Animation in Music Videos

Animation in music videos is used to express a specific theme or even the required promotion necessary for a band to expand it's mainstream appeal. It is widely popular among bands and can offer an interesting perspective to the song itself, as well as the message delivered.

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know?

As per Wikipedia: The video begins with a black background and simple visuals of white sound waves (similar to the AM cover art) that vibrate in synchronization, first with the percussion and lead guitar, then with the lead singer, Alex Turner. As the band enters with the chorus, colored sound waves illustrate new voices. Simple sound waves then give way to fast-moving, representational line-drawing animations that morph between a variety of female, race car, race car engine, and road racing images. At one point, the undulating white line becomes the "trucker's mud-flap girl", seen in the single's cover art. The line drawings are interrupted several times with flashes of full-color animation, several that recall the surrealistic style of Robert Crumb. The increasingly complex video creates, by turns, a somewhat jarring and psychedelic experience, in a style not unlike the Gary Gutierrez animations that were featured in The Grateful Dead Movie (1977). The video ends with the familiar white line becoming two crossed checkered flags, which join together in a single line with the "AM" initials.

Concluding commentary: the music video for "Do I Wanna Know?", directed by David Wilson with animation agency Blinkink, was first released onto YouTube on 18 June 2013. As of July 2016, it has been viewed over 330± million times. This shows how widely popular the animation in the music video truly was.

Tool - Prison Sex

As per Wikipedia: The video for "Prison Sex" was created with stop-motion animation techniques, and was directed by the band's guitarist Adam Jones (who had previous experience in art direction and animation, including work on the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park) and was edited by Ken Andrews. The video was removed from the MTV playlist due to its disturbing content. "Prison Sex" was also nominated for 1995's MTV Music Video Awards' Best Special Effects category.

The video primarily revolves around a battered white humanoid, robotic-like doll figure trapped in a room full of cabinets that contain other humanoids, such as a caterpillar with the main humanoid's face, a jar with a wasp inside, a robotic character with a little child's face that twists and turns, and a being made out of what looks like meat and feces. During various points in the video the main character is confronted by a larger black humanoid who causes the doll to go catatonic. While catatonic, the black figure molests the doll via a paintbrush, fondling parts of the doll, and then some. In the beginning of the video, the black figure severs the doll's legs (even though they still move by themselves) and hangs them out of reach of the doll. By the end of the video, the doll subjects itself to the abuse by painting itself. In the final shot, it is revealed that the doll was in its own cabinet the whole time when the black figure closes the cabinet door.

Concluding commentary: the music video drew controversy and thus publicity. MTV stopped airing the "Prison Sex" video after a few viewings — due to a symbolic dealing with the sensitive subject of child abuse. Maynard James Keenan, who wrote the lyrics, has been quite clear about his antipathy towards his stepfather during early interviews about the song.