10 Best Music Videos Of The 90s
1. November Rain - Guns N Roses
An act in 3 parts, November Rain was directed by Andy Morahan, featuring AXL Rose's marriage to then-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour, followed by their wedding reception and then finally her funeral. At a cost of $1 million dollars, it remains one of the most expensive music videos ever.
It was a huge production, featuring a full live performance in a rented theatre, rebuilding the church seen in the video from scratch and several helicopter shots to capture the guitar solo by Slash outside the church. The second solo, placing him atop the piano in the theatre, was a delicate set-up with a crane swooping around him.
The video uses the song's full-length version, rather than an abridged one, running at over 9 minutes long. It is considered one of the ultimate hard rock ballads, forming part of an unofficial trilogy of videos, with the latter two being Don't Cry and Estranged (unconfirmed by the band, but supported by both Rose and Del James, the writer of the short story that the music video was based on). It is the longest song ever to reach the top 10 on the Billboard chart.
As of early 2020, the video has almost 1.4 billion views on YouTube, making it the most viewed video from before YouTube was founded. The video won the MTV Award for Best Cinematography. It was also one of the factors in the eventual breakup of the band, as Rose claimed the rest of the band did not want to move toward ballads. Slash disputed this in his autobiography.
Whichever the case, this remains one of, it not the, greatest music video of the 1990s.