10 Hard Rock Music Videos That Got Banned
4. This Note’s For You - Neil Young
Everyone's favourite Crazy Horse Neil Young has never been one to shy away from commenting on the state of the world. He's also not a massive fan of corporations meddling with art. Young took this cause to new heights with the highly-charged video for his 1988 song This Note's for You.
This whole thing is one giant takedown of the advertising world.
Young skewered many of the most famous ads of the day, and even brought in Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston lookalikes to make fun of their apparent selling-out to big companies.
Neil may have thought he was sending out a good message, but a certain King of Pop's legal team had other ideas. Jackson's lawyers threatened MTV with court action if they didn't pull the video, which the channel ended up doing. However, Young's native Canada did not ban his work, and the video ended up becoming a hit.
It got so popular that MTV eventually lifted sanctions against it! Take that, MJ's lawyers! This Note's for You even ended up scoring a Grammy nomination for Best Concept Video. What did it lose out to?
Weird Al Yankovic's Fat, a parody of Bad by Michael Jackson.
You couldn't make this stuff up.
The actual This Note's for You video can be found here.