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While the pandemic forced us all inside this year, some of our favorite artists kept us distracted and lifted our spirits by breaking new ground with their visuals. Whether tiptoeing into Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s candy-colored sexual funhouse, reveling in Bad Bunny’s unexpected drag persona, or logging into FKA twigs’ camgirl show along with rapper 645AR, music fans were treated to a buffet of eye-popping and inventive clips from newcomers and established stars alike. See our picks for the best music videos of 2020, listed in alphabetical order by artist name, below. And check out all of Pitchfork’s 2020 wrap-up coverage here.
645AR: “Sum Bout U” [ft. FKA twigs]
Director: Aidan Zamiri
While the pandemic decimated the mainstream adult entertainment industry, it breathed new life into subscription platforms like OnlyFans, a direct-to-consumer site that allows its creators increased financial and artistic autonomy. In their video for “Sum Bout U,” 645AR and FKA twigs explore digital intimacy and demonstrate how sex work can be its own form of art. On a fictional site called Onlycamzzz, twigs dances and poses in a number of high-fashion ensembles and a creepy rabbit’s head. Watching from behind a multi-monitor setup, 645AR is a swooning reply guy, frantically entering his credit card information and sending tips. The concept was conceived by twigs herself and transforms “Sum Bout U” from a horny-on-the-main anthem into an empowering take on creativity and labor. –Quinn Moreland
Arca: “Nonbinary”
Director: Frederik Heyman
There are feature films with less visual interest than Arca’s two-minute video for “Nonbinary.” In a series of splendorous cyborg mise-en-scènes created with artist and director Frederik Heyman, Arca lies on a rocky plinth, pierced by a pair of giant shears; reclines with her feet in gynecological stirrups as robots tend to her pregnant belly; enacts her own version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus as she floats above a flooded graveyard. Nothing is resolved or explained in this absurd, alluring spectacle, or in the mimed argument between Arca’s inner angel and devil that caps it off. The point is possibility, both/and within the self, the infinite, fantastic pursuit of gender euphoria. –Anna Gaca
Bad Bunny: “Yo Perreo Sola”
Directors: STILLZ and Benito Martinez
As recent events have shown, any famous man can don a dress for a glitzy photoshoot and be hailed by fans as a boundary-pushing king. But what makes Bad Bunny’s “Yo Perreo Sola” visually exhilarating isn’t simply the casual subversion of gender stereotypes—though that’s precisely what the reggaeton superstar does, taking on several different drag looks over the course of the music video. Co-directed by Benito himself, the art itself is a playful middle finger to toxic masculinity; it compels casual listeners of the traditionally machismo genre to reorient their perspectives towards empathy and respect for women and the LGBTQ+ community. After the lights go down, the video closes with bold, red text in Spanish: “If she doesn’t want to dance with you, respect her, she twerks alone.” So-called woke culture may not be cool, but basic humanity sure as hell is. –Noah Yoo
Beyoncé: “ALREADY” [ft. Shatta Wale & Major Lazer]
Director: Beyoncé
With the release of her sprawling Disney+ film Black Is King this summer, Beyoncé proved that she remains on the cutting edge of music visuals. Her choreography is emotional and athletic. Her storytelling is personal and vivid. Her references are spiritual and learned. “ALREADY”—a duet with Ghanaian dancehall star Shatta Wale, produced by Diplo and GuiltyBeatz—is just one five-minute vignette from the hour-and-a-half-long Black is King. But within its bounds, it still calls upon West African street dancing, diverse tokens of African wealth, Salvador Dalí’s photography, and more global symbols of art, life, and leisure. In a melange of roughly a dozen separate scenes, black life pulses and beats like a thriving heart. Even as a part of a huge cinematic effort, “ALREADY” is a world of its own. –Mankaprr Conteh
Cardi B: “WAP” [ft. Megan Thee Stallion]
Director: Colin Tilley
For sheer audacity and joy, nothing else this year surpassed “WAP,” a brash paean to pussy accompanied by an appropriately batshit, star-studded video. Immediately racking up over 26 million views in its first 24 hours on YouTube, “WAP” sets Cardi and Megan in a warped, polychromatic sex mansion replete with tigers, leopards, snakes, and cameos on cameos. The clip is a high-budget phantasmagoria with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek, as the two playfully tiptoe from room to room feigning shock at each reveal. Of course, the delightfully racy video literally shocked some conservative pundits, who flocked to Fox News to publicly clutch their pearls and push both rap stars into the political spotlight as arbiters of sexual provocation. Remaining as true to herself as ever, Cardi had a perfectly succinct response to the noise: “It doesn’t make me angry. It makes me happy. They keep talking and the numbers keep going up.” –Eric Torres
Christine and the Queens: La vita nuova
Director: Colin Solal Cardo
This short film is as decadent as a 15-course tasting menu. As romantic as a stroll along the Seine at dusk. As invigorating as a 5K run on the first day of spring. It is the boldest, most complete encapsulation of the Christine and the Queens aesthetic to date. Every second of the 14-minute video, which brings to life most of Chris’ 2020 EP La vita nuova, is stuffed with impossibly expressive choreography (courtesy of Sia collaborator Ryan Heffington), mythical beauty (Chris’ co-stars include a vampiric faun), and enough frilly fashion to fill Vogue’s September issue. Filmed in and around Paris’ ornate Palais Garnier opera house, it tells the fantastical story of an artist doing battle with her passions—for love, for art, for pure expression. By the final scene, Chris is reinventing John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever lothario through a queer lens while demonically biting the neck of guest star Caroline Polachek. This is art-pop cinema that’s both steeped in history and gloriously unafraid to blaze its own way. –Ryan Dombal
Denzel Curry / Kenny Beats: “UNLOCKED”
Directors: Jack Begert and Christian Sutton
On his computer, Kenny Beats has folders for “Topless Steve Buscemi Pics” and “Shrek Fanfiction,” but somehow the files for his Denzel Curry collaboration are nowhere to be found. The South Florida rapper and veteran producer’s 24-minute short film for “UNLOCKED” continues the (staged) internet beef that spooked their fans in early February: Curry storms into Kenny’s studio, furious that their EP got leaked online. To uncover what happened, they zap themselves Back to the Future-style into Kenny’s computer, embarking on a wild journey through multiple animated universes. One minute, they’re in a Japanese horror manga; the next, they’re rendered like Scooby-Doo. From the goofy, brotherly fighting to the dazzling visual displays and surprise ending, “UNLOCKED” is an absolute delight. —Cat Zhang
Duval Timothy: “Slave”
Director: Duval Timothy
In a year when enormous stars went public in the fight to own their master recordings, Duval Timothy’s claymation video for “Slave” offered the most gutting illustration of what it means to lose control of your work. While the word “slave” is sung repeatedly in the background, the video shows Timothy pouring all of his creative energy into recording music. You see him caressing his music in his hand; it’s an adorable, childlike .WAV file, which is promptly shackled and taken away by white music industry professionals. Timothy eventually finds his music locked away and weeps, and when clay tears obscure Timothy’s clay face, it’s legitimately heartbreaking. He frees his music (which symbolizes how he bought back his masters in real life) and poses atop a mountain with two Black icons who fought for ownership of their work: Prince and Nipsey Hussle. It’s an iconic closing image that could hang in a museum. –Evan Minsker
Jayda G: “Both of Us”
Director: Lou Jasmine
Jayda G’s “Both of Us” was a masterstroke of joyful piano house, as intimate as a bedroom whisper and as communal as a dance floor anthem—all shot with a pang of awareness that shared in-person experiences with strangers aren’t really a smart option right now. “I just want to be with you,” the Canadian-born, London-based producer and DJ also known as Jayda Guy lilts, in this opening track from her two-song 2020 EP, Both of Us / Are You Down. The video, directed by London photographer/videographer Lou Jasmine, neatly pulls together all those contradictions, with low-key snapshots of Guy at home, at the club, and out basking in flowery nature, a flock of birds gliding elegantly above. For the song’s cathartic third section, the part where the drums drop out, the studio track gives way to the handclaps of a live crowd, and no, you’re the one with something in your eye. –Marc Hogan
Kelly Lee Owens: “Corner of My Sky” [ft. John Cale]
Director: Kasper Häggström
Kelly Lee Owens’ visual for “Corner of My Sky” puts the Man vs. Machine trope in miniature, with actor Michael Sheen battling wits against a mysterious toaster. He drops in one slice of bread after another as the appliance disappears his toast-to-be; his mood darkens from curiosity to frustration as it does. John Cale sings in celebration of the rain with a looping refrain that matches the dreamy repetition of Sheen’s kitchen inquisition. The toast eventually turns up, just not anywhere toast belongs and with Sheen none the wiser, playfully questioning the nature of expectations versus outcomes. –Allison Hussey
Moses Sumney: “Bystanders”
Directors: Josh Finck and Moses Sumney
Moses Sumney has the power to make even the most humdrum, capitalism-scarred spaces feel almost holy. In the video for “Bystanders,” a beatless daydream of dripping synths and crystal-lattice vocal harmonies, Sumney and co-director Josh Finck offer a swirling vision of two desolate parking lots—Dollar General and Kmart, respectively—that fade into each other as night becomes day. In both stands Sumney’s bare-chested figure, resolute, defiantly undefined. Like most of us, Sumney can’t help but participate in global commerce, but what’s inspiring is how he refuses to allow himself to be diminished by it. –Marc Hogan
Perfume Genius: “Describe”
Director: Mike Hadreas
Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas often has his hands full in his self-directed video for “Describe”: a knife, a leaf blower, a person, another person, a set of clippers as he buzzes off a companion’s hair with someone else’s hands pressed to his eyes. As Hadreas sings, asking for clarity about his surroundings, the scene becomes harder to decipher, his literal grasps ceding to piles of writhing, intertwined bodies bathed in different colors. The farm scenery and fluid motion of its occupants stay surreal and twisting enough to be thrilling. –Allison Hussey
Phoebe Bridgers: “Garden Song”
Director: Jackson Bridgers
A specific kind of solitude courses through Phoebe Bridgers’ music: the kind where you wander around a drug store in the wee hours of the morning, or get in your car and pick a destination based on the first song that plays on the radio. Or, as she depicts in the smoky, psychedelic “Garden Song” video, when you hit a bong alone in your room and suddenly find yourself visited by friends, monsters, and a shirtless dude gyrating behind you. Directed by her brother Jackson, it’s a charming and relatable vignette that ends with an all-too-familiar resolution: collapsing face-down in bed. –Sam Sodomsky
Rico Nasty: “Own It”
Director: Philippa Price
It begins with Rico Nasty wearing a bright yellow fetish mask festooned with icepick-sized spikes, paired with a painted-on yellow swimsuit and vertiginous yellow platforms. Bejeweled acrylic talons protrude from her fingers and toes. It ends with the rapper in a frilly peach babydoll dress and lace gloves, sporting a necklace made out of severed doll parts and shoes wrapped in bubble wrap. Her various accessories throughout the video include: shrimp on her fingertips, lit blunts smoking atop a crown, eyebrow piercings that spell her name, and a wig twisted into the shape of a cage. Not since the heyday of Lady Gaga has a music video featured such wild, jaw-dropping fashion statements. And in a year in which most of us pretty much exclusively wore sweatpants, we couldn’t have needed it more. –Amy Phillips
SZA: “Hit Different” [ft. Ty Dolla $ign]
Director: SZA
For SZA’s slouched-back single “Hit Different,” she took to the director’s chair to create a luxe allegory in her own image. Fitted in yellow and tie-dye outfits, the singer and her backup dancers perform gyrating choreo in front of a stack of cars in a junkyard, with dusky light setting everything in a creamy glow. Later, she wanders through a field, smeared in body paint the shade of blood for a startlingly surreal jolt. SZA saves the best for last: sporting royal beads and straddling a pommel horse, she breaks the fourth wall and sings to the camera as it zooms slowly outward. Each image is a knockout reminder that her creative vision is only getting sharper. –Eric Torres
The 1975: “The Birthday Party”
Directors: Ben Ditto and Jon Emmony
With a plot that could be sold to the writers of Black Mirror, “The Birthday Party” video takes place at an online rehab facility filled with animatronic memes and CGI-rendered humanoids, swiping right on invisible phones in a heavenly forest removed from the world. All well and good, but as with most things 1975, it’s the little details that stick with you, like the robotic receptionist wearing braces and humming one of the band’s old hits, or Matty Healy’s melancholic dance moves as he fantasizes about returning to his social life: “Let’s go somewhere I’ll be seen,” he sings, “As sad as it seems.” It’s sad for sure, but strangely comforting. –Sam Sodomsky
The Weather Station: “Robber”
Director: Tamara Lindeman
A DoorDash delivery guy wanders through the forest, staring at his smartphone. A TV news reporter shoves his microphone into the singer’s face, then quickly pulls it away when he decides she’s not going to say anything sensational enough to satisfy his audience. The Weather Station’s “Robber” video, directed by bandleader Tamara Lindeman, subjects the mundanities of our screen-mediated lives to a surreal juxtaposition, rendering familiar scenes newly unsettling by placing them in the middle of the woods. Lindeman gives a riveting acting performance, donning a mirrored suit and casting loaded but ambiguous glances: at the other characters, at us through our own viewing screens. She is like a visitor from another world, unsure whether to pity the bumbling human creatures around her or fear them. –Andy Cush
The Weeknd: “Too Late”
Directors: CLIQUA
“Too Late” is a gory, thoroughly NSFW romp that doubles as the Weeknd’s love letter to Lost Highway and American Psycho, films that sit comfortably in the pantheon of unsettling cinema. Abel Tesfaye and CLIQUA—the young directing duo of Pasqual Gutiérrez and Raul “RJ” Sanchez—are swinging for the fences here, shining an uncomfortable light on the superficiality of Hollywood, the ugliness of parasocial relationships, and the sometimes ghastly nature of sexual desire. The pop star himself is all but absent, reduced to a lip-synching severed head—a plaything to be admired, exploited, and consumed. In the video’s final moments, the camera zooms out from a glorious Los Angeles estate; as its gates swing shut, a woman jogs by with her dog, blissfully unaware of the horrors that happen around her every day. –Noah Yoo
Tierra Whack: “Dora”
Director: Alex Da Corte
The hook on Tierra Whack’s “Dora” bursts forth like a cuckoo bird announcing the hour, insistent and loopy at the same time. Director Alex Da Corte escalates Whack’s whimsy with bouncy, elastic visuals that feature a mélange of Muppets and other kooky toys, including pieces from the game Superfection that feel like an extra-sly addition. The video’s bright colors, bold geometry, busy motion, and playful animated text recall the best classic Sesame Street shorts. But “Dora” is no simple childhood regression: it plunges deep into the rare wonder of unsullied joy. –Allison Hussey
Yaeji: “WAKING UP DOWN”
Director: Annie Xing Zhao
In the animated video for “WAKING UP DOWN,” Yaeji and Woofa, a floofy dog in a tracksuit, strive to be better versions of themselves. With the help of some kooky characters—a bluebird holding a smirking worm in its talons, a chef with an egg for a head, a boss bitch CEO—the duo master a checklist of tasks like cooking, hydrating, and listening. Inspired by anime opening sequences, the video is full of bright, eye-catching colors, abstract backgrounds, and exaggerated facial expressions, accentuating the goofiness of the characters born from Yaeji’s imagination. Even though Yaeji acknowledges in the song’s Korean-sung chorus that taking care of yourself and others isn’t always easy, the video makes the case that these responsibilities can be fun with a little stretch of the imagination. –Quinn Moreland
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