25 Best Music Videos: 4

4. Take On Me
a-ha

Its really, really hard to take most music videos from the 80s seriously. It's hard to be a Pitchfork-level douchey music snob and praise the artistic merit of Ric Ocasek with a fly's body or David Lee Roth doing anything ever. Sometimes shit is just meant to be fun, there doesn't need to be a deeper level of context or whatever.

This video may be the epitome of such a thing. Woman reads a comic book, hand comes out and drags her into this rotoscoped sketchy comic book world (I should take this time to mention that this may be the only time I've seen rotoscoping actually work). Then there are some angry racers who lost to the lead singer of a-ha and they want to beat him up with a pipe wrench. By the end of the video, lead singer of a-ha (who is apparently named Morten Harket, which sounds like he comes from Whoville. Morton Whoket.) has escaped from the pipe wrench fight (and the comic book) to begin breaking down and smashing reality and fiction as he shifts between real and rotoscopey.

It doesn't appear that this video exists for any other reason than to be fun and entertaining. Maybe the rest of us are just trying too hard.