Really enjoyed reading that!
HLTW doesn’t win the greatest video ever made for me. Out of the selected 25 here, I’d choose Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes as without Steve Strange there would be no (so called) New Romantic movement.
The cartoon theme of A-ha’s Take on Me was top drawer innovation. From a hormonal teen’s perspective I wanted to be Morten in the story - I also think the movie Ghost channeled it’s ‘land of make believe’ approach to a love story.
Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ was way ahead of its time. It was classic pub video juke box material. I was mesmerised by its complexity and sheer cleverness to the point I watched every second just as I would a really good thriller.
I do recall the furore behind ‘Like a Prayer’ and Madonna was the Queen of controversy. I am not God fearing, so while the depiction of a black Christ was somewhat strange, it had no effect on me. But I can see why it would offend. Still a fantastic production and remains Madonna’s greatest video.
As for Duran Duran, there were far better videos than HLTW and they didn’t need sun kissed beaches, exotic locations or mud-slinging, naked girls to film them. ‘Skin Trade’ and ‘Notorious’ are high on my list for not being pretentious. They were both equally stylishly cut and catapulted the band into serious muso’s with a refined art. Together with the funk grooves, the classy dark back drop of ‘Notorious’ made it as DD’s version of a Hitchcock movie. As for ‘Skin Trade’ I could quite easily see Simon morphing into Prince.
I can’t believe ‘Wild Boys’ doesn't get a mention?? I see that MJ gets three mentions and DD only get one - perhaps it’s a USA thing? But I’d vote ‘Wild Boys’ because of how massive the Mad Max apocalyptic movies were at the time. The choreography of the dancing war boys is just fantastic and spellbinding. Yes, it was pretentious (alien head coming out of water), but it helped sell bucketloads of the 12” and it still is brilliant entertainment! Runners up prizes would go to ‘DYBIS?’, ‘Ordinary World’, and ‘White Lines’.
From a UK’s perspective there are a lot bigger and more *influential* videos than the 25 featured here that certainly helped MTV launch - or helped each other. It’s a shame that the video promo seems to be dying a death these days. Just goes to prove that the eighties (edit: and nineties!) were really the best at everything musical.