The 40 Best Music Videos Of 2014

 

Next year, YouTube will celebrate its 10th anniversary. For nearly a decade, then, music videos have belonged almost entirely to the internet. Once upon a time, video directors made their work for TV, expecting you to run across their images when you were flipping through channels. By the time YouTube hit its second year, that was out the window. People were making videos without any expectation that they’d ever be on TV, and that meant an entirely different set of rules and aims and ideas. That’s been the case for long enough, now, that the internet music video has developed its own auteurs, filmmakers with bodies of work that can compete with what Hype Williams or Mark Romanek once did. In the past few years, the internet music video has even found its Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, the brilliant minds who reshaped the form.

Nabil and Hiro Murai are two of the greatest music video directors we’ve ever seen, and both are peaking right now, making stunning videos with freaky regularity and developing their own visual and narrative sensibilities. 2014, for these two, feels a bit like 1997, the year Gondry came out with “Around The World” and “Bachelorette” and “Everlong,” finally equaling what Jonze was doing and maybe beating him at his own game. Nabil has dominated for the past few years, but he only shows up three times on this list. Murai is on there four times, and he’s got the highest spot on the list. He’s the head music video director in charge right now. Someone needs to let these two make their Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. (Grant Singer is on the list three times, as well, so throw him in that group as the Chris Cunningham.)

This list is entirely generated by one person, and that person is me. The list reflects my tastes and ideas and predilections. It’s not objective, and there’s no way it could be. Plenty of worthy and important videos did not make the list, and it might look different if I made it again tomorrow. I switched the #1 and #2 videos back and forth as I was writing it, and I might switch them back again if given a chance. But every one of the videos on the list below is worth your time.

40. Childish Gambino – “Telegraph Ave” (Dir. Hiro Murai)


A beautifully shot tropical love story suddenly becomes a genuinely unsettling monster movie, and I suddenly find myself wishing this was an entire feature.

39. Municipal Waste – “Miserable Failure” (Dir. Whitey McConnaughy)


The new gold standard for every skate-metal video, from now until forever.

38. YG – “My Nigga (Remix)” (Feat. Rich Homie Quan, Lil Wayne, Meek Mill & Nicki Minaj) (Dir. Motion Family)


The formula for black-and-white posse cut videos hasn’t changed since Hype Williams Made “Flava In Ya Ear (Remix).” It doesn’t need to. Sometimes, rampant charisma and liberal use of slow-motion is all you need. Sometimes, it ain’t broke.

37. Steve Gunn & Mike Cooper – “Pony Blues” (Dir. Champ Ensminger)


There are lots of Ensminger could’ve gone with this atmospheric Americana hymn. I wouldn’t have expected “a beautiful and absorbing retelling of an old Thai ghost story” to be one of them, but that’s why I’m not a music video director.

36. Queens Of The Stone Age – “Smooth Sailing” (Dir. Hiro Murai)


If you’re at the bar and you see Josh Homme and a crew of drunk Japanese businessmen walk in, just leave. Trouble’s a-brewing, and you don’t want any part of it.

35. Ariel Pink – “Put Your Number In My Phone” (Dir. Grant Singer)


I am on record hating Ariel Pink and almost everything he does. But this video exists at some uncanny nexus between Lynch, Kubrick, and Clueless, and how could I hate that?

34. Disclosure – “Grab Her!” (Dir. Emile Sornin)


The British Office was a television classic, but it had one fatal flaw: I didn’t give David Brent superpowers. Finally, years later, someone has come along and fixed that oversight.

33. Phantoms – “Broken Halo” (Feat. Nicholas Braun) (Dir. Ace Norton)


I have never been to a wedding this interesting, and that bothers me.

32. Shamir – “On The Regular” (Dir. Antony Sylvester)


The late-’90s/early-’00s Busta/Missy hyper-cartoon aesthetic, used in service of a teeage Vegas club kid who suddenly looks like he’s about to be a huge, shining star.

31. Dizzee Rascal – “Pagans” (Dir. Emile Sornin)


Dizzee opens the video practicing kung fu while in the Van Damme splits, and that’s somehow the most sedate part of the whole video. I don’t know why we don’t get more videos where rappers deal martial arts death to faceless opponents. It’s not like this approach has ever yielded a bad video.

30. Skrillex – “Fuck That” (Dir. Nabil)


Starts as a beautifully photographed and weirdly understated showcase for the French-Moroccan character actor Saïd Taghmaoui. Becomes an underground fighting movie, a car chase, a mystical vision, and, ultimately, a piece of Wu-Tang Clan product placement. Bong bong.

29. Action Bronson – “Easy Rider” (Dir. Tom Gould)


Best cinematic barfight of the year, unless we’re counting the nightclub massacre from John Wick. Best cinematic acid trip of the year, without qualification. Best cinematic guitar solo of the year, and nothing else was close.

28. “Weird Al” Yankovic – “Tacky” (Dir. “Weird Al” Yankovic)


Goofy costumes, parody videos, and music-video celebrity cameos are all thoroughly played-out ideas. You could even say the same about long tracking shots. And yet “Weird Al” took all of these things and made them sing. There’s a reason he’s been here longer than most of us have been alive.

27. Le1f – “Sup” (Dir. Jesse Miller-Gordon)


Le1f has made consistently great videos since we first met him a couple of years ago. But he’s never found a look better than “apocalyptic sci-fi traveler.” He should maybe stick with that one.

26. Trash Talk x Flatbush Zombies – “97.92″ (Dir. APLUSFilmz)


It’s amazing how a new piece of technology — a 360-degree camera mounted on a drone — can make the world look like an entirely new, much cooler place.

25. Mark Ronson – “Uptown Funk” (Feat. Bruno Mars) (Dir. Bruno Mars & Cameron Duddy)


In which Bruno Mars figures out that the best — possibly the only — way to make himself look cool is to imagine a world in which circa-1986 Jonathan Demme had directed a movie about Morris Day & The Time.

24. Taylor Swift – “Blank Space” (Dir. Joseph Kahn)


There is a distinct possibility that Taylor Swift’s been a femme fatale this whole time, that she’s either just figuring it out now or we are. Either way, she just made her first-ever great video, so be afraid.

23. FKA twigs – “Video Girl” (Dir. Kahlil Joseph)


Worst thing about the Sony Pictures hack (other than everything else about it): The sad knowledge that nobody has yet floated the idea of a horror movie built around FKA twigs. These executives need to stop semi-illiterately threatening each other and start watching this video.

22. Sky Ferreira – “I Blame Myself” (Dir. Grant Singer)


Ferreira already did a nice job deflecting charges of racial weirdness in this particular video, so let’s all just hail her for bringing back the dancing-gangs video. That genre was away for far too long.

21. Garden City Movement – “Move On” (Dir. Michael Moshonov & Lael Utnik)


A story of love and loss, told so simply and filmed so beautifully that it comes out looking like one long filmic sigh.

20. Arca – “Thievery” (Dir. Jesse Kanda)


Sometimes, you twerk into the void. Sometimes, the void twerks back at you.

19. Nicki Minaj – “Pills N Potions” (Dir. Diane Martel)


Despair and attraction, hyper-stylized, with a cute bunny and a headless Game. If we want anything more from a Nicki Minaj video, we’re not being realistic. (We still got it, though. See #5.)

18. Ariel Pink – “Picture Me Gone” (Dir. Grant Singer)


There’s a cold sweep to Ariel Pink and Grant Singer’s two videos together. This is both the better and the more expansive of the two, and it tells a lovely story of human connection if and only if you can get around the galling creepiness of the whole latex-mask thing.

17. Warpaint – “Disco // Very” & “Keep It Healthy” (Dir. Laban Pheidias)


Charisma is a difficult thing to quantify. But the particular form of Californian girl-solidarity boho-stoner charisma on display in this video is a powerful force indeed.

16. Fucked Up – “The Art Of Patrons” (Dir. Andy Capper & Mike Haliechuk)


The tour-life stuff is great, complete and tangible in a way that tour-life music videos almost never are. But it’s the coming-home-to-kids stuff that knocks me dead.

15. Kiesza – “Hideaway” (Dir. Kiesza, Ljuba Castot & Rami Samir Afunik)


When a silly dance video is a masterfully executed silly dance video, it doesn’t really need to be anything else.

14. Real Estate – “Crime” (Dir. Tom Schapling)


The self-reflexive music video is a difficult thing to pull off. It helps to just pile on the ridiculousness. It helps even more to be Tom Scharpling.

13. Beyoncé – “7/11″ (Dir. Beyoncé)


Oh hey, Beyoncé apparently made this thing with just a GoPro and a selfie stick, possibly while drunk, in case you ever felt like you had any talent at anything.

12. Perfume Genius – “Grid” (Dir. Charlotte Rutherford)


History will show that, in 2014, Mike Hadreas saved glam rock forever, and that he did it by acting out extremely strange visions like this one.

11. Future Islands – “Seasons (Waiting On You)” (Dir. Jay Buim)


In a way, this video was a failure. The song was huge and omnipresent, and the video did nothing to shape its visual perception in the world at large. It would be hard for any video to overshadow the band’s incredible Letterman performance. But on its own merits, what a beautiful video — a rich and humane and sympathetic portrait of a family, and a lifestyle, and a part of America that never gets a chance to show up in music videos.

10. Bobby Shmurda – “Hot Nigga” (Dir. MainEFeTTi)


Kids bunch up on Brooklyn streetcorners, throw gang signs at cameras, rap over stolen instrumentals from established rappers. This isn’t exactly a new scenario. And yet this excessively low-budget burst of animosity was enough to get a hook-free mixtape freestyle into Billboard’s top 10 and to get major-label deals for not only Bobby Shmurda but also for Rowdy Rebel, who just dances in the background. Some of the credit goes to that great little Shmoney Dance interlude, the hat that flies into the air and never comes back down. Mostly, though, this is raw and unvarnished charisma of the sneering teenage variety. We could always use more of that.

9. Spoon – “Do You” (Dir. Hiro Murai)


Britt Daniel confronts apocalypse in exactly the way you’d hope, piloting his classic car through urban desolation and never adjusting his thousand-yard stare. Murai takes his time in revealing the exact nature of the apocalypse, and when it arrives, it’s maybe the single most weirdly joyous moment on this list.

8. FKA twigs – “Two Weeks” (Dir. Nabil)


The slow, languorous, unbroken pan-out was clearly the music-video camera move of the year, and it never got more rapturously strange than it did here. Music videos can make stars, or they can plunge us into a musicians’ dreamworld. Every once in a while, they do both.

7. Lydia Ainsworth – “Malachite” (Dir. Matthew Lessner)


Please, someone, make the nightmare-universe Step Up sequel that this video hints at.

6. HAIM – “If I Could Change Your Mind” (Dir. Warren Fu)


There’s probably a way to invoke instant joy more easily than showing people who don’t usually dance dancing really well. I just don’t know what it is.

5. Nicki Minaj – “Lookin’ Ass” (Dir. Nabil)


2014 may have given us no greater pop-feminist image than fishnet-catsuited desert princess warrior Nicki Minaj shooting two assault rifles at once, ripping up the sand dunes.

4. Freeway & Girl Talk – “Tolerated” (Feat. Waka Flocka Flame) (Dir. Allen Cordell)


The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” video was a classic, but it had one big issue. Richard Ashcroft just bumped into passersby. He never, say, ripped off a random assailant’s arm and then threw it to Waka Flocka Flame. Somehow, I never realized this was a problem until now.

3. clipping. – “Work Work” (Feat. Cocc Pistol Cree) (Dir. Carlos Lopez Estrada)


I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched this thing, and I still have no idea what it means. But try getting that hovering foot or that stumbling headless body out of your mind. You can’t.

2. Perfume Genius – “Queen” (Dir. Cody Critcheloe)


Pointed, identity-based surrealism so vivid and evocative that it can swallow everything up around it, pulling you along on whatever inexplicable thing it wants to do next. This one lingers.

1. Flying Lotus – “Never Catch Me” (Feat. Kendrick Lamar) (Dir. Hiro Murai)


In the couple of months since this video hit the internet, it’s somehow become even more poignant, as we’ve been treated to the image of police departments nationwide bristling at the idea that they shouldn’t be murdering unarmed black kids with impunity. Here, we see two black kids exuberantly and beautifully dancing their way out of their own funeral, and it’s enough to break your heart. Black lives matter, you assholes. Obviously.

Via: Stereogum. 

The 20 Best Music Videos of 2014 (losinrocks)

20) OK Go – “I Won’t Let You Down” (Director: Kazuaki Seki and Damian Kulash, Jr. )


19) Little Dragon – “Pretty Girls” (Dir: Nabil)


18) Panda Bear – “Mr Noah” (Dir. AB/CD/CD)
 

17) She & Him – “Stay Awhile”


16) Röyksopp – “Skulls” (Dir: Stian Andersen & Röyksopp)


15) Spoon – “Inside Out” (Video edited by Mau Morgó. Photos by Todd Baxter.)


14) Mac DeMarco – “Passing Out Pieces” (Dir: Pierce McGarry)


13) tUnE-yArDs – “Water Fountain” (Dir: Joel Kefali)
 

12) Clipping – “Inside Out” (Dir: Carlos Lopez Estrada)


11) Ariel Pink – “Picture Me Gone” (Dir: Grant Singer)


10) The War on Drugs – “Under The Pressure” (Dir: Houmam)


9) alt-j – “Every Other Freckle” (Dir: Olivier Groulx)
 
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8.) Michael Jackson / Justin Timberlake – “Love Never Felt So Good”


7) Chet Faker – “Gold” (Director: Hiro Murai)


6) Pharrell Williams – “It Girl” (Dir: Mr. and Fantasista Utamaro)


5) Metronomy – “Month of Sundays”


4) Flying Lotus – “Never Catch Me” (Dir: Hiro Murai)


3) Philip Selway – “Coming Up For Air” (Dir: NYSU)

 
2) Paul McCartney – “Early Days”


1) Perfume Genius – “Queen” (Dir: Cody Critcheloe)



Bonus Tracks

a) Rick Ross (feat. Kanye West & Big Sean) – “Sanctified” (Unofficial Emoji Video)


b) Kim Gordon + Nirvana – “Aneurysm” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The 10 Best Music Videos Of 2014 Of Argentina

10. Ignacio Herbojo – “Niebla” (Dir: ODΛ)


9. Lo Pibitos – “Sintonía” (Dir: Julian Pedro Gonzalez Diaz)


8. Mi Amigo Invencible – “Los pájaros” (Dir: Lucía Iglesias)


7. Fede Haro – “Yo sé” (Dir: Federico Haro)


6. Mariscal de Campo – “Dejame” (Dir: Mauro Quiroga) 


5. Diosque – “Una naranja” (Dir: Agustín Carbonere)


4. Babasónicos – “Aduana de palabras” (Dir:Juan Cabral )


3. Juana Molina – “Lo decidí yo” (Dir: Juana Molina & Mario Caporali)


2. Manuel Onís (con Martín Buscaglia) – “De los pelos” (Dir: Mario Caporali)


1. Los Reyes del Falsete (con Litto Nebbia) – “Los Niños” (Sebastián López)

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.