When 1990 rolled around, Michael was disillusioned with fame, so he hired David Fincher and had a radical idea for a video.

It's easy to forget but in the late 80s, Michael Jackson and George Michael were locked in a battle to be the world's top pop star. The video won four VMAs in 1993, including Video of the Year and helped elevate Pearl Jam above from the rest of the Seattle 'grunge' bands to something much more. It truly is a visual masterpiece accompanying a powerful song. The strobe lighting and quick cuts create a truly haunting effect. Jeremy is the only character who moves, everyone else remains still, bringing us closer to him as the most human character of the bunch. Complete with biblical references and outside descriptions of the character, this video is arresting. 'Jeremy' features a bullied boy who drifts into depression before shooting himself in front of his classmates.

In time the label relented, and the resulting video brought on massive controversy. The band's record label, Epic, initially refused to fund the project because it didn't think the song was worth promoting as a single. The third single from Pearl Jam's groundbreaking debut album Ten, 'Jeremy' is a sobering look at the life of a disaffected teenager. (Some of the following videos contain graphic imagery and/or NSFW lyrics. Here's our list of the 50 greatest music videos of all-time. Concepts and directing matter, as did strong, interesting visuals.ДЄlright, enough explanation. A straight performance video wasn't getting on this list no matter how cool it was. If a great video was matched with a bad song, what was the point? We also trended towards videos that were different or even groundbreaking. Most importantly, the song had to be good. With that in mind, we at The Big Lead wanted to rank the top 50 music videos of all-time.ДЄ quick note on the criteria we worked off of. Good ones told a story that connected a song's lyrics to the audience through a visual medium. While videos on YouTube are still wildly popular, the art form has suffered over the past decade as MTV and VH1 have moved away from showing them.ДЇrankly, I miss when music videos were important. Music videos used to be the lifeblood of MTV and pop culture.

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