30 Weirdest Music Videos Ever Produced, Ranked
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Music videos. They practically raised some of us and taught us quite a lot about film, cinematography and lighting techniques in the process (little wonder so many movie directors got their start in music videos). They could also make us smile, make us frown or, in certain cases, leave our jaws on the floor.
When some of the most eccentric musicians out there also got their hands on video equipment, the results could be extremely strange. How strange, you ask? Here are 30 of the absolute weirdest music videos ever made.
30. Amazing
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Artist: Aerosmith
Album: Get a Grip
Year released: 1993
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Alicia Silverstone appeared in a string of videos for Aerosmith’s “Get a Grip” album, and that included “Amazing,” which paired her with actor Jason London (of “Dazed and Confused”). In the early-1990s, virtual reality was all the rage in science fiction, so wouldn’t a music video by those Boston rockers use it in a narrative?
London’s character uses a VR headset to jack into an alternate reality wherein he rides a motorcycle with Silverstone hugging his waist. Things are getting hot between them when the real-world fellow spills water all over the keyboard and ruins the moment — which is both a double entendre and rather funny.
29. Hooked on a Feeling
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Artist: David Hasselhoff
Album: Hooked on a Feeling
Year released: 1997
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Where to even begin? Let’s start with the acid tripiness of “the Hoff” venturing his way from “Baywatch” and into music. In this decidedly strange video, Hasselhoff dances with angels, flaps his arms to fly with the birds, levitates sideways above a motorcycle, runs through the Serengeti, cruises past a glacier and goes through about as many wardrobe changes as Cher during an average concert.
Hasselhoff is hard to dislike, but there’s a reason his music career never took off. As bizarro as the video is, it’s still not as jaw-dropping as the Hoff drunkenly chowing down on a cheeseburger.
28. Rock Me Tonite
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Artist: Billy Squier
Album: Signs of Life
Year released: 1984
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Billy Squier has always marched to the beat of his own drum, and for the music video of his 1984 track “Rock Me Tonite,” he went full-on into crazy town, which features Squier alone on a bed singing. That may not sound so strange until you watch Squier thrusting and squirming as if in coitius with an invisibile partner. MTV was only 3 years old at the time, and “Rock Me Tonite” doubtlessly had frantic parents reaching to change the channel.
Fun fact: The video was directed by Kenny Ortega, who later went on to helm the “High School Musical” flicks.
27. Down Under
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Artist: Men at Work
Album: Business as Usual
Year released: 1982
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Yes, “Down Under” is one of the most danceable songs of the 1980s, but have you ever actually sat down and read the lyrics? Well, Colin Hay and his band of merry Aussies had to turn words into images for the music video, which was shot in their native Oz.
Yep, there’s a guy who hands Hay a vegemite sandwich while smiling, and the band members even hop around like kangaroos for good measure. Not exactly the most well thought out tourism commercial, but it did the trick for a four-minute good time.
26. Do What U Like
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Artist: Take That
Album: Take That & Party
Year released: 1992
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Take That was a boy band out of England whose images were plastered up in many a teen girl’s bedroom in the 1990s. And who could blame them, given that they were five young, attractive guys? And because they were so telegenic, it was natural they headed for videography as well.
One of their earliest efforts was “Do What U Like,” which features the quintet against a white background being pelted with food and singing how there is “no need to ask me,” which is a lyric that hasn’t aged particularly well. This is to say nothing of the multiple zoom-in crotch shots. Subtlety need not apply.
25. I Got You Babe
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Artist: Cher and Beavis and Butt-Head
Album: The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience
Year released: 1993
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Humans and animated characters have shared the screen many times before, even in music videos, but never before has there been a music video featuring a romance between an animated character and a human. Never one to turn down a challenge, Cher re-recorded her Sonny & Cher hit “I Got You Babe” in 1993. But this time she’s co-starring with the dim-witted duo from late-night MTV cartoons.
It’s clear that Cher and Butt-Head are vibing with one another, to the point that he tells Beavis to take a hike so he and Cher can, well, get to know each other better.
24. Physical
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Artist: Olivia Newton-John
Album: Physical
Year released: 1981
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Thanks to “Grease,” Olivie Newton-John was an international star right as MTV kicked off. And boy howdy, did people sit up and take notice with Newton-John’s “Physical” video, which might have not attracted much attention had it not been for the fact that the English-Australian singer was surrounded by greased-up, hunky dudes in Speedos pumping iron in the video.
Fine, sex appeal is part of the form, but along with the hunksters, Newton-John was seen basically torturing overweight fellows to lose some pounds. If it was targeting the gay crowd or S&M devotees, the end result is a headscratcher.
23. I’m on a Boat
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Artist: The Lonely Island
Album: Incredibad
Year released: 2009
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
“Saturday Night Live” alum Andy Samberg and his pal Akiva Schaffer blended their comedic styles together in the Lonely Island, under whose aegis they released some decidedly funny tunes. The thing is, even with funny lyrics, to really unleash the laughter, the lyrics sometimes need to be married to images.
Samberg and Schaffer took this to heart with the hilarious video “I’m on a Boat,” for which they enlisted the services of rapper T-Pain. The video finds the trio, well, on a boat (more accurately termed a superyacht) singing of the joys of taking to the sea.
22. We’re Not Gonna Take It
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Artist: Twisted Sister
Album: Stay Hungry
Year released: 1984
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
“What is that, a Twisted Sister pin?! … What do you want to do with your life?!” screamed actor Mark Metcalf at his “son.” The tyke responds, “I wanna rock!” and strums his guitar, which sends his dad flying through the wall.
Then, Dee Snider and his Twister Sister mates show up in their full clownish makeup, to continue torturing Metcalf throughout the rest of the video. It’s Three Stooges meets the MTV generation, and it was one of the first times we saw that music videos could also be comedic.
21. Sledgehammer
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Artist: Peter Gabriel
Album: So
Year released: 1986
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
When you combine a stop-motion capture of the artist with some absolutely whacky animations, the end result is guaranteed to be something unique. Peter Gabriel wouldn’t have had it any other way, which is why the video for “Sledgehammer” was so groundbreaking.
It’s a trip to watch the former Genesis member’s face seemingly skip every other beat of reality while everything he sings about comes magically to life around him. It became one of the biggest videos of the 1980s.
20. Take on Me
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Artist: a-ha
Album: Hunting High and Low
Year released: 1985
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Cartoons and real actors hadn’t largely cohabited since “Mary Poppins,” which may have been why the Swedish band a-ha gave it a whirl with their seminal hit “Take on Me.” In the video, the band members inhabit one reality, while a comic book alternative universe flashes by.
At times, the two meld, for only an instant, before separating again, leading the band — and we the viewers — to ponder big questions about what is really real. Deep, right?
19. You Can Call Me Al
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Artist: Paul Simon
Album: Graceland
Year released: 1986
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Paul Simon’s album “Graceland” is absolute masterwork front to back, but only one of the songs will instantly get people dancing whenever it’s played. “You Can Call Me Al” is insanely catchy and features Simon playing nearly every instrument, be it guitar, bass or even flute.
Because the song is so spritely, Simon opted to make the video as equally jaunty, and he invited pal Chevy Chase along. Chase lip-syncs all of the lyrics, with Simon playing second fiddle (no pun intended) throughout. It’s rather unusual to have someone else be the “star” of your own video, but there you go.
18. Don’t Come Around Here No More
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Artist: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Album: Southern Accents
Year released: 1985
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Clearly, our dear departed Thomas Earl Petty was a fan of the writings of Lewis Carroll, as he and those Heartbreakers filmed themselves in a hallucinogenic ride through Wonderland on this famous video. Naturally, Petty was the Mad Hatter and served as MC of the proceedings as Alice (Louise “Wish” Foley) traverses a twisted version of Carroll’s fables.
It gets especially weird when Alice gets cut up for an otherworldly tea party, but not before Petty/Hatter swallows her whole. Ah, Tom, how we miss you!
17. Black or White
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Artist: Michael Jackson
Album: Dangerous
Year released: 1991
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Director John Landis and the King of Pop teamed up for the monster “Thriller” video in 1983, and they reteamed in 1991 for the first music video from Jackson’s album “Dangerous.” Macauley Culkin and George Wendt lent their star power to the video, which showed Jackson singing with folks of all skin colors — and featured one of the first-ever uses of computer “morphing.”
But what makes it truly bizarre was the coda, in which Jackson smashes a car’s windows for some reason … and then transforms into a jaguar. The video was a Neilsen ratings champ, though the controversial car-smashing, crotch-grabbing section was omitted upon replay thereafter.
16. Black Hole Sun
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Artist: Soundgarden
Album: Superunknown
Year released: 1994
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
If you’ve ever wanted to be trapped inside Tim Burton’s nightmares of suburbia, then go ahead and press play on “Black Hole Sun.” In this grunge effort, the late great Chris Cornell fronts the Seattle band as they sing their way through what can only be described as a creepy apocalypse on acid.
Cornell and Co. float against psychedelic colors while mysteriously cryptic visions of small-town America play themselves out. Enjoy.
15. Sex and Candy
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Artist: Marcy Playground
Album: Marcy Playground
Year released: 1997
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
It’s right there in the title, as lead singer John Wozniak croons, “Mama, this surely is a dream.” Accordingly, the video for “Sex and Candy” takes dream logic to an extreme, with Wozniak and the rest of the band seemingly trapped in what looks like an early, though ultimately rejected, motif for the film “Beetlejuice.”
Wozniak pops his head up through a multicolored chess board and is immediately faced with a really gnarly looking spider. Truly out-of-this-world stuff.
14. When Doves Cry
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Artist: Prince
Album: Purple Rain
Year released: 1984
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
“Purple Rain” was a smash album, single and movie, all featuring the Purple One in his superstar glory. Songs from the album were quickly turned into music videos to capitalize on — and continue — the movie’s popularity, but lordy did MTV have their hands full when “When Doves Cry” hit the airwaves.
Prince starts out the video in a bathtub, in a church no less. Then, he’s seen with his lips dangerously close to a woman’s in said church. This marriage of the sensual and the holy was one of Prince’s trademarks, and it made for a very weird video.
13. Blue (Da Ba Dee)
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Artist: Eiffel 65
Album: Europop
Year released: 1998
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
“The whole world is blue,” the Italian pop group Eiffel 65 sang, and in the music video for this turn-of-the-millennium song, they made it so. Anyone who went out dancing in the late-’90s remembers this repetitive dance track, which found innumerable things to describe as blue.
Strange enough, but then they made the video, which featured outer space gremlins on an intergalactic spaceship who watch tons of TVs on their interstellar journeys. Naturally, the color of the proceedings was … well, ya know.
12. Sock It 2 Me
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Artist: Missy Elliott & Da Brat
Album: Supa Dupa Fly
Year released: 1997
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott landed like a boulder splashing in a pond in 1997, announcing a new and decidedly unique artist on the hip-hop scene. In the video for the song “Sock It 2 Me,” Missy Elliott and Lil’ Kim are shown on an alien planet being chased around by giant robots reminiscent of the old Voltron anime series.
It’s a shoutout to anyone who grew up in the 1980s, but likely a major head scratcher to anyone not versed on Saturday morning cartoons.
11. Gimme Some More
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Artist: Busta Rhymes
Album: Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front
Year released: 1998
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
“Gimme Some More” lives up to its name. It starts out with a Looney Tunes-esque intro that makes it seem we’re in for some lighthearted fun. But things quickly go from slightly animated to bad acid trip when the kid at the heart of the narrative starts transforming and absolutely freaks out his mom, who scapers away screaming.
Not only is it total crazy stuff, but the video shows Busta Rhymes was comfortable subverting the cartoon form in the service of his own art.
10. Schism
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Artist: Tool
Album: Lateralus
Year released: 2001
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Tool has always made weird videos, and then there was “Schism” from 2001. The seven-minute video looks like the discarded outtakes from the “Hellraiser” films, which adds to its otherworldly feeling.
The band members clearly wanted to play in the netherworld, which allowed the actors in the video to imitate those Forbidden City terracotta warriors come to life. This varies with stop motion animation and other creepy effects to produce a totally bizarro-land video.
9. Where’s Your Head At?
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Artist: Basement Jaxx
Album: Rooty
Year released: 2001
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
Who knows what the members of Basement Jaxx were smoking when they rolled cameras on the video for “Where’s Your Heat At?” But the end result is, uh, something else.
It starts out with some dude waking up in a hospital bed and then switches to another scene where the band members’ faces are superimposed onto … monkeys. The scenes change several times, but the monkeys are always there doing their monkey business. Even describing it is weird.
8. The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)
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Artist: Ylvis
Album: The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)
Year released: 2013
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
The artist who calls himself Ylvis (get it, like “Elvis” but with a Y?) is from Norway, where the winters are very cold and the brief summers have sunlight that goes very late into the night. Perhaps that explains some of the weirdness at the center of “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?),” in which the artist and several other people are seen dressed up in animal costumes who make truly ear-splitting noises.
Things don’t get any more normal as it rolls on, and if you can make it to the end of the video, you’re a braver soul than us.
7. Hunter
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Artist: Bjork
Album: Homogenic
Year released: 1997
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
The Icelandic artist Bjork has never really been known for being of the normal stripe, but holy smoke did she go for absolute nuttiness with the video for “Hunter.” The video has Bjork, with a shaved head against a white background, staring at the camera and singing. Sounds kinda normal, right?
But then computer-animated objects start showing up on her head, the singer’s face starts transforming, and Bjork turns the story into a kind of warped, one-woman version of “The Wall.”
6. Hateful Love
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Artist: Little Big
Album: Funeral Rave
Year released: 2015
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
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Naked chicks — with their NSFW bits tastefully concealed — are guaranteed to get eyeballs on a music video, but how many of them have said ladies anthropomorphized as half-human, half-horse creatures? Guaranteed, not many other than “Hateful Love,” from the Russian act known as Little Big.
There’s also a disembodied hand that moves a la Thing from the Addams Family, a model wearing a skateboard made of meat, AR-15s and a whole lot more. Do not watch this video just before bedtime!
5. Turn Down for What
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Artist: DJ Snake & Lil John
Album: N/A
Year released: 2013
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
The single “Turn Down for What” was a huge success in 2013 and was heard at dance clubs around the world. But when it comes to the music video, there’s strange, and then there’s next-level out-there.
The video commences as a fellow on the roof of a building seems to be super agitated, so much so that he falls through the floor and lands in a woman’s apartment and … well, just watch for yourself. Safe to say the video is a hypersexualized ADD fever dream on steroids.
4. Paul
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Artist: Girl Band
Album: Holding Hands With Jamie
Year released: 2015
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
What would it look like if the delightfully avuncular Fred Rogers, instead of loving children and wanting to see them grow into well-functioning adults, had been on a mission to turn them into antisocial hellions?
For the answer to that philosophical query, look no further than the Girl Band’s “Paul,” whose narrative features the making of a fictional TV show that is like the “Dark Mirror” version of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
3. Windowlicker
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Artist: Aphex Twin
Album: Cold Feet
Year released: 1999
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
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Now that’s a lot of profanity! The official music video for the turn-of-the-millenium “Windowlicker” starts off with over four minutes of “story,” as two extremely potty-mouthed fellows try to lure some prostitutes. Mind you, that’s before any actual music commences, but once the notes kick in, it certainly doesn’t get any more PG-rated.
A stretch limo pulls up to reveal Aphex Twin himself, who emerges to do some Moonwalking and promptly invites said women of the evening for a ride in the limo that should never be seen by young eyes.
2. Closer (F*** You Like an Animal)
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Artist: Nine Inch Nails
Album: The Downward Spiral
Year released: 1994
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
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Long before Trent Reznor was a multiple Academy Award-winning composer, he was the nightmare of parents everywhere, what with his decidedly non-copacetic music videos. None was more notorious than “Closer,” which had a subtitle — and lyrics — that can’t be used here. The video was about as profane, with its grotesque imagery that includes animal carcasses on meat hooks and insects of all sorts.
Did we mention that its creator now has two Oscars to his credit?
1. Clowny Clown Clown
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Artist: Crispin Glover
Album: The Big Problem ? The Solution
Year released: 1989
What Makes This Music Video So Weird
When Crispin Hellion Glover is involved in absolutely anything, you know it’s going to be strange. Like uber-strange. As Exhibit A, may we present “Clowny Clown Clown,” a “song” from the mind of Mr. Glover about the “Back to the Future” actor being chased around by a surly looking Bozo.
Glover also directed the video, which starts out with him doing some decidedly unusual dance steps in the middle of the street before spotting the first of many creepy clowns to follow. Then come people in rather abnormal masks that seemingly have nothing to do with clowns. And then it gets stranger still.
For all of these reasons and more, we clown — er, crown — “Clowny Clown Clown” the weirdest video of all time.