There was a window, roughly 1980 to 2002, when music videos got genuinely, gloriously weird. Not quirky-weird or ironic-weird, but actually strange in ways that left you unsettled during commercials afterward. Directors had budgets, artists had nerve, and nobody had yet agreed on what a music video was supposed to look like. These are the ones that proved no one was really in charge, and we are better for it.
#1: “Land of Confusion” by Genesis (1986)
Ronald Reagan in pajamas, reaching for the wrong button. That single image made this one of the sharpest pieces of political satire the format ever produced. The Spitting Image puppet company built grotesque latex versions of world leaders and let them run wild for four minutes. Children had no framework for processing it. Adults found it hilarious. Both were correct.
