10 Artists Who Always Had The Best Music Videos
5. Guns N' Roses
Notable Mentions: Welcome To The Jungle, Sweet Child O' Mine, Paradise City, November Rain, You Could Be Mine
When Appetite For Destruction, Guns N' Roses's debut album, was released in the late 80s, it's fair to argue most hard rock fans wanted to be them. More so, they wanted to be the guys in their videos.
Guns N' Roses were the ultimate definition of cool, and a lot of their early videos ('Paradise City', 'Welcome To The Jungle') focused on their live gigs, which were incredibly crazy and incredible to witness, as well as a look at the band's life backstage as they toured from city to city. While other hard rock bands had done this before, it was the unique image of GNR that made their videos so successful and their launch into the mainstream that made people sit up and pay attention to what they were doing. 'Sweet Child O' Mine' in particular was one of MTV's most marketable videos at the time, which shows iconic images of the band rehearsing at the LA Mendiola's Ballroom, a punk venue famous at that time.
Like other acts on this list, the videos matured as the band's sound did, and at the turn of the 90s, GNR were going for a more epic feel for many of the tracks on the Use Your Illusion Albums ('Don't Cry' and 'Estranged'). 'November Rain' especially has influences of Elton John and Queen all over it, with vast settings and large venues used to tell a love story over the backing track. At the time, it was one of the most expensive music videos ever made and, among other successes, became one of the first music videos of the 90s to hit over a billion views on YouTube.
Of course, this is Guns N' Roses, so they were still able to retain their hard roots with the video for 'You Could Be Mine', which features lots of stage-jumping, wild crowds, and the entire band nearly being terminated by Arnie Schwarzenegger's T-800.