Best of Pitchfork's Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 50-21

The artists featured in tracks 50-21 of Pitchfork’s Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s have the best music videos of the bunch. This harkens back to when Mtv actually played music videos and they still made an impact on the success of an artist. I know, it’s hard to imagine! As testiment to how great these music videos truly were, many of the directors (Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry) went on to become some of our greatest cinematic directors today. Some of the best of the best music videos can be found below.

“Sabotage” found the Beastie Boys branching out and the music video directed by Spike Jonze was an unforgettable homage to 1970s crime dramas.


The music video for Foo Fighter’s “Everlong” directed by the innovative Michel Gondry is easily one of the greatest and most memorable music videos of all-time.



Nine Inch Nails's "Closer" pushed the boundaries of what imagery could be featured in a music video and was directed by Mark Romanek, who went on to direct One Hour Photo and 2010’s Never Let Me Go.


Not exactly a music video, Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay” was immortalized years later in this haunting scene from the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums.


The video below is an absolutely epic performance of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve at Glasonbury in 2008 which clearly displays the timelessness of the song.


Other tracks of note include “Setting Sun” by The Chemical Brothers from the album Dig Your Own Hole, which I consider the greatest electronica album ever. The cover for the aforementioned album is the image at the top. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s alternative folk classic “I See a Darkness” is definitely one of my favorite’s of the 90s as is Built to Spill’s introspective standout “Car”. It’s hard not to mention Spiritualized’s classically composed "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" for it’s elegant sound. My pick for The Smashing Pumpkins would have been “Mayonaise” even though Pitchfork’s selection, “1979”, is the more widely recognized. All of the aforementioned songs can be found in the player below.