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Four classic music videos to while away some time when you’re bored out of your mind at work

Published on July 5, 2019

It’s Friday, and we can’t be bothered to do any proper work – so here’s our painstakingly selected, scientifically approved, inarguable selection of music videos that should keep you relatively entertained for a few minutes.

Beastie Boys: Sabotage

In all honesty it was a struggle not to fill this whole list with Spike Jonze numbers – a big shot Hollywood director now probably still most famous for Being John Malkovich, in the 1990s Jonze made loads of brilliant, memorable music vids, including Weezer’s Buddy Holly and Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice.

But it’s Sabotage that we have to single out for special attention here. The Beastie Boys are having a blast, dressing up as 70s TV cops, engaging in car chases, rooftop pursuits and disguise sting operations, courtesy of Sir Stewart Wallace playing himself. So dumb in such a brilliantly entertaining way – plus, what a tune.

Bloodhound Gang – The Bad Touch

Maintaining the general theme of buffoonery established in the previous video, this is a pretty stupid video for a pretty stupid song – but as stupid goes, it’s elite-level nitwittery, like Stanley Kubrick directing the Beatles after all concerned have undergone lobotomies. The titular Gang, dressed as monkeys, run around the streets of Paris, singing their ode to “feeling horny now!” while looking to hook up with any unfortunate young woman in the vicinity.

We’re not denying that the sight of guys using a blow dart to tranquilise a woman, then carry her off is problematic in the Me Too era but, er, it’s all in jest right? Plus, Peter Dinklage – Tyrion from Game of Thrones! – pops up as a mime. Come on, don’t tell me you don’t want to see that…

Blur – To The End

Just to prove we’re not simply boorish nincompoops, let’s interject a little class into proceedings (alternatively, if you’re less well disposed to black and white arthouse fare, we’re just cranking up the pretension and pomposity – oh well).

A beautiful song, this Britpop-transcending single is accompanied by visuals paying tribute to Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Mariendbad, a fairly incomprehensible full-length film from 1961 that follows a bunch of aristocratic French types as they gad about a country house (no pun intended). Anyway, I like it, and I’m writing this blog, so you’re just going to have to lump it I’m afraid.

Big Daddy Kane – Ain’t No Half-Steppin’

The tracksuits! The big suits! The gold chains! Okay, so there’s some stuff about this video that has dated a little, and the production values weren’t necessarily the highest to begin with, but nonetheless I always come back to this one – it helps that Kane has some of the best boasts in the history of hip hops, with talk about pitbulls taking on chihuahuas and machetes facing off against butter knives.

Kane himself plays it very cool; from poker games to boxing matches, the Big Daddy is clearly not a man to be trifled with. Hey, he’s one of the pioneers of a musical artform that would become a juggernaut in the nineties, he’s got a right to be a little over-confident.