Best Music Videos of 2015

Director: Director X

Drake's "Hotline Bling" video birthed thousands of memes thanks to his endearing, passionate dance moves. Choreographed by Tanisha Scott, the video purposefully referenced Sean Paul's "Temperature" and "Gimme the Light" videos, in addition to John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

Drake seems to know what his fans want from him, and while the video is bookended by a call center full of beautiful women, he's still the one putting it all on the line.

Related: The Perfect Drake Dancing Gif for Every Occasion

Director: Ian Pons Jewell

Although it's initially difficult to decipher the plot in Nao's "Bad Blood" video, it reveals itself to be an overall look at life and death staged in vacuous, hardly inhabited spaces.

The main character wanders nude through an empty industrial warehouse, confronting the people she finds and making trees burst out of their mouths. What started as an apocalyptic setting later becomes a scene of violent growth and renewal.

Director: Pussykrew

Sevdaliza's "That Other Girl" takes the viewer into an eerie 3D world where the artist herself is cast in various forms of plastic.

Though the scenes are mostly shiny and beautiful, the message seems to be one of captivity and sterilization, evidenced by Sevdaliza's stillness and the security cameras overhead.

Directors: Simon Halsall & JB Babenhausen

Jamie xx's video for "Loud Places" follows him and his bandmate from The xx, Romy, as they skateboard around London. Though both musicians typically present themselves as shy and reserved, here they are happy and joyful as they go on an adventure together through empty streets.

The video recalls the longing nature of the song itself; both Jamie and Romy seem to be in search of something as they skate through their home city.

Related: Jamie xx: Sharing the Good Times

Director: Allie Avital

Autre Ne Veut's "Panic Room" video is perhaps the greatest The Voice audition that never was, both mocking and indulging in the audition experience that's become so commonplace in today's entertainment.

The video captures the tender awkwardness of putting yourself out there to be judged by strangers. Despite his dismissal, Ashin's vulnerability is both genuine and endearing.

Related: Watch Autre Ne Veut Perform "Panic Room" for P&P

Director: Grimes

Grimes' "Flesh Without Blood / Life in the Vivid Dream" follows the aesthetic of her previous videos, where she plays distinct characters that seem to embody both past and present ways of being.

In this case, she specifically represents the "Art Angels," who she named her recent album after. The angels show their happy, pleasant side at first, but by the end they turn bloody and vicious.

Director: Jérémie Rozan

Drug-fueled party scenes are plentiful in contemporary music videos, but Brodinksi's "Us" brings the party to a trippy, decadent spa in China for a fantasy reminiscent of Jeff Bridges' famous dream sequence in The Big Lebowski.

At one point in a hot tub, a man asks Brodinski why he's come to China. Though he doesn't give an answer, his narcotic happiness is infectious, and it quickly becomes one of those nights where the absurdity doesn't need an explanation.

Related: Techno in the Trap House: Brodinski on His Innovative Debut Album Brava

Director: Wolf Haley

Tyler, the Creator has never shied away from controversial subjects when directing his music videos. In that sense, "BUFFALO" is par for the course.

The viewer first sees Tyler painted white and being chased by black people with pitchforks on his way to being lynched. Despite his efforts to make the scene humorous, it's an uncomfortable, suspenseful shot that lasts until he ends up in another scene entirely with a band performing an R&B TV special. In many ways, "BUFFALO" does a great job of representing the many sides of Tyler's artistry—serious (yet never self-serious) and shocking (yet purposeful).

Related: R.I.P. Wolf Haley: Coming to Terms With Tyler, the Creator's Adulthood

Directors: Rihanna & Megaforce

Rihanna's seven-minute "Bitch Better Have My Money" video is an epic revenge story, wherein Rihanna and her girls kidnap the wife of an accountant who owes Ri money.

They take their hostage on a wild, violent adventure that culminates in Rihanna confronting the man in question. She also gets her money back—the video's last shot shows a naked Riri basking in a suitcase full of cash.

It's rumored that the story itself has some truth to it, in that, Rihanna once sued an accountant who messed with her financially. Watching the video with that in mind makes it all the better.

Director: Ian Pons Jewell

Vince Staples' "Señorita" video trails a preaching man with a group of followers who slowly die off.

Staples comes in and out of the scenes to rap verses and interact with various characters in this apocalypse (for example, a skittish bodyguard and an unconcerned, bikini-clad woman getting her nails done), before the screen zooms out to reveal that it's all just museum entertainment for a buttoned-up family.

Though the video doesn't have a linear story, its biting social commentary is undeniable—the story told through a set of alluring characters coping with the end of the world in their own ways.

Director: Andrew Thomas Huang

Björk's "Family" video is the moving version of her Vulnicura album cover, which shows her body painfully splitting down the middle as she's arched over a rock. She then heals and sews herself together before triumphantly blossoming back into the world.

Though the premise is simple, special effects transform the "Family" video into a fantastical tale of emotional rebirth that seemingly only Björk could pull off.

Director: Hiro Murai

Childish Gambino's "Sober" is a heartbreaker, capturing the awkward vulnerability in trying to get the attention of someone you're attracted to.

Here, Glover is admittedly high out of his mind, and his goofiness is tinged with bittersweet sadness. He ultimately gets the girl's attention, and even wins a smile—but like the high, it doesn't last. When the time comes for him to leave, the departure leads to a very rapid comedown.

Directors: Emmanuel Cossu and Fleur & Manu

In the "Everyday" video, A$AP Rocky appears to live his life in reverse, first as a bloated, overweight man reveling in his past life, before getting face surgery and slowly becoming his younger, handsome self.

"Everyday" captures Rocky's exuberance and charisma while examining the cult of celebrity and the song's focus on appreciating the finer things in life. It's a visually striking look at Rocky's inner anxieties, and the inevitable march of time.

Directors: Sia and Daniel Askill

Maddie Ziegler reprises her role as Sia's video muse in "Elastic Heart," this time accompanied by actor-turned-performance-artist, Shia LaBeouf.

The two are trapped in a cage and appear possessed as they fight, physically and emotionally, with one another and against their confines. The video culminates in a powerful final shot, as Ziegler is able to escape yet can't bring LaBeouf with her through the bars.

Director: Thomas Rhazi

Baauer's "GoGo!" follows an emotional rollercoaster between a young couple who fall through the sky in a car that seems to be headed towards an inevitable crash. You witness their highs and lows as the car tumbles and swerves through the clouds and lightning. It's a fantastical love story for our times with impeccable special effects, and it escalates perfectly with the wild electronic production of the song itself.

Director: Seth Mendelson

Tobias Jesso Jr.'s "Without You" takes a simple storyline—a young man and an older woman being attracted to each other and hooking up—and depicts it perfectly by extracting the situation's subtle nuances.

The video captures both characters' humanity as they confront not only how they feel about each other, but also their own insecurities. Though the video itself holds very little back once they give in, it feels genuinely romantic and heartfelt through and through.

Director: FKA twigs

FKA twigs' self-directed M3LL155X videos take the viewer through a song-by-song narrative from twigs' birth (from the mouth of Michèle Lamy) to womanhood. It includes sex, pregnancy, giving birth to dancers, and a vogue battle in the middle of the woods.

Though twigs has become known for boundary-pushing videos that include sharp storytelling, dancing, and fashion, M3LL155X took her creative output a step further by presenting her as a truly multi-dimensional, experimental performer and director.

Director: M.I.A.

M.I.A.'s "Borders" video depicts a version of the hell that many refugees are facing in the world right now as they struggle to leave their own countries' borders and successfully enter new ones.

They're confronted with tall barbed fences, the ocean, and cold weather, yet in this visual, M.I.A. manages to sing about the paradox of "borders" while creating something more stylized—even beautiful—than the gruesome reality we see in the media. It's a clever way of making viewers confront a very relevant story while also making them question if they're taking the human element into account.

Director: Colin Tilley

Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" has become an uplifting anthem responding to the increase in horrific, racially-motivated murder in America. "We gon' be alright" Kendrick repeats as he physically reaches new heights above the city of Los Angeles and more specifically, his hometown of Compton.

He flies, stands on street lights, and hovers proudly above his community before meeting his demise at the hands of a white policeman. The "Alright" video captures the essence and importance of the song and reminds us to keep going and keep dreaming, despite these uncertain times.

Director: A.G Rojas

In "Close Your Eyes (And Count to F**k)," actor Shea Whigham (Eli in Boardwalk Empire) plays a white policeman who's in a physical brawl with a black civilian, played by actor Keith Stanfield (Jimmie Lee Jackson in Selma). Their brutal fight represents the futility of the violence and police brutality happening in America, especially as it's directed towards innocent black people.

Though the video is hard to watch at times, you can feel the senseless, exasperated anger these men feel and direct towards each other before realizing that their fight is completely pointless. The choreography is brilliant in its timing, making the viewer question what's really motivating this encounter—do they love each other, or do they hate each other? Are they serious, or are they playing around? These blurred lines, and these confused emotions, are things that people globally can relate to right now.

By the end, as the two men sit on either side of the same bed, you sense that they are finally understanding the depth of their similarities, not their differences.