Hoping to make this a regular sort of thing: Throwback Thursday.
I’ve taken a look at some lists attempting to figure out the best ’90s music videos of all-time.
Aerosmith is on there a lot. Guns N Roses’ “November Rain,” Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity,” and Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” are all common choices. Foo Fighters’ “Everlong,” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” are a couple other favorites. But one video consistently gets overlooked and forgotten about that I consider the best video from the ’90s ever: Bon Jovi’s video for “Always.”
The song was the lead single from their greatest hits record Crossroads. The video came at a time that hundreds of thousands of dollars were consistently pumped into the production of music videos, as I uncovered while reading I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution by Rob Tannenbaum. And this video had it all. Watch it below.
First of all, this video features a couple future stars in Carla Gugino — who I always had a crush on (Sin City, Entourage, Son in Law) and Keri Russell (Felicity, The Americans) as young actresses. It was directed by Marty Callner, who directed a lot of the ’90s hit videos Aerosmith put out, like “Love In An Elevator”, as well as heaps of concert documentaries.
It’s also got one of the most ridiculous plotlines of a music video ever. Here’s the breakdown:
Boy meets girl. Boy makes sex tape with girl. Boy cheats on girl with her roommate. Boy gets caught because she watches sex tape of him and her roommate. She runs out of the apartment and stumbles into a guy who brings her up to his ridiculous loft, then paints her nude. He’s gone when she wakes up in the morning. Girl calls cheating boy from earlier to come get her from the loft. Boy sees the painting of her and responds by committing arson on the other guy’s place, then flees to Mexico.
It really is a beautiful story — one that still haunts Keri Russell to this day.
“I was recently in a movie theater, and this young kid in the front was like ‘are you the girl in the green bra in the Bon Jovi video?’ I could have died,” Russell told Tarts in 2009.
It’s a video that should be remembered forever. So let’s relive its awesomeness.
