The Best Animated Music Videos, Vol. 1

This new Retro series celebrates the best exemplars of the comic arts and music in juxtaposition. The videos in this series are considered some of the most historically important ones ever made.

ABOVE: A draft still from the video for “Take on Me” by Norwegian pop band a-ha.

{Note: Each entry in this series includes ten music videos released from 1984 to the present. Each video significantly incorporates the structure and/or logic of the comic arts in some way, from the use of hand-penciled drawings to digital renderings and even claymation. The music included in this series ranges widely in terms of genre; viewers should also be aware that the film rating for the music videos included in the series varies widely as well, from “G” to “R.”}

Introduction

I’ve wanted to launch an ongoing series like this one at Retro for a very long time.

As a child, my favorite song was “Take on Me” by a-ha, the music video for which quickly became famous for its superlative integration of the comic arts and music. As I grew older, I kept looking for songs whose music videos included cartoons or comic strips in some fashion, as I invariably found them much more interesting than almost anything else that was then on MTV. Given the choice between an animated music video and yet another dull affair in which a band is seen listlessly or melodramatically playing its instruments, I’ll choose the former every time.

Apparently, I’m not alone. In 2001, Blur frontman Damon Albarn released the first LP from Gorillaz, a virtual band depicted exclusively via animation. The group became an international hit—even earning an entry in The Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Successful Virtual Band”—and all of its videos (many of which will be featured in this series) have since become must-watch multimedia for music-lovers and lovers of the visual arts alike.

The trend of using cartoons, comics, and/or the logic and/or conventions of the comic arts in music videos has been ongoing for almost 40 years, from the aforementioned “Take on Me” and Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” (1985) through, well, the best music videos released each year of the 2020s, which often feature cartoons or comics or media (like claymation) that require videomakers to think more in the language of the visual arts than is the case with the typical docudrama or live-concert formats we often see in music videos.

I’ve also been thinking for a long time about how to make the Comics section of Retro more than just a celebration of printed materials in the comic arts. While I did teach both comic books and graphic novels as a professor at University of New Hampshire, I did so as a semester-long introduction to visual literacy broadly writ—which is not to say that I don’t love comic books or graphic novels (I really do), but rather that I think the comic arts, like poetry, are a meta-genre that offers readers a doorway into a much broader understanding of the world than most people would ever credit.

Just as poetry builds advanced literacy skills whether it’s iambic pentameter or high-brow “conceptual poetry,” the comic arts help us to build our visual and multimedia literacy whether they’re attached to still or moving images.

The fact that some of the very best music videos ever made feature cartoons or comic-strip-style artwork is just one sign that we as a species keep returning—keep feeling the need to return—to a particular form of self-expression that takes a more abstract approach to form, figure, and line. I’m particularly intrigued by the thought process musical artists go through when they’re deciding a given song needs this particular artistic treatment; other than Gorillaz, I don’t think there are any bands that release exclusively music videos with a cartoon component, which underscores that the bands that do make such videos must be having some interesting conversations about which songs in their oeuvre most deserve such an idiosyncratic multimedia treatment.

The focus of this new series at Retro has been briefly considered by major media before, for instance in this 2012 Rolling Stone list of the greatest animated music videos of all time. But Rolling Stone, like other outlets that have addressed the topic, implicitly denigrated music videos of the sort this series focuses on even as it claimed to be honoring them (emphasis added):

Animated music videos are…a go-to for artists who either do not want to appear in their own clips or—for one reason or another—don’t have the time to turn up for a video shoot.

Animation has become a lot cheaper and easier to produce in recent years, so the number of cartoon clips have skyrocketed, particularly among smaller acts on a tight budget.

While the implication that a singer or band would employ animation in a music video largely as cost-cutting or time-saving measure is of course preposterous, it’s actually not so surprising that America’s leading music magazine would belittle the comic arts in this way. The comic arts have been treated as “low-brow,” only “borderline” art for decades and decades now, so why should the music snobs at Rolling Stone approach it any differently than their peers in the literary and visual arts? Yet, the prejudice and even animus thrown at the comic arts belies the fact that music videos made under the influence of the comic arts tend to be the most beloved and unforgettable ones ever made.

And isn’t that what creating multimedia to set to music is all about in the first place?

So I’m thrilled that the Comics section will get to play host to a music-themed series that not only offers absolutely delightful music and multimedia but can honestly lay claim to featuring some of the most admired and memorable music videos in history.

Because videos of the sort focused on here have been coming out in high volume for decades now, this series will necessarily jump from decade to decade—including the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s, therefore encompassing music and multimedia we think of as “retro” and work that is more contemporary—but what all the works in the series will have in common, I anticipate, is (a) excellent music, and (b) visuals that work wonderfully in concert with their music, whatever musical genre is being played.

I hope you’ll enjoy this series, and please do feel free to suggest new additions to it in the comment-field below!

---

(1) Michael Kiwanuka, “Light” (2019)

---

(2) Giangrande, “Paper Plane” (2013)

---

(3) Of Monsters and Men, “Little Talks” (2011)

---

(4) Matthew Sweet, “Girlfriend” (1991)

---

(5) Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood” (2001)

---

(6) Daft Punk, “Veridis Quo” (2001)

---

(7) Melpo Mene, “I Adore You” (2008)

---

(8) Sturgill Simpson, “Sing Along” (2019)

---

(9) “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Party in the CIA” (2011)

---

(10) Flobots, “Handlebars” (2005)

---

(Bonus) Electric Light Orchestra, “Mr. Blue Sky” (2019)

Curator’s note: The song below was first released by ELO in 1977, but the music video was first published on YouTube by the official account for ELO in 2019.

---