Want Your MTV? Take This Quiz on Classic Music Videos

This revolutionary, 1986 music video was directed by Stephen R. Johnson, who had previously used the lip-sync stop-motion style in the Talking Heads’ video “Road to Nowhere.” Aardman Animation, the company behind the popular cartoon “Wallace & Gromit,” was involved in the production of the video due to their extensive experience in claymation. Gabriel described the scene where clouds flew across his face as “painful” due to the fact that his skin became sore from the constant reapplication of paint for each stop-motion take.

The music video for Norwegian band A-ha’s song “Take On Me” won six of its eight nominations at the 1986 MTV Music Video Awards, including Best New Artist in a Video and Viewer’s Choice. The video’s animation style pencil drawings were inspired by the 1980 sci-fi film “Altered States.” Every scene was shot live and subsequently projected onto paper and traced. The 1985 video helped the song skyrocket to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Despite the song’s musical intricacies and operatic interlude, the video for 1975’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” only took around four hours to film — the band arrived at Elstree Studios around 7:30 one morning and were done before lunch. The video’s composition was fairly simple, relying on clever lighting and camera angles to spotlight frontman Freddie Mercury and his bandmates.

The video for Australian singer Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” features a dorky shimmy, a red pompadour, and dozens of stereotypically ‘80s outfits. It was thanks to the internet, however, that the song achieved a new level of worldwide popularity decades later. The video became a meme known as “Rickrolling,” which involves getting someone to click on a link to the video without them realizing. The popularity of “Rickrolling” propelled the video to over a billion YouTube views as of July 2021.

Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” (2008) music video features the superstar and two backup dancers in black leotards performing a now-iconic dance that was inspired by a Bob Fosse-choreographed routine from 1969. Joining Beyoncé in the video are dancers Ashley Everett and Ebony William, who were both heavily trained in ballet. The video took between 8 and 12 hours to shoot, and the leotard-clad dancers performed the routine an estimated 50 times.

MTV: Music Television went live for the first time on August 1, 1981 at 12:01 am with the Buggles’ prophetic “Video Killed the Radio Star” debuting as the network’s first music video. The video was introduced by Warner Cable executive John Lack, who said, “Ladies and gentleman, rock ‘n’ roll.” MTV’s distribution was initially hard to come by, which led to the iconic marketing campaign in which fans chanted the phrase, “I want my MTV!”

Released on December 2, 1983 and directed by John Landis, the nearly 14-minute long epic that is the “Thriller” music video features Michael Jackson wearing an iconic red outfit as he zombie dances his way into music history. The video — also featuring a movie-within-the-video in which Jackson transforms into a werewolf — cost half a million dollars to produce, and was the most expensive music video ever made at the time.

While MC Hammer’s 1990 song “U Can’t Touch This” became the first hip-hop song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the video made an equally lasting impact. In addition to Hammer’s iconic puffy pants, the song also debuted the Hammer Dance — a 15-second long dance break in which MC Hammer shuffles from side to side.

Often called the “Queen of Reinvention,” pop legend Madonna has several dozen classic music videos under her belt, but for her 1984 hit “Material Girl” she chose to emulate another famous blonde — Marilyn Monroe. The music video features a shot-by-shot recreation of Monroe’s performance in the film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” in which the famed Hollywood legend sang another song about the finer things in life, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

The “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video was shot on August 17, 1991, to accompany the release of the lead single from the band’s album “Nevermind.” Director Samuel Bayer took inspiration from the Ramones’ 1979 film “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” when designing the soundstage to look like a high school gym. A casting call for the video asked interested participants to be “18 to 25 years old and adapt a high-school persona, i.e., preppy, punk, nerd, jock.”