Follow Billboard. All rights reserved. Who says the music video is dead? In the first half of , mega-stars and indie auteurs alike turned to the medium to add a new layer to their existing tracks, and came up with some of the coolest clips in recent memory. From Taylor Swift beating bad guys to Shamir 's puppet theater to Maroon 5 's cheer-worthy wedding antics, these 10 music videos stood out from the hundreds released over the past six months. Following up the "Chandelier" video should have been a difficult task for Sia; recasting Maddie Ziegler as a mini-Sia in a pseudo-sequel should have been impossible to pull off successfully. Instead, the enigmatic pop singer mined another imaginative concept involving a birdcage, Shia LaBeouf and a stunningly powerful expression of loss at its conclusion. If Maroon 5's "Sugar" is arguably the band's most irresistible pop-rock confection of its V era, then the "Sugar" music video is definitely the band's most unabashedly grin-inducing visual in recent memory. Only the coldest cynic could dismiss the charms of this multi-wedding sneak attack.


Young Thug "Best Friend"
Fetty Wap "679"
Pop music dominated YouTube this year, with arena-filling acts making blockbuster-type music videos. These mostly hip-hop and pop stars incited us want to shimmy and shake, mimicking dance moves as we saw them. But here at Paste , we noticed another trend with music videos this year. Some artists used their music videos as spaces to share messages of social import—from body image to the refugee crisis to police brutality. But the very best music videos of were able to do both. The year-old rapper gets people of all ages—from soccer moms and Stepford wives to high-schoolers and small children to perfect his patented moves. Everyone from talk show hosts to sports coaches have been doing the whip and nae nae this year. Good Grief is scheduled to come out on March 11, Film director Paul Thomas Anderson conceptualized this seven-minute music video. This nearlyminute epic is the perfect way to announce a new David Bowie album.
We asked, you voted! All of the represented albums have been heard on The Current but unlike the airwaves, YouTube isn't regulated by the FCC, so fair warning: Featured videos are slightly NSFW as they all include some combination of violence, gore, language or sexual content. Be sure to tune in to The Current's listener-curated Top 89 countdown on Dec. CT with a rebroadcast on New Year's Day starting at 10 a. As someone who has never seen a second of Game of Thrones , Modest Mouse's video for "The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box" has convinced me that I've seen a sneak preview of the series finale before it's aired. Sporting gold leggings, a fur cape and a scrap metal crown, frontman Isaac Brock is a positively possessed pompous king who stomps across a vast land of garbage occupied by fairies with wings made of plastic bags.
Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive. The art of the music video is in a strange place in TV channels that actually air them are an endangered species, but on YouTube, where a few music videos have now racked up over a billion views, a good video can turn a nobody into a star and make a hit song iconic. And while there are some superstars who can still command expensive CGI effects and big-name cameos, most of the best videos in popular music rely on cheap old-fashioned virtues like charisma, choreography, humor, and storytelling. Every couple years, Drake takes a break from rapping to sing a full-on pop smash. FKA twigs rose to fame thanks to the otherworldly aesthetic of both her music and her videos, which she often co-directs.