IF you are music lover, you will surely have your own favourites, but Rolling Stone magazine has compiled a top 100 of what is says are the greatest music videos of all time. Does it chime with your own choices?
The hot 100?
The music bible says it has compiled “the best music videos of all time", in honour of MTV's anniversary, as the channel began broadcasting 40 years ago this month.
So what was the first ever video?
The inaugural video shown on MTV was ironically, The Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star”. But in his autobiography, Tony Bennett claims he created "...the first music video" when footage of him walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London in 1956 was set to his song "Stranger in Paradise”.
And what makes the list?
Rolling Stone say the hot 100 “are perfect examples of how pairing sound and vision created an entire artistic vocabulary, gave us a handful of miniature-movie masterpieces, and changed how we heard (and saw) music”.
So…?
Rounding off the bottom is, in fact, 'Video Killed the Radio Star", while Sinead O'Connor's simple clip for her 1985 classic "Nothing Compares 2 U", which is primarily a close-up of her singing as tears roll down her cheeks”, is at 94.
What else?
The list features a fairly eclectic selection, including Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” at 80, which the magazine says is full of "care-free late-80s charm", and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" at 64, saying it "changed the music industry forever" helping to "make the song an enormous international hit, inspiring many other groups to follow their lead and make their own videos”.
The top 10?
It features Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" at 10, for showing he could "glide on air", while Guns N'Roses' "November Rain" is at 9, Peter Gabriel's iconic stop-motion "Sledgehammer" is at 8 - and is also the most-aired video in MTV's history. US singer D'Angelo's "Untitled (How Does It Feel?) is at 7, Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" is at 6, New Order's "The Perfect Kiss" is at 5, US star Childish Gambino's "This Is America" is at 4, with Madonna at 3 with her “Vogue” video and then Johnny Cash's "Hurt" at 2, showing his last major appearance on film.
So what takes the top spot?
Beyonce’s 2016 video “Formation” is number one for its “striking commentary on significant moments in black American history”, showing her dancing in “a plantation-style house where the black denizens are the masters not the slaves” before the film moves to “the top of a sinking police car.”
Are videos as popular now?
MTV is still on the go, but YouTube is the most popular video platform, with Formation, for example, having a quarter of a billion views, while views of over one billion are common for artists such as Taylor Swift - her song Blank Space has nearly 3 billion views on YouTube, making 67 in the Rolling Stone chart.
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