The 10 Best Rock Music Videos of All Time, Ranked

Published Sep 19, 2026, 3:58 PM EDT

Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies.

Today, when your favorite artist puts out a new music video, you can go to YouTube and watch it as often as you like. This wasn't always the case. In the days before the internet, you had to turn on MTV and be patient, waiting and hoping for the video you desperately wanted to see to show up on your TV screen. In 2026, MTV might be a thing of the past, but music videos aren't, even for rock and roll, which has been declared dead so many times. Whether it be huge bands from the 80s, or smaller acts from the 21st century, these ten songs and the videos attached to them will live forever as the best of the format.

10 "Learn to Fly" by Foo Fighters (1999)

The Foo Fighters were born in tragedy following the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Their drummer, however, refused to be consumed by darkness. Instead, Dave Grohl found light and humor with his own band, Foo Fighters. Many of the group's earlier music videos steer towards comedy, and they were never funnier than in 1999's "Learn to Fly." As Grohl sings about learning "to fly high," the video shows the band on a commercial airplane playing multiple roles, such as the lead singer as both the pilot, an overweight woman struggling to fit in her seat, and a pig-tailed girl. It's four minutes of fun, with cameos from Jack Black and Kyle Gass of Tenacious D included. "Learn to Fly" is a silly masterpiece.

9 "Coffee and TV" by Blur (1999)

London, England's Blur began in 1988 and found mainstream success with songs such as "Girls & Boys" and "Song 2". For this best video, however, you have to go to one of their smaller hits, 1999's "Coffee and TV." The second single from the album 13 has the singer wanting his vices to escape from a harsh reality. The music video goes in its own direction. In it, an animated carton of milk goes on a search for the missing boy shown on his side. Along the way, he encounters terrors like a weed whacker and a motorcycle, before hitching a ride to the city, where he falls in love with a strawberry carton of milk, only to witness her getting smashed by a foot. In the end, it's the missing boy who drinks from the carton and returns home. Now dead, but having served his mission, the carton grows angel wings and floats up to Heaven with a smile on its face.

8 "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden (1994)

Soundgarden had already found great success throughout the late 80s and early 90s, but in 1994, with their album Superunkown, they reached their peak thanks to the colossal hit "Black Hole Sun." Without a doubt their biggest song, it was elevated by the accompanying video. In it, Chris Cornell and the rest of the band play on a stretched out sunny hill. Interspersed are shots of an exaggerated suburbia, with creepy smiles plastered on the townsfolk as they go about their day. In the end, all are sucked into a black hole, their lives of nothing all for not. It's the perfect example of surrealist art as a part of music.

7 "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister (1984)

Suburbia strikes again in Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It." It begins with a boy in his bedroom pretending to rock out on a guitar, only to be interrupted by his angry, disciplinarian father. When the man asks what he wants to do with his life, the boy confidently replies, "I wanna rock", before twirling into the flamboyant Dee Snider. Screaming to his old man that he's not gonna take it, Snider goes downstairs and gets his conservative brothers to join him. An anthem for the youth of America wanting to break free, the video is a call to action.

6 "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen (1975)

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" just might be the greatest rock song ever made, and its music video brilliantly captures the magic. The opening shadowy shot of the four band members singing together is iconic and has been parodied often. It's so much more than that though. The actions shots of the group playing, Freddie Mercury clad in white and feeling free, are simplistic while simultaneously full of so much energy. With two billion views and counting on YouTube, this video alone has created countless fans of Queen.

5 "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer (1986)

Englishman Robert Palmer had a steady career through the 70s and the first half of the 80s, only to really blow up and have a moment in time as the biggest thing on MTV with the success of "Addicted to Love." Dressed in a white dress shirt and black tie, Palmer radiates coolness as he croons in front of models in black pretending to play instruments. There is nothing more to it than Palmer's voice and the exaggerated, red-lipped, non-smiling women, but the video accurately captures the freedom and excess of a carefree time for many.

4 "This Too Shall Pass" by Ok Go (2010)

OK Go was never a huge rock band who dominated the charts. They didn't need to be. The group wisely found another outlet to get them attention from the masses: YouTube. Ok Go has created a variety of experimental and jaw-dropping videos, and none are more flooring and hard to comprehend the complexity of than 2010's "This Too Shall Pass." The song is catchy. It's the video, though, which brought in millions of views. With a Rube Goldberg machine, dominoes are knocked over, leading to the release of one contraption after another, the band fittingly in the background for the shots. At the end, it all goes right, and everyone is sprayed with paint cannons as an audience cheers. How they got that all in one take is beyond us.

3 "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam (1991)

Pearl Jam quickly became disgusted by anything to do with commercialism, which included MTV and music video success, but at the beginning of their careers, with the album Ten, few bands did it better. Their most famous video is a heartbreaking masterpiece of pain. In "Jeremy," Eddie Vedder sings about the boy he picked on as a kid next to shots of the troubled boy all alone and struggling. At the end, the kid walks into his classroom and puts a gun in his mouth. You can listen to "Jeremy" on the radio and get lost in the beat. The video won't let you rest. The real life story of Jeremy Wade Delle demands your attention.

2 "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel (1986)

In the beginning of the band Genesis, there was Peter Gabriel. When he left the band, he didn't disappear. Gabriel only got better, hitting his peak in 1986 with the dazzling music video for "Sledgehammer." It became so iconic that it won nine trophies, a record, at the next year's MTV Music Video Awards. It was a well deserved honor. As the beat launches, Gabriel comes to life, but everything is off kilter. State-of-the-art technology allowed stop-motion, claymation, and surrealism to come together for a bizarre video. Forty years later, there's been nothing like it.

1 "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana (1991)

In the early 90s, every teenager seemed to be wearing flannel shirts, ripped jeans, and Chuck Taylors. It all started with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a song which took the rock genre and flipped it on its head with something fresh and filled with energy. The video created an aesthetic all on its own. There is no high concept here. The success of Nevermind's opening track comes from the vibe of the moment. A new decade was revolting, and for a moment its spokesman was Kurt Cobain. Screaming his lungs out in a foggy gymnasium for a raucous high school pep rally, Cobain stares right through the viewer and tells us what every kid demands: "Here we are now, entertain us." At the end, a movement had been born.