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Top 89

Top 89 of 2016: Music Videos

Here are the top five music videos of 2016
Here are the top five music videos of 2016MPR graphic

by Cecilia Johnson

December 30, 2016

We asked, you voted! All December long, you — the music lover — voted for your favorite music videos released in 2016, and the results are in!

All of the represented albums have been heard on The Current but unlike the airwaves, YouTube isn't regulated by the FCC, so fair warning: Featured videos are slightly NSFW as they all include some combination of violence, gore, language or sexual content.

Be sure to tune in to The Current's listener-curated Top 89 of 2016 countdown on Dec. 31, 2016 starting at 5 p.m. CT with a rebroadcast on New Year's Day starting at 10 a.m. CT.

5. OK Go - "The One Moment"

From Hungry Ghosts (OK Go)

When a music video comes with its own behind-the-scenes featurette, you know it's going to be intense. Take OK Go's latest, "The One Moment," which takes 4.2 seconds to unspool in real time but shares so much more within a second, much slower look. The song is two years old, having been released on the band's 2014 album, Hungry Ghosts. But the video, a collaboration with Morton Salt, came out on Nov. 24 this year – to the amazement of the internet. Its hullabaloo is a precisely timed series of plant splatters, flying leaps, and exploding guitars (they were manufacturing defects). Although it looks like a single long take, the shoot actually happened in segments.

4. David Bowie - "Lazarus"

From Blackstar (Columbia)

"In January I dismissed my mate's theory that David Bowie was the glue holding the universe together but I don't know man... I don't know..." tweeted actor Paul Bettany in June. The rock star's passing was one of the year's many devastating celebrity deaths, but only he was able to deliver his own epitaph Blackstar, his 25th and final album, which came out two days before his death. Accordingly, Bowie's penultimate music video (the final one he starred in) is almost too much to watch. He slowly writhes on a white deathbed, blindfolded and wrapped up in graveclothes; he disappears into a wardrobe before we're ready to say goodbye.

3. Radiohead - "Burn the Witch"

From A Moon Shaped Pool (XL)

A pleasant town goes horrorfest via brainwashed stop-motioners in "Burn The Witch." One of two music videos from Radiohead's 2016 album A Moon Shaped Pool, it's political, detailed, and bolstered by wicked strings from the London Contemporary Orchestra. Don't miss the homages to British TV show Camberwick Green and horror movie The Wicker Man.

2. Beyonce - "Formation"

From Lemonade (Columbia)

Beyoncé keeps exceeding herself. In 2013, she popularized the surprise album drop that's now an everyday rollout, accompanying her self-titled album with a slew of music videos. This year, she pushed the "visual album" further with Lemonade, an hour of music, ornately detailed film, and spoken word interludes uttered by Queen Bey. Formation was both the first single and music video released from Lemonade, and it still summarizes the album: a royal, gyrating assertion of pain, influence and black excellence.

1. Har Mar Superstar - "How Did I Get Through the Day"

From Best Summer Ever (Cult)

Har Mar Superstar takes a cruise down the Mississippi in "How Did I Get Through The Day," a video from his 2016 album Best Summer Ever. The song sports the fuzz of the '60s soul that inspires Har Mar, but the video, directed by Philip Harder, is as sharp as the boat slicing through the water.