Top 10 Funny Music Videos of the 1990s

In the 1990s, MTV and MuchMusic had everyone glued to the tube to catch the latest gnarly clip from Nirvana or TLC or Guns n' Roses. Sometimes that produced good things like Radiohead's 'Just.' Sometimes it produced, well, anything by Color Me Badd. And sometimes we got to laugh our collective heads off. Here are the top 10 funny music videos of the 1990s, from the exceptionally cheesy to the comically genius.

10. 'Learn to Fly,' Foo Fighters
Despite being a seriously ass-kicking rock band, Foo Fighters have released some very funny music videos. This is their best, with Dave Grohl mugging it up as a fey flight attendant, a clueless airline pilot and a brace-faced fangirl. Taylor Hawkins also shines as a surprisingly fetching stewardess. Some of the impersonations are a tad politically incorrect -- the cheeseburger-craving fat lady comes to mind -- but Grohl and Hawkins, especially, have real comic flair. Look for a cameo by Tenacious D's Jack Black and Kyle Gass as bumbling maintenance men.

9. 'Buddy Holly,' Weezer
Spike Jonze gets Weezer to invade 'Happy Days' in this clever clip, complete with the actual Arnold's Drive-In set and the real Al Molinaro making a cameo as the rotund proprietor of Arnold's. Scenes from the original 1950s-era '70s sitcom (one of the funniest bits is Fonzie kick-dancing) are intercut with Weezer performing as a clean-cut '50s combo. In retrospect, it's also pretty amusing that the most famous image of perpetually dour Rivers Cuomo is him sporting a cheeseball grin without his trademark Buddy Holly glasses. Oh, the irony!



8. 'Everybody (Backstreet's Back),' the Backstreet Boys
There are intentionally funny videos and there are unintentionally funny videos -- and this is definitely the latter. The Boys get turned into icons of scariness, including Dracula and the Wolfman, with Nick Carter inexplicably channeling the Mummy, singing, "Am I sexual?" and trying to look hot while wrapped in hospital gauze. Then they all attempt some 'Thriller' choreography dressed as hip-hop pirates, which would explain the hysterical row-the-boat and hoist-the-sail dance moves. This is a slick affair, a product of the bloated boy-band budgets of the '90s, but cool it is not.



7. 'Amish Paradise,' Weird Al Yankovic
Weird Al set the standard for song parodies and funny videos back in the '80s -- a couple decades before the Lonely Island and Flight of the Conchords started skewering music. This clip pokes fun at Coolio's 'Gangsta's Paradise' but, as is Al's trademark, with more of an absurd touch than a scathing one. There's a sexy butter-churning scene, Florence Henderson as Yankovic's alluring Amish wife and kids peeking at an exposed shin in an Amish girlie mag. See also 'Eat It' and 'Fat' for Al at his Michael Jackson-baiting best.

6. 'I'm Too Sexy,' Right Said Fred
When this video came out in 1991, the bald 'n' brawny brother duo of Richard and Fred Fairbrass were rocking a fabulous and utterly obvious gay aesthetic, complete with mesh shirts and tight leather pants. But they threw in lots of bikini-clad women mincing around just to up the hetero factor. In this monster hit video, the too-sexy men pose and preen and expose their chests with reckless abandon. You may be laughing with or at them, but you gotta think these guys were aware they looked a little silly -- one of their lyrics is "I'm too sexy for my cat," for Pete's sake.

5. 'The Majesty of Rock,' Spinal Tap
1984's 'This Is Spinal Tap' was a full-length parody of heavy-metal excess. This track, released in '92 for their "comeback" album 'Smell the Glove,' successfully repeats the Spinal Tap formula, including goofy lyrics ("The majesty of rock, the mystery of roll/The darning of the sock, the scoring of the goal"), ridiculous rock poses, awful costumes and excessive pompousness. Plus, crappy computer-generated images of Roy Orbison and Janis Joplin rock out with the aging Tap musicians.

4. 'Hooked on a Feeling,' David Hasselhoff
You may ask, is it a joke? But once you see a tuxedo-clad Hoff croon this 1969 B.J Thomas/1974 Blue Swede hit while making love to the camera, it's clear he really thought this music video was the bomb. In this preposterous clip, David Hasselhoff travels around the world with horrifically bad green-screen footage and a cheesy rotating cube. Most creepy are the flying kiddie angels. Maybe he was drunk during the filming, but even that's no excuse.



3. 'Sabotage,' Beastie Boys
The Beasties have produced a lot of funny videos (see 'Fight for Your Right to Party' and 'Body Movin''), but 'Sabotage' rules, hands down. The video (directed by Spike Jonze) takes loving aim at '70s cop shows like 'Starsky and Hutch' and 'Baretta.' Check out the superfly period costumes, the rad wigs and mustachios, the character names ("Bunny" and "Cochese," indeed!) and the doughnut-eating interlude. If all music videos looked this fun, musicians would never stop doing them.



2. 'Coffee and TV,' Blur
This video chronicles the adventures of an animated milk carton who goes looking for missing Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, who is featured on Milky's cardboard side. He has a close call with a weed whacker and a litter-kicking gang of kids, falls in love with a cute strawberry milk container (who suffers an unfortunate demise from the heel of a shoe) and ends up in an alley filled with some really messed-up trash. It's clever, amusing and, at times, quite sad -- but there is a happy ending!

1. 'Praise You,' Fatboy Slim
It was a classic YouTube video before YouTube existed. It's directed (again) by Spike Jonze, who leads the Torrance Community Dance Group as they perform an amateur modern dance sequence in front of a California movie theatre. The choreography itself is awesomely crap-tacular, but it's the reaction of puzzled onlookers that really makes this Fatboy Slim clip sing: The crowd boos when security tries to shut the dancers down, and a guy says, off-camera, "Who are these guys? They're pretty good, though, huh?" When it first came out, everyone asked, "Is it for real?" We only wish.