23 Music Video Facts That Are Like a Store Brand ‘Pop-Up Video’

Okay, so these facts pop up on pictures, not videos, but they’re still cool!
23 Music Video Facts That Are Like a Store Brand ‘Pop-Up Video’

Wow. Pop-Up Video. The name alone inspires such reverence. From the moment we laid eyes on those interesting music video tidbits popping up on the music video itself, we knew that music video fact-hunting was the life for us.

In our acceptance speech for “Music Video Fact-Hunter of the Year,” we’ll thank them first. Then our parents, we guess. It seems customary, even though they were against this endeavor since day one. 

Anywho, here’s the music video fact batch that landed us the nomination!

MTV

13 Fascinating Nuggets Of Movie And General Trivia - MTV'S Video Music Award is a Moonman because of an early MTV graphic.
Source: MTV

Thriller

Michael Jackson's THRILLER is so much more than a music video. In December 1983, the 13-minute short film was solely responsible for increasing MTV's ratings tenfold. It is the only music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. CRACKED

The Jukebox That Could Play Video

Music videos are 20 years older than MTV. CINEMATIC 50 They were made for the 1960s fad Scopitone, a jukebox that could play video. CRACKED.COM

Mariah Carey

RE MENTS Directed by Brett Ratner and inspired by Grease and Enter the Dragon, this $2.5 million video pits Carey against herself, has a Powerpuff Girls-esque animated sequence and makes Jerry O'Connell tongue-kiss a dog. CRACKED

Rupert Wainwright

James Brown, Eazy-E, Queen Latifah and, uh, Jim Belushi all show up in Rupert Wainwright's 15-minute epic, plus a who's-who of 1991 sports stars - Jose Canseco, Isiah Thomas, Wayne Gretzky, Deion Sanders and more. That's what $2.5 million gets you. CRACKED

Limp Bizkit

Limp Bizkit have always had a complicated relationship with irony - their $3.5 million video for Rollin', helmed by Fred Durst himself and shot atop the World Trade Center, is meant to be self-parody, but can you really spend millions satirizing your own excesses? CRACKED

Diddy

Directed by Marcus Nispel, this $2.7 million video set in the year 3002 has explosions aplenty, cameos from Danny DeVito and Dennis Hopper, and a bit where Puff Daddy releases two doves from each hand in slow motion. Incredible. CRACKED

Aqua

Aqua did Barbie Girl, and as far as anyone is concerned, only Barbie Girl. That makes the inexplicable $3.5 million spent on the video directed by Tomáš Mašín for this absolutely forgettable Eurodance follow-up all the more mysterious. CRACKED

Michael Jackson

The morphing technology used in John Landis's $4 million epic was totally cutting-edge stuff at the time, which could probably be done fairly well on an iPhone these days. Plus, a cameo from Macaulay goddamn Culkin. CRACKED

Madonna (Again)

You'll have gathered by now, Madonna really, really liked spending money on music videos. Mark Romanek's $5 million surreal masterpiece featured innovative CGI, morphing landscapes, flying witch hats and Madonna in maybe 15 different wigs. CRACKED

Pharrell

Pharrell's 24-hour music video. ISE 08:57m AM 08 SHARE THIS MOMENT Directed by We Are from LA, the full length version of Pharrell's 2014 hit Happy is 24 hours long. It filmed hundreds of regular people and celebrities dancing to the song overll days of shooting and 42 separate locations around L.A. CRACKED

OK Go

OK Go was a pioneer in viral music videos. Their treadmill choreography in 2009's Here It Goes Again was a massive hit that led to their rube goldberg machine video for This Too Shall Pass. With a crew of 60 people, the machine synced up with the song itself and took roughly 60 takes to complete. CRACKED

Childish Gambino

THIS IS AMERICA by Childish Gambino sparked a ton of controversy. Louda State DE - In 2018, the Hiro Murai-directed video was discussed to no end. A very apt review said, It tackles police brutality, gun violence, and the use of African Americans as a brand shield, all while dancing in Jim Crow-style caricature. It won the Grammy for Best Music Video that year. CRACKED

Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire's interactive SUBURBS video For their 2010 song We Used to Wait, fans could plunk in their address on thewildernessdowntown.com and see Google Maps images of their house in the video for a personalized experience. CRACKED

A-ha

A-ha's TAKE ON ME blended live action and animation. Director Steve Barron and animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger used a technique called rotoscoping, which involves tracing over live-action footage, frame by frame. Four months and over 3,000 drawings later, they had arguably the most iconic music video of all time. CRACKED

Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello had the first fully animated music video. Released in 1979, Accidents Will Happen was made by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, who created a cartoon version of the band using 35mm stills as reference. CRACKED

Madonna

The world first saw an empowered female artist through Madonna's videos She is cited by Encyclopedia Britannica as the first female artist to fully exploit the potential of the music video. Her '80s videos for Like a Virgin and Material Girl paved the way for every female artist to follow. CRACKED

Queen

Rolling Stone said that Queen's BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY invented the music video. It only took four hours and £3,500 to make, but its success in 1975 had every record company thinking about video! Director Bruce Gowers became a star, and went on to make videos for the Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson, and Prince. CRACKED

David Bowie

ASHES TO ASHES by David Bowie is the music video's first art piece. Bowie co-directed his 1980 video, which cost £250,000 to make (a massive price tag at the time). It was a prime example of how music videos can be interpreted as art, and allowed artists to do more than just film themselves playing their instruments. CRACKED

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was an early pioneer of the music video. In 1965, 16 years before MTV, Dylan filmed a video for his song Subterranean Homesick Blues, where he held cue cards with lyrics. Several bands have used the cue card approach since, most notably INXS with 1987's Mediate. GET BORN CRACKED

Video Killed the Radio Star

MTV had a very fitting first music video. At 12:01a.m. on August 1st, 1981, Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles became the very first music video on MTV. The video was released in 1979, so the band definitely saw the changing of the guard and capitalized. CRACKED

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