Michael Jackson has an incredible back catalogue but which is The King of Pop’s best music video?

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It goes without saying, that Michael Jackson had a recording discography like few others. From his time in The Jackson 5 as a young man to when he became a bonafide superstar solo artist, he proved himself as a pop titan over and over again.

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Though this does nothing to settle which masterpiece is his finest piece of work. Some say the best Michael Jackson songs are the disco-led bangers – and some say his epic love songs show the King of Pop at his finest.
 

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Solo Career

Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough – 1979 – Director Nick Saxton
It was Jackson’s first music video as a solo artist. The music video shows a smiling Jackson dancing and singing “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” in a black and white tuxedo with a black bow tie while appearing chroma keyed over a background of abstract geometric figures. At one stage, Jackson is seen dancing in triplicate, which was considered innovative at the time.

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Rock With You – 1979 – Director Bruce Gowers
The video features Jackson in a sparkly sequined suit singing the song with a bright laser behind him. It was filmed on a stage in Los Angeles called the 800 Stage.

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She Outta My Life – 1980 – Director Bruce Gowers
The music video for the song features Jackson sitting on a stool in a darkened room singing the song, lit by a single spotlight. The video uses a split screen technique to simultaneously show Jackson from two different angles during the second and third verses.

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Can You Feel It (with The Jacksons) – Director Bruce Gowers & Robert Abel
The music video was noted for its remarkable special effects created by Robert Abel and Associates, which included tidal waves, explosions and the Jacksons towering over a city, spreading glitter and rainbows. Jackson created the video’s concept and Tito’s sons, Taj and Taryll, appeared as extras.

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Billie Jean – 1983 – Director Steve Barron
The short film for “Billie Jean” is considered the video that brought MTV, until then a fairly new and unknown music channel, into mainstream attention. It was one of the first videos by a black artist to be aired regularly by the channel, as the network’s executives felt black music wasn’t “rock” enough.

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Beat It – 1983 – Director Bob Garaldi
The music video for “Beat It” helped establish Jackson as an international pop icon and cost Jackson $150,000 to create after CBS refused to finance it. The video was filmed on Los Angeles’ Skid Row—mainly on locations on East 5th Street—around March 9.

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Say, Say, Say (with Sir Paul McCartney) – 1983 – Director Bob Garaldi
In the short film, the duo play “Mac and Jack”, a pair of conmen who sell a “miracle potion”. The video was filmed at Los Alamos near Santa Barbara, California and the video cost $500,000 to produce. Cameo appearances in the video are made by McCartney’s then wife Linda, as well as Jackson’s older sister La Toya.

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Thriller – 1983 – Director John Landis
This music video became one of Jackson’s most successful and was filmed at the Palace Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, the zombie dance sequence at the junction of Union Pacific Avenue and South Calzona Street in East Los Angeles and the final house scene in the Angeleno Heights neighborhood at 1345 Carroll Avenue. All principal photography was done in mid-October.

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Bad – 1987 – Director Michael Scorsese
The video is an 18-minute short film written by novelist and screenwriter Richard Price. The video has many references to the 1961 film West Side Story, especially the “Cool” sequence.

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The Way You Make Me Feel – 1987 – Director Joe Pykta
It was choreographed by Vincent Paterson. The short version of the video is six minutes and thiry-four seconds long and the full version is nine minutes and thirty-three seconds long. The video begins with a group of males trying to pick up women, but they don’t get any luck. Joe Seneca, Sean Cheesman, and Tatiana Thumbtzen all have roles in the video.

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Man In The Mirror – 1988 – Director Donald Wilson
This video is a notable departure from Jackson’s other videos mainly because Jackson himself does not appear in the video, aside from a brief clip toward the end of the video in which he can be seen donning a red jacket and standing in a large crowd. Instead, it featured a montage of footage from various major news events.

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Dirty Diana – 1988 – Director Patrick Kelly
The video featured Jackson performing the song live during his Bad World Tour. The film footage was taken on July 16 at Wembley Stadium with soundtrack mixed from live multitrack recording taken on the same day, with additional footage from June 27–28 show at Parc des Princes.

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Smooth Criminal – 1988 – Director Colin Chilvers
In the music video, Michael Jackson and the dancers immediately around him perform a seemingly impossible forward lean. To accomplish this maneuver, a hitching mechanism which Jackson co-patented was built into the floor of the stage and the performers’ shoes, thereby allowing performers to lean without needing to keep their centers of mass directly over their feet.

Speed Demon – 1988 – Director Jerry Kramer & Will Vinton
Jackson filmed the video as a promotional video for the song, which originally was a segment of his 1988 film Moonwalker.

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Come Together – 1988 – Director Jerry Kramer & Colin Chilvers
Jackson filmed the video as a promotional video for the song, which originally was a segment of his 1988 film Moonwalker.

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Leave Me Alone – 1989 – Director Jim Blashfield
The music video was released on January 2 and features llamas and peacocks from an animal preserve and an amusement park, Oak’s Park. The video was the result of the media criticizing his idiosyncrasies.

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Liberian Girl – 1989 – Director Jim Yukich
The music video featured many of Jackson’s celebrity friends who gathered on a soundstage to film the music video for “Liberian Girl”, only to discover that Jackson was filming them all along. It featured Paula Abdul, Dan Aykroyd, Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg, John Travolta, and Olivia Newton-John.

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Black Or White – 1991 – Director John Landis
The video featured Macaulay Culkin, Tess Harper, and George Wendt. This was the second time John Landis and Jackson worked together, the previous time being Thriller. It was choreographed by Vincent Paterson.

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Remember The Time – 1992 – Director John Singleton
The promotional music video was filmed in mid-January. It was a nine-minute video and was promoted as a “short film” and was choreographed by Fatima Robinson. The video was an elaborate production and became one of Jackson’s longest videos at over nine minutes. It was set in ancient Egypt and featured groundbreaking visual effects and appearances by Eddie Murphy, Iman, The Pharcyde, Magic Johnson, Tom “Tiny” Lister, Jr. and Wylie Draper. The video also featured Michael’s first on screen kiss.

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In The Closet – 1992 – Director Herb Ritts
The sepia colored music video features Jackson performing sensual dance routines with supermodel Naomi Campbell. The spoken vocals by Princess Stéphanie of Monaco were re-recorded by Campbell for the video. The clip was filmed in late March in Salton Sea, California and premiered on April 23.

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Jam – 1992 – Director David Kellogg
The video features a cameo appearance by the rap duo Kris Kross and Michael Jordan. Both Jordan and Jackson teach one another their special talents in this video; Jordan’s basketball skills and Jackson’s “moonwalk”.

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Heal the World – 1992 – Director Joe Pykta
The music video features children living in countries suffering from unrest, especially Burundi. It is also one of only a handful of Michael Jackson’s videos not to feature Jackson himself.

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Give In To Me – 1993 – Director Andy Moranhan
It was shot on June 25, 1992 in Munich, Germany and features Jackson performing the song on stage at an indoor rock concert with ex-Living Color bassist Muzz Skillings, Guns N’ Roses guitarists Slash and Gilby Clarke, as well as the band’s touring keyboardist Teddy Andreadis. The pyrotechnics appearing on the video are computer-generated and were added later on.

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Who Is It – 1993 – Director David Finch
In the music video Jackson was featured falling in love with a high-priced escort and stares sadly at the city skyline.

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Will You Be There – 1993 – Director Vincent Paterson
The music video features Jackson performing the song during his Dangerous World Tour and footage from Free Willy.

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Gone Too Soon – 1993 – Director Bill DiCicco
The footage in the music video featured scenes of Jackson and White together, as well as brief coverage from White’s funeral. Home movies, donated by White’s mother Jeanne, were also shown in the short film.

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HIStory Teaser – 1995 – Director Rupert Wainwright
A promotional music video for Michael Jackson’s HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I studio album.

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Scream (with Janet Jackson) – 1995 – Director Mark Romanek
The music video was 4:46 minutes in duration and was choreographed by Travis Payne, LaVelle Smith Jnr, Tina Landon, Sean Cheesman and Sacha Lucashenko in May. It features a dystopic, playful spaceship dance-off between Jackson and his sister Janet and the video cost $7 million to make.

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Childhood – 1995 – Director Wayne Isham
Jason James Richter and Francis Capra, actors from the movie Free Willy 2, both make a cameo appearance in the video.

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You Are Not Alone – 1995 – Director Wayne Isham
The video was filmed on July 12 and features temple scenes that were a homage to Maxfield Parrish’s 1922 painting “Daybreak” and theater scenes which was filmed at the Pantages Theatre, in Los Angeles. Lisa Marie Presley, Jackson’s wife at the time, appears in an affectionate semi-nude scene with him.

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Earth Song – 1995 – Director Nick Brandt
The video was filmed in four geographic regions (Americas, Europe and Africa). The first location was the Amazon rainforest, where natives of the region appeared in the video and were not actors. The second scene was a war zone in Karlovac, Croatia, with Croatian actor Slobodan Dimitrijević and the residents of the area. The third location was Tanzania, which incorporated scenes of illegal poaching and hunting into the video. The final location was in Warwick, New York, where a safe forest fire was simulated in a corn field.

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Why – 1996 – Director Ralph Ziman
A promotional music video for the single of the same name and was shot in black and white.

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They Don’t Care About Us – 1996 – Director Spike Lee
Two music videos were made for the single. The first was filmed in Salvador (Pelourinho) and in Rio de Janeiro. The second was filmed in a prison with cell mates; in the video Jackson is seen handcuffed. It also contains real footage of police attacking African Americans, the military crackdown of the protest in the Tiananmen Square, the Ku Klux Klan, war crimes, genocide, execution, martial law, and other human rights abuses.

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Stranger In Moscow – 1996 – Director Nick Brandt
The music video was shot in Los Angeles and is based on Jackson’s personal life, portraying him walking around looking for new people to talk to, as he did in his real life.

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Blood On The Dance Floor – 1997 – Director Michael Jackson & Vincent Paterson 
Carmit Bachar, member of The Pussycat Dolls, was featured as a dancer in the music video. Another version of the music video was made, presented as the “Refugee Camp Mix”.

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Ghosts – 1997 – Director Stan Winston
It was a five-minute clip taken from a film entitled Ghosts. Jackson unveiled the film at the Cannes Film Festival, as part of the album promotion.

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HIStory – 1997 – Director Unknown
The video features scenes from his short film Ghosts, and live performances from the Bad World Tour and the Dangerous World Tour.

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You Rock My World – 2001 – Director Paul Hunter
The video, which is over thirteen minutes long, was described as being a short film. The video features appearances from Chris Tucker, Marlon Brando, Michael Madsen and Billy Drago.

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Cry – 2001 – Director Nick Brandt
The video was filmed in six different locations, five of which were in California and another in Nevada. People featured in the video included members of a real life gospel group.

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What More Can I Give – 2001 – Director Unknown
The song for the music video was created as a charity single recorded by various artists for 9/11.

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One More Chance – 2003 – Director Nick Brandt
Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch was raided by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. Michael Jackson had been shooting the video late into the night of November 17, but following the raid, production was stopped. The single was instead promoted using a montage video of highlights from Jackson’s career to date.

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Cheater – 2004 – Director Unknown
The music video features clips from the Live in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour DVD, which was included in the same album the song appears in.

 

Posthumous

 

This Is It – 2009 – Director Spike Lee
The video was released on December 27 and premièred on the webpage of Lee’s production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. The video, almost five-minutes long, features various scenes of Jackson’s hometown and former residence in Gary, Indiana, along with photos and videos of him and tributes from his fans around the world.

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We Are The World 25 For Haiti – 2010 – Director Paul Haggis
Haitian film students were involved in the video as part of the production crew. The music video for the song was formatted similar to the original “We Are the World“; the video opens with the song’s title with the recording artists’ signatures surrounding it, as well as clips of the artists performing their parts in the recording studio and included archive footage of Michael Jackson performing his part of the song. The video was intercut with clips showing people in Haiti following the earthquake.

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Hold My Hand – 2010 – Director Mark Pellington
On Monday, November 22, the filming for the video began in Tustin, California, a main filming location being the airship hangars at Marine Corps Air Station Tustin. There was a casting call posted on Jackson’s official website, stating interest in people of all ages who wanted to be in the video.

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Hollywood Tonight – 2011 – Wayne Isham
It was shot in front of the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California. Sofia Boutella portrays the lead dancer in the video.

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Behind The Mask – 2011 – Director Dennis Liu Aggressive
Two versions of the music video were made, the first being made in 2011 and the second, known as the alternative version, being made in 2013.

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All In Your Name (with Barry Gibb) – 2011 – Director Barry Gibb
The video shows unveiled footage of Gibb recording an unreleased track of the song with Michael Jackson in 2002.

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Love Never Felt So Good (with Justin Timberlake) – 2014 – Director Rich Lee & Justin Timberlake
Two versions of the music video were released. The first featured a crowd of young dancers lip syncing and, Timberlake singing along and making some memorable moves from Jackson’s classic music videos or live shows. The second version featured clips from the duet version, as well as clips from other Michael Jackson music videos, such as “Dirty Diana” and “You Rock My World“, along with some of Jackson’s live performances, such as “Billie Jean”.

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A Place With No Name – 2014 – Director Samuel Bayer
The video stars dancers Alvester Martin and Danielle Acoff in new dance sequences in a desert. The video also weaves in rare clips from Jackson’s “In the Closet” video shoot. A second music video was released on Michael Jackson’s Vevo page on August 28, with choreographed dances performed by the dancers from Cirque du Soleil’s “Michael Jackson: One” world tour. It was filmed at different places in Los Angeles, but most of the video was shot inside the “Michael Jackson: ONE” Boutique inside Mandalay Bay.

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Say, Say, Say (with Paul McCartney – Remix) – 2015 – Director Ryan Heffington
McCartney released this music video that unveiled new vocal recordings by Jackson.