The 10 Most NSFW Music Videos Of 2009
It's the most wonderful time of the year -- i.e., the time to rank and categorize the best and worst music-related content we spent the last 12 months blogging about. Welcome to Listomania.
Why all the nudity in 2009? Well, look at this way: The affordability of video production technology has made it easier for everybody to get in the game; the unceremonious death of music television has shifted the means of music video distribution to the internet, where it's less about FCC than about NSFW; and let's face it, blogger hit counts love no four letters more than NSFW. More than ever, video directors and bands are cutting through the iMovie inundation by setting their songs to a bunch of extras parading their giggly bits. (Occasionally the artists themselves are baring more than just their souls, too.) To memorialize the year in NSFW, here are ten of the most prurient sets of moving pixels we've seen all year. Any other week we'd say you shouldn't watch this at your cubicle, but you deserve a reward for even being at work this week, so go nuts! Lots of nuts here.
10 Marilyn Manson - "Running To The Edge Of The World"
There was a time when Marilyn's idea of NSFW was convincing his ex, Rachel Evan Wood, that doing a softcore sex scene in his video was a smart idea. Then she found an actually smart idea and broke up with him, and now Marilyn's NSFW means depicting a barely dressed woman of a similar age being beaten into a bloody pulp. His shtick is sad, and gross, and tired, but this is a list of NSFW videos, and this is a pretty NSFW video. Obligatory, evergreen addendum: Marilyn will be knocking on your door soon.
09 Patrick Wolf - "Vulture"
B&W; print, S&M; bondage gear, Wolf's bare butt, and somehow still not as exciting as this other Patrick Wolf video which didn't cost a thing (aside from his dignity).
08 Depeche Mode - "Hole To Feed"
After watching what he did for Flying Lotus last year, it was clear Tim & Eric's Eric Wareheim was going to be a major force in NSFW videos for years to come, or at least the next one year to come. So in 2009 he makes this list twice! The only director worthy of such an honor (also, the only one in the running for it). Eric's very particular brand of sexy gets good work for Depeche Mode, where the "Hole" is the mouth and the "Feed" is aggressive face fucking. Gross and also fantastic.
07 Massive Attack - "Paradise Circus"
Massive Attack's Heligoland track with Hope Sandoval serves as a (way)backdrop to a documentary in which a 73-year-old Georgina Spelvin recalls the lay of her life in the adult film classic The Devil In Miss Jones. Basically the Toby Dye-directed clip is Titanic as porn documentary, where instead of flashing back to cute scenes with Leo, Old Rose is flashing back to money-shots with Disco Stu. Why it didn't rank higher: You need to watch it twice to even remember there's a Massive Attack song playing at all.
06 Yeasayer - "Ambling Alp"
The technologically advanced teaser made for state-of-the-art peeping Tom-foolery, allowing the viewer to rotate a camera around an unrestricted circle of naked kids. The video itself? Much classier, thank you very much, although also much less interactive. (The two are probably related.) Never mind what anybody else does, unless they're running through the ambling Alps on a pseudo-Ryan McGinley nudist marathon, while All Hour Cymbals-faced beefcakes pummel each other and the band has their faces dripped in pixelated goop. It's only logical, sort of.
05 Raekwon - "Pyrex Vision"
Some of the clips on this employ the NSFW for gratuitous reasons, but clearly Raekwon's just striving for gritty reality in his ode to cooking crack in Corning. And as Hollywood's taught us time and again with New Jack City and American Gangster, only naked women cook crack. So this is just some germane, necessary nudity, here.
04 Major Lazer - "Pon De Floor"
This may just look like some of the most acrobatic and colorfully eye-popping dancehall dry-humping ever set to film, but really Eric Wareheim is making a statement on the Jamaican ban of daggering. Maybe. Or maybe he's just getting really good at NSFW videos. Either way, this treatment for Major Lazer's "Pon De Floor" is perfecto, and if you don't learn something about how to treat your lover while watching it, you'll never know how to treat your lover.
03 Girls - "Lust For Life" (XXX Edit)
"Lust For Life" is such a good jam that Girls could just keep rolling out new versions of videos for it and nobody would really complain. Which is pretty much exactly what happened. Especially when it came down to the Aaron Brown and Ben Chappell-directed "XXX Edit," starring Hunx and junk doubling as a flesh-toned microphone, and errant shots of topless ladies being lusty, living life, etc. Hunx says he'll do a sequel as long as Christopher will do a three-way, we say this is carefree nudity that captures some of the song's spirit, on top of also just being a very good song.
02 Matt & Kim - "Lessons Learned"
Everything you see here is real: Matt and Kim jump out of a van and stroll through Times Square in winter, in slow-mo, stripping until the cops are finally hipped to the fact that theirs are bare. The Taylor Cohen-directed clip even won an award! (The Woodie. Fitting.) Bonus points for the artists themselves stripping to the skin, and bonus-bonus for neither of their significant others being able to get jealous since they are their own significant others. Brilliantly planned.
01 The Flaming Lips - "Watching The Planets"
This year, these guys were routinely making their stage entrances through psychedelically undulating (Flaming?) vaginal Lips. Because they were reborn, or something. Well those lips made an appearance in spirit, in this clip, where Wayne took a terrible old Truly Tasteless Joke -- you spend nine months of your life trying to get out, and the rest of your life trying to get back in -- to its illogical extreme. It's easy to get a NSFW stamp and score some pageviews by incorporating nudity by proxy, getting some hired guns (or here, some Craigslisters) to be filmed in the buff for you. But few have the balls to bare 'em themselves. To top this list, Wayne pulled out the biggest trump card of all. From his pants. "Killing the ego" indeed. (Or, inflating it. Depending on your angle. And his.) Congrats to Wayne and his coyne: you are tied at #1.
Posted at 2:25 PM in Listomania, Video
Tags: Depeche Mode | Girls | Hope Sandoval | Hunx And His Punx | Major Lazer | Marilyn Manson | Massive Attack | Matt And Kim | Patrick Wolf | Raekwon | The Flaming Lips | Yeasayer
Woah...you might want to hold off there for just a little while so soon after Vic Chesnutt's death.
Score = -3
Massive Attack should definitely be #1 for most prurient. The wooly vagina in the Flaming Lips vid scares me.
Score = 0
Agreed, Massive Attack was ROBBED of this well deserved honor.
#6 Yeasayer and #1 Flaming Lips nudity is of the boring non-sexual Ryan McGinley/Woodstock type. Sure there is greater volume of nudity, and a giant vaginasphere but you can dismiss it as artistic. It's really not much more NSFW than Da Vinci's Statue of David.
#5 Raekwon vid is just drugs and boobies. Yawn.
#4 Major Lazer's entry is cartoon sex with a page stolen from last years superior video for the track Parisian Goldfish by Flying Lotus (check it out if you haven't already).
#3 Girls get credit for lip synching with a penis mic and cute hipster boobies, but that's not enough.
#2 Matt & Kim's naughty bits are pixelated and even if they weren't all we would see is the flesh colored thongs they were wearing. Not only not sexual, but I think my testicles retracted into my body while watching their fake winter streaking.
Massive Attack's video for Paradise Circus has 100% MORE EJACULATION than the other finalists. Not only is it visually more lascivious and sexual in nature, but the audio of grandma trying her hand at being a prostitute and lines like "flittering of the tongue across the clitoris" makes this video the #1 NSFW video of '09.
I DEMAND A RECOUNT.
Score = 0
Where's Modest Mouse's King rat and The Whale Song?
Score = 0
where the fuck is rammstein's video for "pussy" ?!?!?!
Score = 1
http://www.thegauntlet.com/article/307/16877/Rammstein-releases-video-for-Pussy.html
Honorable mention!
Score = 0
Took the words outa my mouth!
Score = 0
You can make all the nude, penis as microphone videos for "Lust for Life" that you want, but that song is monotonous, uninspired garbage. Girls is the perfect case of a intriguing back-story being the entire basis for a talentless bands sudden success. Get off it people, these guys are not going to last.
Score = -3
Get off it?
Fuck you, don't tell me what to listen to. And like you know who's "going to last".
Lust for life and Morning light were released over a year ago before anybody knew anything about Girls. They were successful because they made great songs.
...not gonna lie though, that "NSFW" music video sucks.
Score = 3
i like Album and there's a few songs (like "Morning Light") that are really really good...but yes, it is the perfect case of a intriguing back-story being the entire basis for a band's sudden success. I read the Pitchfork review recently and I almost cracked up.
the indie music world was once a haven for open-mindedness (did i make that word up?), and a place where new artists could try to get exposure without pre-judegement and pressure to appeal to the status quo and cronie-filled major label driven outlets...now the indie music world is way bigger, making money, setting more trends, etc so of course, it is now becoming its own judgemental cronie-filled staus quo where bands could be overnight stars or overnight backlash victims based on what one blog or what one record label says.
Score = 0
Amen, goils. Oh and Piro, I wasn't telling you what to listen to, I know I could never compete with Pitchfork.
Score = -2
I must be the only person that is oblivious to all this pitchfork noise.
I heard Girls through Aquarium Drunkard, but I'm sure they're being pushed by matador since true panther was bought out. Regardless, its not like I care about the politics. I don't listen to bands to try and look cool, I listen to music because I like the way it sounds, eat shit.
"Indie" is so fucking stupid. What does Indie even mean? Years from now, its going to be like "new wave" from the 80s or "alternative" from the 90s. Companies have realized that this "indie" trend is widely marketable and are disguising all this bullshit as "indie". Every time I'm at this site now, its fucking "coke music" or like right now, some george clooney movie ad.
Whatever, I'm not gonna hate. Make cash.
Score = -1
Yeah, Girls were also covered by Gorilla Vs. Bear long before.Pitchfork lauded them. I caught their show at The Delancey Fall of '08. I was genuinely excited to see them because I enjoyed their music which was widely available in the form of mp3s posted to blogs. There was no hype or back story. People who complain about Girls success are just late to the show.
Score = 1
Where are all the homos? Props to Girls for being NSFW and also all-inclusive, whether you like them or not.
Score = 0
the drummer from avenged sevenfold died.
Score = 1
hopefully that means they'll break up and never make music again!
Score = 3
what about Ghostface's "Stapleton Sex" video?? I'm pretty surprised that didn't make it at least into the top 3...
Score = 0
Body Shot - Electric Six
Score = 0
That's a good one, consider it #11
http://www.vimeo.com/6857695
Score = 0
The 10 most superfluous lists of Stereogum, can't wait for that one.
Score = 0
hahahah I <3 Patrick Wolf. he's such a weirdy
Score = -1
The best new music was *really* new but they didn't have the budgets to *really* do videos..But Beck is still more orginal than the average phone commercial...
Score = 0
Where's this "Face fucking" in the depeche mode video? I see plenty of face licking, but no fucking...
Score = 0
where did they find so many females that don't shave their vajs? i havent seen this much girl pube since 8th grade!
im not complaining but i'm surprised there are so many out there...
Score = 1
cos u only see vaj in porn?
Score = 0
no way. most "everyday" (non-porn) girls these days (yes, even the ones that listen to the Lips and visit sites like this) shave completely or buzz down a stripe. there's nothing wrong with the au natural but it is what it is...call it social norms or whatever, I didn't make this up.
Score = 0
Uh, that is what MOST FEMALES look like. Seriously, women who wax aren't listening to Flaming Lips or reading Stereogum.
Score = 0
all these videos suck
Score = 0
"Lessons Learned" is the best video here, but the list is 10 Most NSFW. Everything is pixelated! I'd definitely put the penis microphone in "Lust For Life" above that.
Score = 0
I'm surprised that #1 wasn't Rammstein - pussy. It was basically porn. If that isn't NSFW, then I don't know what is.
Score = 0
The Flaming Lips video has a Fantastic Planet vibe. Weird creatures, naked people, spheres, and bird and animal noises as the soundtrack (before the Lips song cuts in).
Score = 0
not EVERYTHING in "Lessons Learned" can be real, can it? Kim didn't die from getting hit by a bus, did she? Did she?! No she didn't... did she?
Score = 1
haha man that flaming lips video is something else.
Score = 0
Merrimack-In the halls of white death video is NSFW and most definitely not safe for the vatican, It makes laugh everytime because its so brooklyn, a dirty projectors affair totally.
Score = 0
If you don't have Rammstein's "Pussy" on your list somewhere - likely in the top 3 - your list cannot be considered complete.
Score = 0
To the white guy in the hamster bubble kicking the Bitches Brew...
Score = 0
The nudity in Yeasayer and The Flaming Lips' videos are mainly artistic. "Lesson Learned" is just another streaking video like Make The Girl Dance's video.
Although I don't listen to Rammstein, "Pussy" video is definitely deserved to be on this list and possibly at no.1 spot for NSFW.
Score = 0
What about "Trucker's Delight?"
http://www.vimeo.com/7670880
Score = 0
You have a list of the "10 Most NSFW Music Videos of 2009" and you don't include "Pussy" by Rammstein? This list is incomplete without it!
Score = 0
ehhhm :)
we did a vintage NSFW footage VS cumbia VS western pop music mashup video in January 2009, it's called 'lollibon' http://vimeo.com/2813041
does that count?
Score = 0
Matt & Kim belong on one list only: Lamest Bands of 2000's.
Score = 1
Rammstein is definitely #1 when it comes to 'NSFW' !
Score = 0
I'm afraid to admit that I don't like Girls because I'm afraid people will think I'm homophobic.
And by that I mean the band Girls, because I do like girls in general...
But I'm not saying that if I didn't that it would be a bad thing, because I'm not homophobic...
I just don't like Girls. The band.
Score = 0