Top 5 Countdown: Best Backwards Videos

In celebration of the new clip from Guineafowl – the ridiculously catchy “Little Fingers” (an early contender for Australian song of the year – seriously loving it!) which you can view at the end of the article – we’re going to look back at five of our favourite backwards video clips. This was a surprisingly difficult list to bring together – there are a lot of amazing clips out there with backwards elements.

5. Pharcyde – Drop

Hip Hop has jumped into the backwards wagon quite a few times over the years. T.I. “Be Easy” is the first that comes to mind. Though none have done better than the Spike Jonze directed “Drop”. With Beastie Boy cameos and more, this is one video that requires multiple viewings, too. Enjoy!

4. Cibo Matto – Sugar Water

There have been a few split screen videos over the years – where one is in normal motion, and the other is backwards, but this one is in our opinion the best of the lot. It wouldn’t surprise you to learn that Michel Gondry is behind this little gem…

3. Mute Math – Typical

I was surprised at how many people recommended this one – but it was so massive when it premiered on YouTube back in 2007, I guess it shouldn’t have. That makes it the newest clip on our list. Israel Anthem directed this one.

2. Coldplay – The Scientist

Say what you want about Coldplay, this is about as close to perfection as a music video gets, let alone one made backwards… though Guineafowl might have a few words to say about that later 😉

1. REM – Imitation of Life

While it’s not a completely backwards clip, this video directed by Garth Jennings was the most voted by our contributors. It’s a fantastic song, and on a rewatch it makes perfect sense why it hit the number one spot – it’s incredibly unique and memorable, exactly what a music video needs to be.

Now, I’d like to let Sam from Guineafowl have the last word on this article:

“Backwards clips are not as common as you think in Music Videos, Coldplay did one for “The Scientist” and Jack Johnson did one for “Sitting, Waiting, Wising”. What both clips share (aside from being in reverse) is the artists at points, turning to the camera and singing the verse or chorus backwards. Although both artists accomplished this pretty well in their various clips, we wanted to try and top them.

So, the director of the clip, Kip Williams, asked me to learn every lyric of “Little Fingers” backwards, including the kinda dense verses. On top of this, Kip had decided to speed the filming of the clip up by a third, so as to give the impression that thingswere moving a little slower when we returned the clip to proper pace. So, I was to learn the entire song backwards and by the day we shot had to have the ability to sing it a third faster than regular. When you approach singing a word backwards, it’s actually not important to say all the letters in the word, but to emulate the shapes that word makes with your lips. So for us, “Out of Horror” became “Orror Vorno” rather than “rorroh fo tuo”. This made singing the song a little easier as the words became less consonant heavy and more about vowel shapes.

On the day of shooting, I was still frantically trying to learn the lyrics, and even had crew members holding up big pieces of cardboard with our made up language scrawled all over it whilst we were shooting.

Due to timing constraints and the fact that we did not have the budget to trash multiple rooms, we had two chances at filming the clip, so I did not get much practice at singing and trashing the room at the same time. In Johnson’s and Coldplay’s clip, each artist often turns away or looks down when they are singing, I had to look right at the camera and deliver, and although sometimes it looks like I am saying gibberish, those moments where the lyrics match my lip syncing are dead on. Take that Chris Martin…”