What is the most expensive music video ever recorded?
The Jacksons didn’t do things by halves. Back when they were the Jackson 5, they were one of the biggest pop groups on the planet, the first band in history to debut with four consecutive number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Then, the youngest brother, Michael Jackson, decided to top that and become the single biggest pop star to ever live. Then the youngest of all of them, Janet Jackson, also decided to have one of the most innovative and influential pop careers of her time as well. A talented bunch, I’m sure you’ll agree.
This goes far beyond their popularity, though. In terms of sheer scale, everything the Jacksons did was a huge deal. The music speaks for itself, but when they made a TV series, it was massive. When they went on tour, it set records that are still standing today. Then you get to the medium that, arguably, the Jacksons have done better than just about anyone of their era: the music video.
Michael, in particular, was a huge movie buff. So, when the 1980s hit and music videos started to become the most important way of promoting music, he wanted his to hit the way his favourite films did. It was his idea to draft John Landis, fresh off of American Werewolf in London, in to make the music video for ‘Thriller’.
The project would become a 15-minute short film that cost half a million dollars and give MTV one of its biggest audiences to date upon its television premiere. At the time, half a million dollars was a psychotic cost for a music video. It suited the scale of the video itself, but surely that wouldn’t become the norm, right? Well, typically, MJ himself upped the ante with the video for ‘Bad’.
He quadrupled the cost of the video (and the talent of the director) by hiring Martin Scorsese and spending two million dollars on it. The industry as a whole would take a few years to catch up, with the omnipresent likes of Madonna, Guns N’ Roses, and MC Hammer (he was massive at the time, I promise) dropping similarly priced promos around the same time.
Fittingly enough, it would take two Jacksons to make the biggest, most expensive music video of all time. Michael’s little sister Janet had been leading her own hugely successful pop career in the 1980s, which led to her signing one of the biggest record deals of all time in 1991. In 1995, she teamed up with her older brother for the first single off his album ‘HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I’, ‘Scream’. A record of this magnitude needed a video to match, and the bill for this video had to be seen to be believed.
The video, a sci-fi-themed spectacular featuring a giant CGI spaceship, zero-gravity choreography and gratuitous flipping off the camera, cost an astonishing $7million, $13m in today’s money. Still, it is the most expensive music video ever made by a pretty large margin. Fittingly enough, the biggest music video of all time has since become one of the most influential too, with everyone from Nicki Minaj, Ciara and, in particular, TLC for the video for the deathless ‘No Scrubs’ paying tribute to it.
It’s true; no Jackson did things by halves. But when you’re Janet Jackson, why should you?
