Ranking every MTV Video Music Awards 'Video of the Year' winner

The first ever VMA video of the year is also the least deserving. Why? Because Michael Jackson's " Thriller" was also nominated for that category during the awards' inaugural year and lost. To this music video. Yeah. Exactly.

Man, I love Neil Young, but this track and its accompanying music video really put that affection to the test. If "get off my lawn!" could be a music video, it would be precisely this. Also, how did MTV get away with calling itself the channel for youth culture when "This Note's For You" beat out Michael Jackson ("Leave Me Alone") and Madonna ("Like A Prayer") at the 1989 VMAs?

When I think of Katy Perry, the first word that comes to mind is "gimmicky." Her rise to prominence came with "I Kissed A Girl," which was only a big deal because it's a song about exploring one's sexuality that was performed by the daughter of Pentecostal pastors. "Firework" is no different. It's a music video in which Katy Perry's breasts shoot fireworks. Yep. Really.

What's funny about "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" isn't even that it's the best "disaffected rock band travels aimlessly through the desert" video ever made. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Scar Tissue" is clearly better. The latter at least wasn't filmed on a green screen.

"Need You Tonight" is easily one of the better and catchier pop songs of the 1980s. It's a shame that its video wasn't. If the premise of your visual piece is to highlight every member of the band — as in the case here — you deserved to be fired for your lack of imagination.

This video has a circus, a wedding and Wild West motifs, which I guess...I don't know, man. How "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" beat out Madonna's "Hung Up," which might legit be her best to date (it has parkour!), is beyond me.

You have to give some credit to Don Henley, the former Eagles vocalist turned soloist. His music video for "The Boys Of Summer" isn't the best, but it's got some visuals compelling enough that they stick to your head. The expressionless drummer boy comes to mind.

This music video is pretty amazing if you imagine it being a single-serving Twitter account dedicated to tweeting only trite aphorisms. That, of course, wasn't the intention of Mark Fenske, the director. Also, "Right Now" beat out Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the VMAs. Yeah.

The thing about making jokes about the zeitgeist is that they quickly become irrelevant. That's the biggest issue with "The Real Slim Shady," which references the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape, Tom Green and other ephemera from the late-'90s/early 2000s. Also worth pointing out is that this video beat out Blink 182's "All the Small Things," which just goes to show you that being sophomoric was very much in around that time.

Eminem approached music videos the way "Family Guy" does episodes: with a barrage of referential and childish jokes that miss more than they hit. At least this time around, "Without Me" tries to have some kind of plot (Em and Dre as Batman and Robin). That this video beat out the White Stripes' "Fell In Love with a Girl," which was made with nothing but Legos and was directed by Michel Gondry, is a true travesty.

On the one hand, "Mirrors" is eight minutes long, which...why? On the other, it beat out the music video for Robin Thicke's misogynistic "Blurred Lines" and Macklemore's annoying Seattle hipster rap anthem "Thrift Shop," so it can't be that bad.

"Bad Blood " featured a ton of celebrities — Jessica Alba, Selena Gomez, Zendaya, Cindy Crawford and Kendrick Lamar, just to name a few — and yet it only managed to be an amusing-at-best music video. The mediocrity of "Bad Blood" is made more apparent when you take into account that it beat out Kendrick Lamar's " Alright," which is legitimately a piece of visual art.

"Piece of Me" is a run-of-the-mill music video that could have featured just about any pop starlet you can think of. The only thing that makes it stand out, I suppose, is that this was Britney's comeback video after infamously having a breakdown in 2007.

If the idea of an upper-middle class, suburban, white teen girl dipping her toes into the wild side was a music video, it'd be this one. In it, a pre-"Clueless" Alicia Silverstone goes all out by getting a piercing and bungee jumping. Cool. " Cryin'" beat out the Beastie Boys' and Spike Jonze's "Sabotage" that year, by the way.

The premise of "Umbrella" is to highlight Rihanna's stunning and breathtaking beauty. It certainly accomplishes that. Other than that, there isn't really much one can say about this music video.

Sure, the computer graphics are bad, but nowadays that's actually considered cool (ever heard of vaporwave?). Credit to Dire Straits for making a video that's not just the band playing instruments and for pandering to MTV for name dropping them in the song. ("I want my, I want my MTV.") LOL. But also, how crazy is it that "Money For Nothing" beat out a-ha's "Take On Me?" Straight up baffling. 

I'm not sure why — maybe the fact that it's set in the UK and drugs are being mixed with romance — but this music video reminds me of "Trainspotting." It's not a bad thing. Also, shout-out to RiRi for casting a Chris Brown lookalike as her love interest.

"Waterfalls" was the first "Video of the Year" winner by a black artist or group, which speaks volumes about MTV. The video hasn't aged all too well, but TLC dancing in the water and morphing into water goddesses still holds up quite well. Also, I forget how much I miss Left Eye. Side note: "Waterfalls" beat out Weezer's "Buddy Holly."

Full disclosure: If you were to ask me to describe Jamiroquai's music with one word, it would be "meh." That said, the music video for "Virtual Insanity" deserves mad props for pulling off a simple idea so well.

I love the music video for "Lady Marmalade" because you can tell that Paul Hunter (its director) was told to do his best Baz Luhrmann (who directed "Moulin Rouge!") imitation. Hunter most definitely delivered.

Not only does "Wrecking Ball" pay tribute to another video on this list (Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2U"), but it also inspired countless memes and Halloween costumes that year, which is a great indicator of the cultural impact of a particular piece of work. Also, you can tell this was directed by Terry Richardson because of the creepy male gaze point of view.  

It's not perfect, but it's still worthy of note. The best music videos are the ones with visuals that complement and/or align well with the music and lyrics of the song. "Losing My Religion," directed by the iconic Tarsem Singh, manages to accomplish that in this track about the loss of faith.

The genius of Beyonce is that she can straight up lift another artist's work — in this particular case, Bob Fosse's choreography from "Mexican Breakfast" — and her Beyhive will call her brilliant. I know that upsets a lot of you, but it doesn't make it any less true. Fight me.

Only Madonna could rip off the seminal documentary "Koyaanisqatsi" and truly make it her own. The song's beat is perfectly complemented by the frenetic time lapses.

Missy Elliott is an aesthete. That's true when it comes to music, fashion and music videos. "Work It" is no exception.

Another full disclosure: I have a visceral and contrarian reaction whenever someone sings Pearl Jam's praises largely because people legit go overboard when it comes to this band. BUT even this hater can't deny how prescient and how well the "Jeremy" video has aged.

What I love about Lady Gaga is that she's basically the answer to the question, "What would Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails be like if he/they were a female pop star?" The music video for "Bad Romance" supports this theory, IMHO. Also, I love how you can tell Gaga is an Interscope artist by the not-so-subtle Beats product placement in her video. (Jimmy Iovine, founder of Interscope, also co-created Beats with Dr. Dre.)  

The music of Lauryn Hill is timeless. That has never been more apparent than in the music video for "Doo Wop (That Thing),"which very much visualizes this idea by seamlessly juxtaposing two block parties — one from 1967 and the other from 1998 — as Lauryn Hill does her thing.  

"Tonight, Tonight" is fantastic for two reasons. The first is that it's a wonderful tribute to cinema OG George Melies and his film, "A Trip To The Moon." The second is that it highlights how much members of the Smashing Pumpkins look like they came from the 1900s, an era where tuberculosis was rampant.

So much unadulterated joy in the Bryan Barber-directed music video. The concept is quite simple: a nod to the time the Beatles made their first televised appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," but better because the fictional band in "Hey Ya!" is made up of EIGHT Andre 3000s.

This music video, directed by John Maybury, is a master class in keeping it simple. For the bulk of the video, we see nothing more than Sinead O'Connor's face running the gamut of emotions. And you know what? That is completely fine by me.

Great song with even greater visuals. "Sledgehammer," directed Stephen R. Johnson, is what you would get if the great Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer had ventured into making music videos instead of trippy stop-motion films.

It's tempting to want to give K-Dot the top spot — the man just earned a Pulitzer (the first ever awarded to a non-classical or jazz musician), so why not give him this? "HUMBLE." is so loaded with references — Da Vinci's "Last Supper," the classic Grey Poupon mustard commercial, "The Young Pope." Take your pick! — that the video requires multiple viewings just to get them all. Still, for my money, this video is not as good as "King Kunta," hence it's runner-up placing. 

Real talk and criticism aside, there's no bigger artist in the world right now than Beyonce. No one else can close down the Louvre to make a music video with her partner (Jay Z clearly plays second fiddle in "Apes**t," which could very well be this year's winner for "Video of the Year") only to one-up herself by taking over the September issue of "Vogue" and hiring the first black photographer to shoot the cover of the iconic issue for the magazine's 126-year history. She is on another level all by herself, and this particular reign truly began with the release of "Lemonade," of which "Formation" is the lead single. The video for it has so many layers. There's the political — it critiques the government's poor response to Hurricane Katrina and it's very much pro-Black Lives Matter — but "Formation" is also one of those rare pieces of film where literally every frame is a standalone piece of art. All hail, Queen Bey.