The 30 All-TIME Best Music Videos

Thirty years ago, on Aug. 1, 1981, MTV began to beam a budding art form — the music video — into homes across the U.S. TIME takes a look back at the most memorable clips from three decades' worth of music television

Gnarls Barkley, 'Going On' (2008)

By Gilbert Cruz Thursday, July 28, 2011

BACK
NEXT

26 of 30

Director Wendy Morgan's video for this track from Gnarls Barkley's second album is a sucker punch of joy. Morgan (who also helmed the similarly energetic promo for Janelle Monáe's "Tightrope") takes Barkley's three-minute piece of percussive pop perfection and matches it to a story about a group of young men and women who discover a magical door to another dimension. Filmed in Jamaica and incorporating dancehall-inflected choreography, the video finds power in the movement of its Doc Martens–wearing local stars, who clap, sway, leap, slide and stomp across the screen with abandon. The push and pull between their synchronicity and wild free-for-all dancing (skip ahead to 1:25 for an example) make this clip dynamic in a way few others are.