to the last two slots here. And I don't want this one to be the one we go out on, but I feel like we really ought to mention it. So I'm going to go with Jamiriqui's virtual insanity. So if you've seen this video, you remember this video. It's one shot in the all-white room and the walls.

You remember the hat? The hat he's wearing. J.K.'s wearing this hat. And he's dancing. And it looks like the whole floor is moving. And he's just, it's an incredible optical illusion. The thing that's kind of amazing about it is that it looks like the floor is sliding with him. Yes.

But he is actually standing in place. The illusion was created by moving everything else in the room. That's incredible. So the floor is still, the walls were on casters and are sliding past him, all the furniture on casters, and sliding around in the room. And he's kind of dancing around and wobbling like he's having a hard time keeping his balance. But the truth is, he was standing still the whole. tie. That's wild. He was dancing. He was dancing. He was dancing. He was dancing. He was dancing. He was dancing.

He was dancing. All right. And my last bit of trivia for you. Who directed this video? Jonathan Glazer. Oh, my gosh. That's right. I totally forgot that. That's how Jonathan Glazer. Yeah. Sexy beast, birth under the skin, zone of interest, that guy. He directed this video. That's killer. I just remembered who you're talking about. Yeah. You know, like, this is my next, this is going to be my next PhD. thesis is like the connections between zone of interest and Jamarquois. I was just trying to figure out how to connect zone of interest to virtual insanity.

He also did a lot of videos, Radiohead. I think he did Karma Police. He worked with massive attack. Nick Cave in the Bad Seats, lots of them. So we're down to the final slot here, and I don't really know what to do. I mean, I've got, oh, go ahead. No, no, we both have. Do you want to fight it out?

Should we have a cage match on the last round? Why don't we do this? Why don't we all pick one that we would go to the map for being on this list, and then we'll just play one to go out on. Okay. I'm going to go with you two where the streets have no name. The police department has the authority to shut these locations down, and that is exactly what we are doing.

And I apologize to you for having to have all your quick and do down here, but it's over as a fountain. There is no compromise. We'll stop your camera. He got was another radio station that one on the air with paranoid, warnings and said things about they were expecting crowds of 35,000 rowdy people and they were expecting the National Guard to be called out and so forth. So they blew it for us.

Which kind of freaked out the city fathers across the street looking down on top of the liquor store where you two was doing the taping. And it was a fashion factory. There's little ladies in there sewing and it seems just as gone. And there was, what is going here? Oh, no. 1987 shot on the rooftop of a liquor store in Los Angeles. It's sort of an homage to the Beatles playing their final show on a rooftop.

And it's presented kind of like a little documentary where they're shooting behind the scenes. The band's trying to give the show and the cops show up and they cancel the whole thing. We're shutting you down. But the director yells, keep rolling, keep rolling. And, you know, there are all these overhead helicopter shots of the things. happening and it was just so cool and incredible and I've never loved the band more. I've always wondered over the years whether this video was real, like how staged it was. I assumed part of it was staged.

It was totally staged. It was not totally staged. It was not totally staged. It was real in that they did set up. They were on the rooftop. They were going to give a show. But they wanted to get shut down. They were hoping they would get shut down.

So they had a backup generator ready to go to keep everything powered up once they got shut down and the cops did come and the cops did shut them down. But in interviews, years later, it was revealed that the police actually gave them plenty of opportunity to keep going and finish their video even though they said we're shutting it down. So that's the one I would go to the mat on. All I have to say to you guys is losing my religion. How could we have not included losing my religion. R.E.M. Directed by Tarsem Singh, who goes on to make such cult classics as the cell, mirror, mirror, amazing visuals. But I wanted to highlight this video, not only for Michael Snipes' insane dancing in it,

which is so great, but just for what a video can do for a band, you know? Well, that was the whole turning point, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're very, this is like a Gen X conversation. So we're talking about our Gen X heroes. And R.E.M, like, the embodiment of college rock, they leap to a new level with this video. counterpoint, I would go with everybody hurts. Oh, beautiful. I love that too. Which is sort of like the YouTube video in that it's shot, it's on a highway, and it's shot

as they all get out of their cars in a traffic jam, and everyone's walking, and at some point there's a helicopter shot overhead, and it's like a news event. Everyone's just getting out of their cars and walking. But by 92, I would argue, because of that turning point that you mentioned, and REM has become the biggest band in the world at that point. They are. Absolutely. Stephen, what are you going to the map for? I'm going to go with Prince in the Revolution.

Kiss. 1986. You know, like I mentioned Prince in passing, but if we're going to actually have a list of 20 songs, I think Prince has to have one of them, one of the faces of the 80s, that not only is this video iconic Prince and Wendy of Wendy and Lisa, you know, she's playing guitar,

he's writhing around, sometimes shirtless, sometimes not. But also that song is so, and seriously no pun intended, that song is revolutionary. The message of that song is revolutionary counter-programming to so much of the messaging that I received from videos on MTV in the 80s.

There is a gigantic number one hit single in which someone says, you don't have to be rich, you don't have to be cool. You don't have to be cool. Was a message that was on MTV in 1986? God bless that man. Women not cool.

Women, not girls, rule my world. So basically we're ending with a three-way tie here for our ones. We'll go to the mat over, even though where the streets have no name, losing my religion and kiss. The song, not the band. We left out so many great ones, but that's okay. We left out literally thousands of songs. I'm sure everyone is going to disagree with all of our picks, and there's so many things that we didn't include. You can leave us a review in Apple Music or Spotify or Comcast.

comment what videos you think we should have mentioned. Email us all songs at npr.org if you'd like to write us a dear idiots letter. We always love getting those. You could fill an entire filing cabinet with all the ones we've gotten so far. Just in the time it took to tape this episode. It's true. But Ann Power, Stephen Thompson, thanks for this. Thanks for exposing your soft white belly to the long knives of our listeners.

Thanks for the memories, guys. I'm Robin Hilton for Inpair music. it's all songs considered.