The decline of MTV and the advent of YouTube have meant that music videos these days are free to be more risqué and boundary-pushing than ever before. With this in mind, for the last few years we’ve made it something of a December tradition to round up the year’s most notable NSFW music videos — some good, some bad, some artistically interesting, some gratuitous and even exploitative. 2014 certainly hasn’t let us down. In fact, it gave us what must surely be the first music video hosted on PornHub. (For that, we can thank Xiu Xiu, because of course.) Click on through to check out what this year had to offer — but not at work.
JMSN — “The One”
A close-up of a girl pissing her pants is, um, quite a statement of intent as far as opening shots go. But despite what that might lead you to believe, this video isn’t so much shocking as it is strikingly beautiful — the use of color recalls Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography, an idea that reaches its logical extreme when one of the models strips off her bodysuit to reveal that she has alopecia vitiligo (or appears to, anyway).
clipping. — “Body and Blood”
This video makes a similarly stylized and aesthetically beautiful use of a limited color palette, in this case black, white, and blood red. It’s disconcerting viewing, juxtaposing images of the naked body against flesh grinders and power drills. The obvious implication is that of torture, and there’s something distinctly fascist about both the colors and the Riefenstahl-esque oiled bodies.
Die Antwoord — “Pitbull Terrier”
And one more that does interesting things with color, with the song’s “black cat” and “white cat” represented by girls in black and white body paint (and bikinis). They’re rather overshadowed by Ninja’s star turn as the eponymous pitbull, though — he dons a dog mask and wreaks havoc, humping legs and tearing out throats indiscriminately. (Also, he kills the real Pitbull, or someone who looks just like him.)
Xiu Xiu — “Black Dick”
I mean, this is hosted on PornHub. There is, yes, black dick, along with all sorts of other genitals and pretty much everything else you can possibly think of. (In fairness, there are also cats.) This post is tagged NSFW, but this one is really NSFW. Really. Do not watch it at work. I warned you.
DJ Snake and Lil Jon — “Turn Down for What”
And while we’re discussing dicks, here we have a man quite literally possessed by his genitals! Hey, it’s happened to everyone, right?
Against Me! — “Black Me Out”
Surely the world’s first and only NSFW shadow puppet video, this is a perfect accompaniment to Laura Jane Grace’s visceral howl of rage at the machinations of the music industry. The imagery follows the lyric pretty closely, and considering that the lyric in question refers to “piss[ing] on the walls of your house” and “chop[ping] those brass rings off your fat fucking fingers,” it doesn’t exactly make for cheerful viewing, although it’s kinda uplifting in a curious way.
Annie — “Russian Kiss”
If you were going to pick someone to wind up Vladimir Putin for his stance on his LGBT rights, you could certainly do worse than batshit crazy artist Bjarne Melgaard, who’s the sort of person who probably gives Putin nightmares (or, perhaps, oh-so-confusing sexy dreams). Melgaard collaborated with Annie and Richard Kern on this video, and although it’s surprisingly tame — there’s no nudity save for a few nipples, and none of the provocation one might expect from Melgaard — it still gets its point across pretty unambiguously.
The Black Keys — “Weight of Love”
Dan Auerbach serves as the spiritual leader of a cult of conventionally attractive topless white girls. Sure, it’s well-shot and all, but c’mon.
The Raveonettes — “Endless Sleeper”
A couple of naked lovers on a beach! Aw, bless! Except… wait, one of them has a knife! (Warning: if you’re sensitive to strobe lighting, there’s some pretty intense strobing going on here.)
Pharmakon — “Bestial Burden”
Theres’s nothing strictly NSFW about this, but both music and imagery are so disconcerting that I can’t imagine your boss taking a particularly charitable view of seeing this over your shoulder. It expands on the visual theme Pharmakon established with the artwork for Bestial Burden, and finds her covered with organs of dubious provenance. It’s terrifying, frankly.
The Marilyn Manson video that wasn’t
The most controversial video of the year is something that wasn’t a video at all: the leaked footage of Lana Del Rey, shot by Eli Roth, in which the pop star acts out a rape scene. When the footage first emerged, the word was that it was for a Marilyn Manson video; Manson, however, denied this, and at present it remains unclear exactly why the footage was shot. Whatever the reason, it’s pretty disturbing viewing.