29 Music Video Facts That’ll Have You Dying to Get Into the A/V Club

Music videos. You can hear them, you can see them, and hey, maybe one day you can smell them
29 Music Video Facts That’ll Have You Dying to Get Into the A/V Club
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Music videos hit two of the five senses, and that’s good enough for us. We don’t need to be smelling, tasting or feeling any of these, so we’re okay with seeing and hearing. Well, if we were a tad creepier, those other three senses would be nice to hit, too. But we’re not!

We’re nice, non-perverted pre-list blurb writers who just want to enjoy music videos for what they are — things to hear and watch. Not “watch” as in… 

You know what? We can’t dig ourselves out of this hole. Just enjoy these music video facts and get out of here, would ya?

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Phil Collins

PHIL COLLINS & BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY CRACKED.COM Bone Thugs-N-Harmony flew to Switzerland so Phil could sing live in the music video for Home. The collab went so well that the band made Collins an honorary member. His Bone Thugs-N-Harmony name? Chrome Bone.

Garth Brooks

GARTH BROOKS THUNDER ROLLS CRACKED.COM Good luck finding this video on YouTube (although it's on the Internet if you want to dig). Brooks plays an abusive husband who actually strikes down his wife in front of his young daughter. CMT wouldn't air the clip but it still won the CMA Video of the Year.

Britney Spears

BRITNEY SPEARS HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME CRACKED.COM The video's director caught flack for featuring the former Mouseketeer grinding in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit. All I did was tie up my shirt, protested Britney. I didn't do anything. Then again, she seems to know she was up to something: I'm not that innocent.

Billy Idol

BILLY IDOL CRADLE OF LOVE CRACKED.COM You might think the troubling part is the young neighbor crawling in her bra and panties to seduce the Business Guy. But MTV banned the video for featuring Adventures of Ford Fairlaine clips. (Andrew Dice Clay got a lifetime ban for telling naughty nursery rhymes at the MTV Video Music Awards.)

Eddie Murphy

EDDIE MURPHY & MICHAEL JACKSON GRAGKED.COM They were both 80s icons but it's hard to imagine what else brought these two together. Watch for early greenscreen technology (is it raining Michael Jacksons?) and a handshake at the end, some kind of gentlemen's agreement that Whatzupwitu was a terrible, terrible idea.

Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave

KYLIE MINOGUE & NICK CAVE CRACKED.COM The pop princess and the Bad Seed teamed up for an unlikely love song. I had a quiet obsession with her for about six years, says Cave. It was only when I wrote this song, which is a dialogue between a killer and his victim, that I thought I'd written the right song for Kylie to sing. Creepy.

The First Music Video in Space

THE FIRST MUSIC VIDEO RECORDED IN SPACE IS COMMANDER CHRIS HADFIELD'S COVER OF DAVID BOWIE'S SPACE ODDITY. It's also the first remote musical DAVID ВОШӀЕ Space collaboration from outside the Earth: Dadity the vocals and guitar were recorded on the International Space Station, the piano in Toronto, the track was produced in Los Angeles and posted on YouTube on May 12, 2013. CRACKED.COM

Kanye

ONE OF KANYE'S FAVS CRACKED.COM Kanye West has gone on record (Twitter) by stating that Akira and There Will Be Blood are equally his favorite movies ever. Не even went as far as to parallel a lot of the scenes in the anime classic in his music video for Stronger.

Thriller

US CRACKED.COM In the opening, we see that young Adelaide is wearing a Thriller T-shirt. At the end of the film, Adelaide is revealed to secretly be one of the Tethered, and Michael Jackson is revealed to be some kind of monster in the final frame of the Thriller music video.

Lisa Loeb

Ethan Hawke Не directed the music video for Lisa Loeb's Stay. Loeb was part of Hawke's theater company back then. She hadn't even been signed by a label when her hit came out in the mid-'90s. CRACKED.COM

Pharrell

Pharrell made only $2,700 in songwriter royalties from 43 million plays of Нарру on Pandora. Happy was nominated for Best Music Video and Best Pop Solo Performance in 2015, but that didn't help his cut from the streaming service, where a million streams yields roughly just $60 in royalties. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Cardi B

The WAP music video spent $100,000 just on Covid testing. Every single person on the shoot had to get tested. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Paula Abdul

AT A GLANCE KEANU REEVES Не was in a Paula Abdel music video. Не was in 1991's Rush Rush music, re-imagining James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. CRACKED.COM

Akon

The country of Sri Lanka prohibited Akon from ever going there. The problem? Akon's music video, which shows a wild pool party taking place in front of a Buddha statue. CRACKED.COM

DJ Snake and Lil Jon

DJ Snake & Lil Jon's Turn Down for What music video influenced Captain America: Civil War. The lighting style and the overall look of the scene in Bucky's apartment were partly based on that video. CRACKED.COM

Weird Al

Jordan Peele Не appeared in a Weird Al Yankovic video. Key and Peele show up in the music video for Yankovic's White & Nerdy, freaking out at just how white and how nerdy Al is. CRACKED.COM

Snoop Dogg

Celebrity Endorsements Snoop Dogg parodied himseTt for Hot Pockets. In 2012, Snoop recorded a parody of his hit Drop It Like It's Hot called Pocket Like It's Hot to advertise the microwavable calzone-ish pastry. Не even recorded a full-length music video for it. CRACKED.COM HOT POCKETS

Nine Inch Nails

David Fincher wanted the director of NIN'sCloser to make the title sequence. A fan of the music video, Fincher suggested director Mark Romanek to do the movie's titles. But designer Kyle Cooper insisted on doing it himself. SEVEN CRACKED.COM

Ariana Grande

She Was Cast In An Ariana Grande Music Video CRACKED.COM Coolidge first discovered Ariana Grande was a fan after Grande did a pretty accurate impression of her on The Tonight Show. In response, Coolidge sent Grande a DM telling her she loved the impression which eventually led her to reprise her role from Legally Blonde in the Thank You Next music video.

Miley Cyrus

Beloved celebrities who used to be hated MILEY CYRUS got a lot of flak fo BRY - - her twerking routine. During her performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, people were wondering if she was on MDMA (or molly). CRACKED

A-ha

A-ha's TAKE ON ME blended live action and animation. Director Steve Barron and animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger used a technique called rotoscoping, which involves tracing over live-action footage, frame by frame. Four months and over 3,000 drawings later, they had arguably the most iconic music video of all time. CRACKED

OK Go

OK Go was a pioneer in viral music videos. Their treadmill choreography in 2009's Here It Goes Again was a massive hit that led to their rube goldberg machine video for This Too Shall Pass. With a crew of 60 people, the machine synced up with the song itself and took roughly 60 takes to complete. CRACKED

Madonna

The world first saw an empowered female artist through Madonna's videos She is cited by Encyclopedia Britannica as the first female artist to fully exploit the potential of the music video. Her '80s videos for Like a Virgin and Material Girl paved the way for every female artist to follow. CRACKED

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson's THRILLER is so much more than a music video. In December 1983, the 13-minute short film was solely responsible for increasing MTV's ratings tenfold. It is the only music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. CRACKED

Queen

Rolling Stone said that Queen's BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY invented the music video. It only took four hours and £3,500 to make, but its success in 1975 had every record company thinking about video! Director Bruce Gowers became a star, and went on to make videos for the Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson, and Prince. CRACKED

Total Request Live

MTV'S TOTAL REQUEST LIVE WAS A DAILY MUSIC VIDEO COUNTDOWN SHOW PULL SN Before YouTube, we had to patiently wait for Carson Daly to introduce one minute clips of our favorite music videos. CRACKED.COM

Yacht

CRACKED L.A. band Yacht created a fake sex tape to promote their new album. The whole story was fiction and a scheme weeks in the making to advertise a new music video. Activists say the stunt may make it harder for revenge porn victims to be believed.

Oingo Boingo

Canada banned the Oingo Boingo song Little Girls. The Independent named it as the creepiest music video of all time, but Danny Elfman still maintains it was written as a facetious jab and satire. CRACKED.COM

Beyonce

A Beyonce video inspired an Australian skyscraper. The architects behind Melbourne's Premier Tower based the building's shape on women in Beyonce's Ghost, who look like, well, writhing ghosts wrapped in fabric. CRACKED.COM

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