Richard’s Top 3 Music Videos Of All Time

The Rest Is Entertainment

The hosts explore their personal rankings of all-time great music videos, highlighting the artistry of artists like A-ha and Madness. They t

Key takeaways

• The hosts rank Madness's 'Baggy Trousers' as a top music video for its ability to enhance the song through creativity.
• A debate is held regarding Sydney Sweeney's promotion of Novig, with the hosts defending her right to engage in brand partnerships.

Main topics

• All-time great music videos
• Sydney Sweeney and gambling advertisements

Notable quotes

It should show you a band. It should make the song feel bigger and better than it already is.

Conclusion

The episode offers a thoughtful reflection on how media formats, from

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, traditionally, the entertainment gatekeepers had to find you before an audience ever could. It's Speaker 6 (0:09) been the biggest change, really, I would say, in entertainment in the last five years or so. Just that generation who grew up making their own content on YouTube, on TikTok and things like that, suddenly finding themselves right at the heart of a culture. And they say no one had to commission it from them. Speaker 2 (0:22) Well, we talked before about Kane Parsons. He just made his incredible sort of YouTube series of shorts. And within a month, they'd gone so big that people were kind of battering down his door to direct a big movie version of it. And A24 eventually won and he created The Backrooms, which brought a huge audience online for that first Speaker 8 (0:42) weekend that was just a phenomenon. So by the time the traditional gatekeepers arrive, you may have already proved there's an audience for what you've made. You haven't inherited a routine. You have built one yourself. Speaker 1 (0:53) And Octopus came into energy with customers as the starting point. It saw they weren't being well served and built things differently from there, with each account looked after by the same small team of around 10 Octopus energy specialists. Speaker 8 (1:12) Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restors Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde. Speaker 1 (1:18) And I'm Richard Osman. Hello everyone. Hi Marina. Hello Richard. How are you? I'm very well. Looking forward to your views on Sydney Sweeney in this episode. We promised them. Speaker 2 (1:25) Like none. Yeah. Speaker 1 (1:27) Imagine how many views Speaker 2 (1:28) I've got. Speaker 1 (1:28) We sometimes have big industry names answering questions for us. We've got a big industry name asking a question this time around. So we will get to that as well. Shall we dive straight in? Speaker 2 (1:39) Let's Speaker 8 (1:39) dive Speaker 2 (1:40) in. Wow. This is a question that... genuinely of all the top threes would have been the hardest for me to answer. So I'm so glad to be giving it to you, Richard. Tom says, what are your top three music videos of all time? It's Speaker 1 (1:52) a great route one. Sometimes the route one questions are the best, right? Speaker 2 (1:55) I would find, I love music videos so much. I think I would find this so hard. Speaker 1 (1:59) Okay, well, listen, you can chip in as we go along. And I slightly, I'm doing a top three, but I'm slightly theming them. Speaker 6 (2:06) So in third place, I think, okay, I've got to go with one of the all time. There's certain videos, you know, the Bohemian Rhapsody and Thriller and stuff like that, that are absolute classics. And I had to choose between two of them in the end. One of them, Sinead O'Connor, Nothing Compares to You, just the kind of slow sort of push into the face, the tear, which, you know, is an incredibly beautiful video and probably not super expensive. I bet it's more expensive than you think. that video, I bet they'll go, no, it's actually 1.5 million. And this is the reason. But it's a really beautiful, clever video that Speaker 1 (2:39) makes the song better. And that's the key, right? It's something where whatever the song is, you associate it with that video as well. And it improves the song. It's so Speaker 8 (2:48) courageous that she, first of all, that look was sort of extraordinary and shocking to have at Show of Ted, completely. But also to effectively, almost all of it, be her acting directly into camera. There are the bits where she's walking through the... Speaker 2 (3:02) God, I don't know where she is, the long black thing. I can't remember. Maybe that was the cost. They hardened an entire Italian hilltop. But to trust an artist to just emote like that into the camera, Speaker 1 (3:15) it was so Speaker 2 (3:16) compelling. Speaker 1 (3:17) And you're trusting the song. Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:18) yes. Speaker 1 (3:18) Because the song is so compelling. So I went for that, either that or... Take on me by Aha. I Speaker 2 (3:24) knew you were going to say that. It's so good. I watched it again the other day, actually. Speaker 6 (3:29) I had a deadline, obviously. Yeah, Speaker 1 (3:31) exactly. Speaker 6 (3:32) With that sort of amazing animation. It just didn't feel like anything you'd seen before. There's an amazing rip-off of it on Family Guy, which is really worth checking out. And that as a song, both of those songs, you could release either of those songs tomorrow with exactly the same production. Speaker 1 (3:47) But the team dream of it, of people Speaker 2 (3:49) sort of coming out of the pages of your magazine, you know, there was something that was so perfect about the kind of artist they were trying to show you that they were. Speaker 1 (3:56) Yeah, exactly. Speaker 6 (3:58) And people do keep re-releasing Take On Me, don't they, as it was, and Blinding Lights. I mean, all that, Speaker 2 (4:03) you Speaker 6 (4:03) know, there's something about that. So I think I'm going to go for A-ha, even though I think the artistry is greater in the Sinead O'Connor. I think there's something about the A-ha thing that... Speaker 1 (4:13) the movement of it, the originality of it. I Speaker 6 (4:14) don't Speaker 1 (4:15) know. So I'm going to go for that, although they're both brilliant. Number two, I just think people who are ahead of their time in videos, because if someone gives you two million to Speaker 6 (4:24) shoot Duran Duran on a yacht in the Bahamas, I mean, that's Speaker 1 (4:28) a Speaker 6 (4:28) video. Look, it's technically difficult, but you're not inventing the wheel. So I'm going to go with, because at the time it felt, oh my God, this is like crazy what these guys have done. And now it's... All of our Instagrams is this sort of thing all the time. And that's Here We Go by OK Go. Yes. Which is when they're doing the thing on the treadmills. Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:49) yeah. Speaker 6 (4:49) And now, like, people are spending, you know... Speaker 2 (4:52) Anyone can do this now. It's so hilarious. My Speaker 6 (4:54) Instagram is all like trick shots that have taken like kind of four weeks to do or people parkour and stuff. But that was them going, okay, we've got zero money. We've got a really catchy song. This is going to be really, really difficult because none of us is any sort of a gymnast. But it absolutely went crazy. It went viral. But now it's a sort of, we see 20 of those a day, all day. But they were, that was, there would have been people who did it before it. they were the first people to really, really break that as a thing. And again, and the song is super catchy, but just the kind of foresight to do that, I think, makes that number two in my book. And number one, I had to go back to, you have to go back to when you are, I think, falling in love with pop music. And also it's almost sort of a kind of a golden age of videos when... So I'm thinking kind of early 80s. Late 70s, early 80s. Videos hadn't been around that long. It had just become a sort of a playground for certain bands. And videos from that era that I want to mention for different reasons. Up the Junction by Squeeze. You must go and look at it. It's literally the five of them in a kitchen with someone making them a cup of tea. You've got Jules with a big cigar in his mouth. Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford. It looks so young. It breaks your heart. This incredible song set in the right place. And it's just a really beautiful slice of life. So I love that. It's not my number one. I love also, for a completely different reason, Walk of Life by Dire Straits. Speaker 1 (6:21) So Speaker 6 (6:21) Dire Straits at that point are sort of, they're cracking America. But you know, MTV was a huge deal for Dire Straits. And Dire Straits, Walk of Life is the video where it's a little bit of concert footage. But in between, loads of sports bloopers from American sports. And this, again, is before, many, many years before, your entire timeline is sports bloopers. Speaker 2 (6:44) So Speaker 6 (6:45) watching that. Speaker 2 (6:46) Decades before this. I'm Speaker 6 (6:47) like, this is, I cannot believe what I'm seeing here. It's like the montage they would do at the end of the snooker every year to the sting, but for American sports. So it was amazing for us because we hadn't seen these things and kind of, you know. American football players cartwheeling in the air and ridiculous mascots and stuff that felt insane. But also, for America, it was amazing. So it didn't feel like they were sending out to America, but it was absolutely aimed at the American heartlands. It's a great song. So I think that, again, to use a video, that's spending your money well. Concert footage, plus they've had to buy some clips, but it absolutely... lands in the American heartland. So it does something for the song. It services the song. But the video I'm going to go for, and they always make great videos, and just I think the first time I fell in love with what a music video could be, if I say saxophonist on a crane, you know it's going to be Baggy Trousers by Madness. Baggy Trousers itself, when you're a kid, is the most extraordinary song you've ever heard. You go... I'm so sorry they're talking about this. Sorry, the teachers are in the pub. Sorry, as my entire reality just changed. What is happening here with this? song that is also extraordinarily well written and then you look at the video and they're so you're like no wonder they're called madness mum look uh you know would you have Speaker 2 (8:10) liked to been in that gang i don't Speaker 6 (8:12) know i'd been too scared i wouldn't want to be hanging off a crane you got but i don't think you're supposed to play a saxophone um hanging off the end of a crane lee thompson i think that's actually madness and just you know what what