BEST ROCK VIDEOS EVER IN THE 90S

 

When MTV(Music Television) was first introduced to the people, it became an outlet for the rock artists to show not only their creativity in making music but also their ideas for a rowdy and satisfying music video. Since the 90s became the birth of rock metal. Below is our seven(7) Best rock videos:

 

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from Discogs

 

A different vision of school as Hell, albeit one that looked a lot more fun than anything Roger Waters and Gerald Scarfe cooked up. Samuel Bayer’s video for Nirvana’s career-making single subverted the high-school pep rally, turning it into an anarchic free-for-all complete with slow-motion cheerleaders, and kids storming down from the bleachers (including future Fear Factory singer Burton C Bell) while a janitor keeps time with his mop like a human metronome. Kurt Cobain’s face is obscured almost all the way through, either by the demonic sepia-tinged lighting or his own lank fringe – ironic, given how famous he became (he insisted on the leering close up at the end). The mini-riot that ends the clip was a product of dozens of kids being forced to sit in their seats all day: actively encouraged by Cobain, it pretty much foreshadowed what was just around the corner for Nirvana.

 

Foo Fighters - Learn To Fly (1999)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from IMD.org

 

Dave Grohl loves to dress up, and if he’s going to do it, dammit, so are the rest of the Foo Fighters. The unarguable visual high point of their career so far is the video for their soaring 1999 single. A warm-hearted spoof of the Airport disaster movie series, it begins with guest star Jack Black and Kyle Gass of Tenacious D hiding their drugs in an aeroplane’s coffee machine, only for things to go predictably wrong. Cue a parade of increasingly off-their-rockers characters all played by Grohl and co: a team of swaggering pilots, camp cabin crew, an overweight family, a starstruck teenage girl and, uh, a rock star who looks suspiciously like Dave Grohl. The frontman is having a blast, although not as much as Taylor Hawkins as a gum-chewing female flight attendant. Why it took the band so long to make their own movie, god only knows. 

 

Twisted Sister - We're Not Gonna Take It (1984)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from Pinterest

“Whaddya wanna do with your life?!” “I wanna rock!” If ever MTV metal had a clarion call, the pay-off at the end of the

extended intro to Twisted Sister’s greatest video provided it. The channel was invented for Dee Snider and co, and the video for their classic 1984 anthem saw these New York club veterans embracing the medium wholeheartedly. Animal House star Mark Metcalf played the ultimate repressive suburban dad with gritted-teeth glee, watching his teenage son transform into a Snider-shaped mass of hair and eyeliner, then hopelessly attempting to stop these long-haired deviants from rampaging through his house like the most terrifying RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants ever. Sure, in the cold light of day it’s funny that this generation-gap anthem came from a bunch of men pushing 30 and beyond, but let’s not split hairs – socking it to the grown-ups has never looked so much fun.

​

​

 Guns N' Roses - November Rain (1992)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from Snackkle

 

November Rain was the singer’s years-in-making magnum opus, and it received the video it deserved: a visually stunning, utterly incoherent nine-minute clip that cost upwards of $1.5 million (still $3.5 million cheaper than the lesser promo for Estranged, mind). Ostensibly based on a short story by Axl sidekick Del James, and starring the singer’s real-life wife-to-be Stephanie Seymour, it played out like the world’s most expensive wedding home video, intercut with scenes of the band and orchestra playing at LA’s Orpheum Theater. Yet for all Axl’s hubris, it’s Slash who steals the show, exiting the opulent marriage ceremony and suddenly finding himself outside a tiny white chapel in the middle of the desert, where, naturally, he peels off a solo with a guitar that’s materialised out of nowhere. The whole thing is utterly bonkers, borderline hilarious and strangely moving at the same time. They don’t make ’em like this any more. In fairness, they didn’t back then either.

 

Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall (1979)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from Discog.com

 

The bleakest No.1 single of the 1970s got one of the most harrowing videos ever made. The drab panoramic cityscape and footage of damp, brown alleyways that opens Another Brick In The Wall (Pt 2) screams ‘late-70s urban hopelessness’. 

 

But it’s Gerald Scarfe’s surreal, malevolent visuals that stick in the mind: the hammer-headed headmaster; the vision of school as a mincing machine with the kids as meat; the ranks of fascistic goose-stepping hammers; the towering white wall wrapping in on itself; all repeated over and over again. 

 

By contrast, the choir of kids bathed in demonic red light singing ‘We don’t need no education’ was the closest the whole thing got to light relief. This was the movie inside Roger Waters’s head, brought vividly and unsettlingly to life.

 

Van Halen - Hot For Teacher (1984)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from Genius.com

 

Poor old Waldo. He really wasn’t like other the other kids. But this bespectacled geek provided the flashpoint for the greatest ‘kids take over the classroom’ video ever made. It’s an absolute riot from beginning to end, whether that's the four teenage Van Halen mini-mes staring bug-eyed as their teacher whips off her day clothes and performs a bikini-clad dance in front of them, the real-life band own rhythmically challenged song-and-dance routine, that lascivious spoken-word breakdown section (“I got my pencil… Now gimme something to write on!”) or the sight of Eddie Van Halen blazing a guitar solo as he stalks along a row of school desks like a panther. 

 

Metallica - One

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image from Pinterest

 

Metallica spent most of the 80s stubbornly refusing to make a music video, reasoning that capitulating to MTV would be tantamount to selling out. When they did finally deliver a promo, it was for their powerful anti-war anthem One – and it was made entirely on their terms, and all the more powerful for it. The song itself was based on Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun, about a limbless WWI soldier who wanted to die, and the video leaned heavily on the 1971 movie version. Moody yet striking footage of the band playing in a vast warehouse was intercut with harrowing clips from the film, while snippets of dialogue provided a ghostly narration. The video has been played so often that the band reportedly bought the rights to the film to save on royalties. As with so many things they did, it showed that there were two ways of doing things: Metallica’s way, and everyone else’s way.