THEY WERE SIMPLER times, the 90s.
We were all a little more innocent and a lot more easily impressed.
And that meant when a music video made an impact, it made a serious, hold-my-coffee, did-that-just-happen, impact.
We’re talking watercooler discussions and hours spent trawling the TV hoping to land yourself on it.
The future was now, people.
And here are just seven which we could barely believe we were watching in real life.
1. ‘Teardrop’: Massive Attack
Hold the fecking phone. Were we actually watching a foetus in utero?
Released in 1998, the video seemed so ahead of its time and, hard and all as it is to believe now, was the talk of music critics everywhere.
Nowadays, it looks exactly like what it is: grainy footage of a plastic foetus in a plastic womb.
2. ‘Smack My Bitch Up’: The Prodigy
Ah now, here. We always knew The Prodigy had the ability to leave us a little shook, but this was a different league altogether.
Back in 1997, the notion that the video’s protagonist had actually been a woman out on the rip the whole time left us gaping at our TVs in absolute astonishment.
3. ‘Virtual Insanity’: Jamiroquai
Ah, how was your man in the ridiculous hat doing that? Was the floor moving? Was he on strings? Were WE moving? And why did that cockroach have to make a cameo?
Yes, we’re embarrassed for ourselves too, but it was 1996 and we’re letting ourselves off this one.
4. ‘Black Hole Sun’: Sound Garden
Released in 1994, this one gave absolutely everyone the fecking creeps.
It felt vaguely like a nightmare when everything is just a little… well… off.
Everyone was smiling, everything was in vivid colour, and yet we were all uneasy AF.
5. ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ : The Verve
You know a music video has reached iconic status when parody versions are made of it, and that’s exactly what happened in the aftermath of The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony in 1997.
The simple but compelling nature of the concept had us all transfixed.
6. ‘Ironic’ : Alanis Morissette
Accompanying easily one of the biggest songs on the 90s, the video to Alanis Morissette’s Ironic was discussed almost as much as the track.
Featuring four versions of the singer who chime in at various stages of the song, critics at the time felt Alanis achieved an exceptionally intimate connection with the viewer through the execution of the concept.
7. ‘Come to Daddy’: Aphex Twin
Released in 1997, we were traumatised by it lads, absolutely traumatised.
Filmed on the same council estate that Stanley Kubrick shot A Clockwork Orange, the video told the story of a group of ‘children’ wreaking havoc in an industrial estate, and we were bloody terrified.
And then the moment that ‘thing’ screams in the granny’s face? Nope, we were out.
