The shots Guide to...David Lynch's Music Videos

Following our guide a fortnight ago to director David Lynch's adverts, we now turn to the eight music videos. Expect disembodied heads, monstrous faces and a lot of fire, plus a headache from watching so much deliberate shaky camera footage...

1. Sparks: I Predict, 1982

Remember Dorothy Vallens, Isabella Rossellini's nightclub singer from Blue Velvet? Now put a Hitler moustache on her, and you have Sparks' I Predict, with the band's Ron Mael playing a burlesque dancer. Although this site is as disturbing as anything from one of Lynch's films, it is not particularly Lynchian, save for the smoke and neon that has made many a backdrop in the director's work.

2. Chris Isaak: Wicked Game, 1990

Although the Herb Ritts-directed video for this soft rock classic got all the airplay, Lynch also had a go at a video for Wicked Game, which featured on the soundtrack of his 1990 film Wild at Heart. Perhaps the only MTV-appropriate clips from the film are intercut with footage of Isaaks singing in moody black and white. Despite the clips from one of Lynch's films, the results are more Bland Tweed than Blue Velvet.

3. X Japan: Longing, 1995

The video for a truly terrible song from huge cult Japanese band X Japan (which for some reason only exists on the web with Portuguese subtitles) is much more of a Lynch joint, with the 5 minute song-poem accompanied by elements recognisable from his films - ominous natural landscapes, fire, and disembodied body parts, and of the director's Calvin Klein ads (which you can see in our previous feature).  It also, however, introduces a trend that exists only in his music videos - matching the lyrics of the song incredibly literally with images on the screen...

4. Bluebob: Thank You Judge, 1999

...which reaches a nadir in his video for his own music side project Bluebob. The song sees singer John Neff detailing all the things a judge gave to his wife in his divorce, with most of them accompanied on a screen by footage of that thing. That silly gimmick aside, however, it is typical of the more comic side of Lynch, with the director himself wearing a disturbing plastic mask and a cameo from the Twin Peaks red curtains and Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks: The Return star Naomi Watts.

5. Moby: Shot in the Back of the Head, 2009

Animation has been a small but significant part of Lynch's oeuvre since film school, with the director creating an absurdist comic strip in the 1980s and an eight-part cartoon web series in 2002. Maybe the highlight of this body of work is this video for Moby, which looks like a storyboard for a lost Lynch film, full of stark, repeating images and another in the long line of Lynchian severed heads. The artist liked it so much that he returned the favour, directing a music video for Lynch.

6. Interpol: Lights/I Touch a Red Button, 2011

Another animation from around the same time is I Touch a Red Button, Lynch's film to accompany Interpol track Lights. For this, he created a series of simple repeated animation featuring red buttons and a monstrous figure pressing them on his computer, then filmed the computer screen to create a nausea-inducing shaky film.

7. David Lynch: Crazy Clown Time, 2012

Perhaps the highlight of his music video work is Crazy Clown Time, a promo for his own song from the album of the same name. Yet again, what we see on screen is the same as what we hear on the vocal track, but the whole thing is done with such menace that what is first funny becomes unsettling becomes full-on disturbing. 

8. Nine Inch Nails: Came Back Haunted, 2013 

(WARNING This video has been identified to potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy. Viewer discretion is advised.)

Most recent of his music videos is this nightmare for Trent Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails. More shakiness, more monstrous creatures (this one's half girl, half insect, a whole lot of creepy), and a lot of strobing red and white lights.