The 20 Best Music Videos of 2014

Dancing is one of the most well-worn music video tropes, and there's plenty of it on this list. But rather than hewing to typical choreography, picturesque sets, and rhythmic perfection in the Michael Jackson mold, many of the best videos of the year took a more impressionistic route, from the eerie digital twerker at the center of Arca's "Thievery" clip, to FKA twigs flailing over a dead body in "Video Girl", to the freeform explosiveness of Sia's "Chandelier". Even video formalist par excellence Beyoncé got in on the subversion with her (relatively) dressed-down, DIY video for "7/11", which has her getting loose in a messy bedroom.

Along with all the dancing, the following alphabetical list includes breakout clips from Shamir and Vic Mensa, Rick Ross translated via emoji, heavy-metal LARPing, Anne Hathaway in drag, the ultimate mash-up video, and more.

2 Many DJs: As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2

Director: Glyn Peppiatt

Twelve years after they helped transformed the term "mash-up" from an action to a genre with their landmark As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 megamix, 2 Many DJs grant us the opportunity to be dazzled by it all over again through this riotous reanimation of the source albums’ cover art. Certainly, being serenaded by Peaches’ labia while the Velvet Underground & Nico’s unpeeled punk banana pokes out of her hot pants is more fun than reading a list of samples on Wikipedia, no? — Stuart Berman

Arca: "Thievery"



Director: Jesse Kanda

In which Arca’s nude, gender-amorphous alter ego Xen twerks flawlessly within a strobe-lit digital vacuum—a disturbing, irreverent, and wholly original spin on the tone-deaf big butt "trend" the media tried to force feed you this year. — Eric Torres

Ariel Pink: "Picture Me Gone"



Director: Grant Singer

Characters go about their lives behind emotionless, uncanny-valley masks while Ariel Pink lip syncs his corroded heart out. Presumably, it’s about the tragedy of a world that forces us to hide our day-to-day feelings. Also: super creepy. — Evan Minsker

Azealia Banks: "Chasing Time"



Director: Marc Klasfeld

Azealia Banks currently reigns as the fashionable overlord of a parallel universe. When she’s not popping black orbs or relaxing in the buff, she can be seen holding court with her dancers in garb fit for a cyberpunk queen—ponchos! apron belts! breast-baring leotards!—and giving homage to the brazen MCs who wrote the blueprint on feminine badassery. Kim, Missy, Left Eye: This one’s for you. — Zoe Camp

Beyoncé: "7/11"



Director: Beyoncé

With her ecstatically DIY "7/11" video, Beyoncé brings together a host of modern obsessions: GoPros, twerking, kale. Even though the clip is edited to a T, it gives us a glimpse into Bey’s life offstage: a hopeless perfectionist goofing off at her leisure.  — Molly Beauchemin

Blood Orange: "You're Not Good Enough"



Director: Gia Coppola

A great archetypal pop video that ends with Dev Hynes and Gia Coppola exchanging a secret handshake, smiling about what they’ve just created. They should, too—primarily because of the part where Hynes sings into a single flower while staring off into the distance. — Evan Minsker

Cashmere Cat: "Wedding Bells"



Director: Peter Marsden

We’ve all seen the movie trailer where two people meet, have sex, fight, make up, and finally gaze into a breaking ocean, all while Very Dramatic Music ups the emotional ante. But director Peter Marsden and Norwegian producer Cashmere Cat flip things around here, serving up a music video that looks like a trailer—replete with SoundCloud comments ("Cashmere Cat is a girl," "LOL no he’s a guy") standing in for critical hosannas—that’s more enjoyable than most full-length features. — Ryan Dombal

FKA twigs: "Two Weeks"



Director: Nabil

In 2002, Aaliyah posthumously starred in a cinematic adaptation of Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned as the first vampire to ever walk the earth. In 2014, Tahliah Barnett honored the late legend’s role by bringing a queen of the shadows into the light, re-envisioning her as sort of a sun goddess—all-powerful, in-control, a giant among mere mortals. — Zoe Camp

FKA twigs: "Video Girl"



Director: Kahlil Joseph

Just a few years ago, twigs was a go-to dancer for cheeseball pop videos. The song "Video Girl" is about those days, when the singer would embarrassingly deny that she was a girl who danced in cheeseball pop videos. And just as her music is a beautiful inversion of what we’re used to hearing on the radio, the "Video Girl" video is a haunted take on your typical pop clip. Yes, twigs dances in it. But instead of being surrounded by pastels and synchronicity and dutiful artifice, she’s in a black-and-white lethal injection chamber, mixing sex and death while straddling a murderer. — Ryan Dombal

Flying Lotus: "Never Catch Me" [ft. Kendrick Lamar]



Director: Hiro Murai

With his album You’re Dead!, Flying Lotus set out to find the "blissful and silly" moments in death. So while a church mourns two children in this video, the kids rise from their coffins with smiles, dance away, and drive off in a hearse. It’s the same old ending, with a new beginning. — Evan Minsker

Iceage: "The Lord's Favorite"



Director: Cali Thornhill DeWitt

Even when these Danes are pouring champagne over their heads in slo-mo, getting shoulder massages from a guy in drag, and beckoning "come here and be gorgeous for me" over power-tripping cowpunk, they aren't commanding glamorous excess as much as they're using small, studied gestures to do something bigger than their limited means. — Jenn Pelly

Jamie xx: "Sleep Sound"




Director: Sofia Mattioli and Cherise Payne

With the help of the Manchester Deaf Centre, directors Sofia Mattioli and Cherise Payne capture a group of hearing-impaired people both young and old in this gorgeous examination of what it means to experience music using little more than your imagination. — Eric Torres

Jenny Lewis: "Just One of the Guys"



Director: Jenny Lewis

The former Rilo Kiley singer and her Hollywood pals (including Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart) bro-out in drag, upending stereotypical notions of what women should be doing in their 30s. — Jenn Pelly

Lykke Li: "No Rest for the Wicked"



Director: Tarik Saleh

One shot of Lykke Li in a hairnet is all it takes to establish her no-frills cred in this video, which traces a doomed relationship with a tattooed bad boy who’s run out of town—or something worse—for his so-called wickedness. Low-lit bar dancing, moody strolls through wheat fields, brooding looks passed between haunted hearts—it’s equal parts Brokeback Mountain and Terrence Malick, an uneasy calm before the fall. — Jeremy Gordon

Mac DeMarco: "Passing Out Pieces"



Director: Pierce McGarry

And you thought Kramer’s shower-soaked salad prep was the most revolting display of leafy vegetables in a bathtub… — Stuart Berman

Mastodon: "High Road"



Director: Roboshobo

LARPing is a lot more difficult than it looks. Provided you don’t want to come across as a fugitive wanted for robbing your local Medieval Times, you’ll need to spend hours honing weapons, practicing swordplay, and questing with your fellow geeks at the local park—not to mention dealing with those waiting to kick your butt when you get back to the real world. But as the "High Road" video demonstrates, modern-day adventuring isn’t about bragging rights, or even the chance to relive an epic time long since lost. It’s about believing in yourself and charging head-on towards the spoils that await, all while knowing that your squire—or, at least, your grandpa—will be there to defend your honor when the assholes strike. — Zoe Camp

Rick Ross: "Sanctified" [ft. Kanye West and Big Sean]



Director: Jesse Hill

If you look to this annual list as a time capsule of styles and aesthetics that permeated the preceding year, look no further than Jesse Hill’s emoji-crazed, fan-made video for Rick Ross’ "Sanctified". There’s much to learn from this funny, flawless evocation of humanity’s newest common tongue—for instance, I did not know the eggplant emoji meant "dick" until I watched this masterpiece. — Corban Goble

Shamir: "On the Regular"



Director: Anthony Sylvester

If only all of us could sum up our personalities as succinctly and attractively as Shamir Bailey does in the clip for "On the Regular", which throws bugged-out eyes, big smiles, and brightly-colored balls at the viewer as the rapper/singer shows why—yes, yes—he’s that guy. — Jeremy Gordon

Sia: "Chandelier"



Director: Sia and Daniel Askill

Eleven-year-old Maddie Ziegler takes Sia's "Chandelier" by the horns, executing an inventive dance routine while flowing through an apartment. We never leave the residence, but the delicate visual framing of the choreography makes this video’s world feel just as explosive and liberating as the song that inspired it. — Molly Beauchemin

Vic Mensa: "Down on My Luck"



Director: Ben Dickinson

If Tom Cruise’s underrated 2014 thriller Edge of Tomorrow—in which a dishonored army publicist is thrown into combat only to learn that every time he dies fighting an alien enemy, he is resurrected at the beginning of the day before the fight—is the alien-movie version of Groundhog Day, then Vic Mensa’s "Down on My Luck" video is the partying version. In the clip, Mensa keeps replaying a calamitous club outing, slowly learning from his mistakes—getting drugged, getting punched, responding to a text he shouldn’t have responded to—to earn his final reward: a hard-won spliff at the end of the night. — Corban Goble

With his album You’re Dead!, Flying Lotus set out to find the "blissful and silly" moments in death. So while a church mourns two children in this video, the kids rise from their coffins with smiles, dance away, and drive off in a hearse. It’s the same old ending, with a new beginning. — Evan Minsker

Via: Pitchfork.