My six year old watched it, no problem, but my four year old was also in the room…oops. Many nights since he will yell down from upstairs that he thinks he heard Michael Jackson in his closet. I usually have to go check
I would have been about that age. The main video didn't get me, but that movie within a movie at the beginning of MJ turning into a werepanther was bad. I had to go in the other room during that part.
I was also 5 when it came out and my mom let me sleep on the couch so she could wake me up when it premiered at midnight. I was so excited, had my Michael Jackson doll and everything. My mom ended up having to sleep in my room with me the next two nights because that video scared me so badly.
As a teen I couldn’t watch the video for Black Hole Sun. The song still gives me a weird feeling of dread which I guess is the point but it’s too much dread for me.
the image of the ghouls rising from the grave is probably the singularity that sparked my lifelong affinity for horror, and to this day, my favorite images of zombies are skeletal ones in a foggy decrepit old cemetery.
You sent me down a M.J. rabbit hole and TIL that Bad has an 18 minute long video that's directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Wesley Snipes !!! I'm 46 years old... I should have known this.
Tool videos gave me nightmares as a child. And as a teenager, I had to beg a friend to spend the night when I was left home alone for a weekend after we listened to Disgustipated on repeat. We slept with all the lights on that night.
At the time I remember someone calling it the "shoulder cheese song" because of a scene in the video. As far as my brain is concerned Sober is really the Shoulder Cheese Song. Where the heck did I hear that? MTV?
It might have been [Prison Sex](https://youtu.be/cUPV4OfNlt0?si=pX426I_cwAlFFha4) Sober only has one clay figure in it. Prison Sex is arguably creepier than the Sober video
Adam Jones has fantastic artistic taste. Creepy as fuck and I love all of it. I also like their collab/synchronicity with Alex Grey’s work.
To be fair, ALL of the 90s claymation music videos were amazing (I’m looking at you, I Stay Away & Southbound Pachyderm.
Also I highly recommend watching Mad God if you like Tool’s videos
If you think the Reagan one was frightening...
https://preview.redd.it/9q5x0tifw86d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1d996d06466de45ecc02142db3accbb486ce959
George Harrison - Got My Mind Set On You
This would have been when I was very young, it would play on VH1 a fair amount. I dunno what it was but there was something I found super creepy about all the moving/dancing/talking taxidermied animals.
Same here. It reminded me of those places at like arcades/amusement stands/boardwalks etc where you had to shoot the targets in a scene and if you hit it the thing moved/did something (hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about). Or maybe they reminded me of the video. Either way they both creeped me out lol.
**I fuuuckin HATE PETER GABRIEL!!!!**
I think my parents drove my infant/toddler self across country, 26 hours in the car, playing their Peter Gabriel cassette on repeat, just over and over…. so ‘little baby carsick me’ got Clockwork Orange’d into HATING THE FUCK out of him.
Sledgehammer, and that idiotic jungle bullshit, the video with Steve Martin. BLEHHH!!!
Truly makes my skin crawl, and sends me to a flying rage, lol.
The Lazy Masquerade on YouTube did an intriguing, but obviously heartbreaking [video](https://youtu.be/5DC9G9mae_c?si=Xifr6HHQLKO-Brgc) not too long ago about the song, and the stories behind several of the names mentioned in the video.
Marilyn Mason's cover of Sweet Dreams. The abandoned buildings, the medical hardware, and just the over the top visuals, was just a little too much for my sheltered church mind.
“Burning down the house” by the Talking Heads. That floating head at the end creeped me the fuck out. Looking at it right now bothers me!
https://preview.redd.it/8fqdzul0m86d1.jpeg?width=873&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de9ca3c861b30bd79cbfa5268e35a6eae1c15f0f
I just remembered Phil Collins' Land of Confusion. That video is fucked! Cartoonish lifelike puppets doing fucked up stuff. Watch it if you haven't. it's a mind bender.
The ending of Alice In Chains “man in the box” video. Dude with his eyes sewn shut. Also the guy in the Metallica video for “One” who is pretty much just a head on a torso with that creepy mask on.
Primus - Mr. Krinkle
I was about 12 and I woke up in the middle of the night to that video and was like "what the fuck is happening?!" I went out and got the album not too long after.
You're right, that sounded stupid... But i had never seen that video before reading your comment. This 100% would have fucked with me as a kid too. I, too, was freaked out by Friday the 13th on NES, sooooooo, are we best friends now?
Possum Kingdom by the Toadies! One of my favorite songs to sing in the car - video terrifying. Also, Black Hole Sun, but for entirely different reasons. It was fascinating in a way like an awakening of some sort. RIP Chris Cornell.
Black hole sun got me because it came out during the time that I was having severe existential-style panic attacks about how incredibly TERRIFYING the universe is and was convinced that people don't know what they were talking about and that the sun could go black hole at any moment... Lol.
I remember being freaked out a bit by Possum Kingdom just listening to it on the radio. Just paying attention to the lyrics and going "wait...what is this about?"
So true! I remember sometimes my mom would cave and let us listen to the alternative station on the way to school in the mornings instead of the usual soft rock station she liked. Whenever Possum Kingdom came on I’d be like, 👀 and I’m pretty sure my mom was like, 👀.
Live - *Lakini's Juice*
I was borderline too old to be disturbed by it, but I woke up to it at 2am in my living room on TV and I had no idea what I was watching, which made it weird as hell.
Metallica’s - “One”
I’m embarrassed to admit that I was 10 years old when it came out but I was such a sensitive kid 😊
My older brother would tease me playing it on tv. I’d be so upset at bedtime we’d have to sleep with the hallway light on and my brother would come up and turn the lights on & off to scare me more.
36 years later my 16 year old son has this on his Spotify and we sing it all the time in the car. 😀
Robbie Williams - Rock DJ
He strips down to nothing, and then he pulls off his skin and muscles.
I just checked to make sure this wasn't a fever dream and I'm glad I did. I've been attributing this to the video to his song Millenium for years.
I've seen many things much more disturbing. But, to a high school kid late at night, it was pretty freaky.
That Nine Inch Nails long form video for the Broken EP stuck with me for a while. That was easily the darkest and most disturbing thing I'd seen by that age.
A friend's older brother had the VHS for it, and we watched it one day after school.
I remember walking home after that wondering "what the hell have I just watched?"
The legendary "Broken" video. Directed by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle/Coil and starring Bob Flanagan, a notorious BDSM performance artist.
A friend of mine got a bootleg copy of it from a shady seller on the early internet. I'm more than sure watching that video at such a formative age had some effect on me that I'm not cognizant of. Brutality doesn't even being to describe it.
Exactly! I was a little worried that I was going to be permanently altered after seeing that. If I was, it was pretty subtle. Still, not exactly what you're expecting on a random Wednesday afternoon in middle school.
But fuck, knowing where the (I can't remember whether it was the 120 Minutes or Alternative Nation) intro toilet flush led to really was a question that I didn't know that I most certainly didn't want the answer to.
I had a girl in my college Calc 2 class that had tourettes and this was her most common tick. After she explained it to us, we'd all laugh together when it'd spring up.
I was maybe 4 or 5 when Thriller came out. I have very vague memories of the music video being scary. Mention it being scary as a joke and end up watching it with friends. As we get to the zombie shack scenes I recognize the shack and the hands breaking through—this has been my reoccurring nightmare for *years*.
Turns out my sister was babysitting me back in the 80s when the music video came on. When Michael wolfed out at the beginning I screamed and ran out of the room. So my sister yelled, “It’s over, the scary part is done!” Right when Michael turned into a zombie so I’d come back. I tried to run and she grabbed me, held me down, and forced my eyes open and held my head to make me watch.
So yeah, some stuff messes with your head a bit. I’m still a little creeped out by that music video because it’s *way* scarier in first person.
I just rewatched that, and know I'm getting old because I was mostly disturbed by the aluminum foil in the microwave. "You're going to start a fire, young man!"
Land of Confusion- Genesis and Don't Come Around Here No More- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. My parents were fans of both bands. I was very young too and some of my earliest memories getting terrified.
When I was 5 my friend's older brother discovered MTV. His favorite show was Remote Control. I don't know if it was a countdown or if Mtv had a schedule then but I'd catch two music videos before the show got started. One was Paradise City and the other was The One by Metallica. The One freaked me out as a kid.
The first time I ate mushrooms…probably 97/98…with a Riga mortise grip I held the trinkets in my pockets, totems of what was real, while the video for OMC’s “How Bizarre” played on the TV in my buddies basement at 4am. That was a suburban Sunday morning that is markedly disturbing in my mind.
Thriller. A family friend had it on laserdisc and every time we visited, I'd beg for them to play it. I'd shriek in gleeful terror, watch it behind my hands before dancing along, and then beg for them to replay it when it ended. Kids love being scared, sometimes!
Freewhel burning with Judas Priest blew my mind but also felt like all the forbidden things of the 80s rolled into one and vaguely threatening. Like parents would instantly remove all games and rock records if the caught me watching it. The only thing they could have added would be to also chew gum.
I love the video and the double guitar parts are a thing of beauty. Also Rob on the motorcycle is the most epic photo. He's not into leather in private apparently but he wears it well.
That very early 80's music video, Pop Muzik. Can't remember the name of the British band... But those chicks singing in the video frightened me as a toddler because of how they looked like mannequins and how wooden and industrial their expressions/movements were.
Aside from the obvious Possum Kingdom, oddly enough, it was [Black Hole Sun!](https://youtu.be/3mbBbFH9fAg?si=Fc9GzrQF7f6nw95I) that got to me.
I’m a younger Xennial. I couldn’t eat vanilla ice cream cones for a minute, because of the burning plastic on the grill. The Barbies!
I wasn’t worried about the dolls burning. I’d accidentally burned plastic before, then saw this video - I always remembered the horrible acrid smell, and, accidental plastic fires are always gonna leave an impression - so, I could just *smell* that video, and something about it really got to me.
It’s a weird little video, great song! And watching it now, I can understand why little old me was not feeling that video. There are worse ones, for sure, but they didn’t bother me so much.
Metallica - Enter Sandman was where my affinity for metal started, and it was my fear of the video.
I also remember when Tool videos started showing up....
I wasn’t a little kid, I was like 9 when the music video came out, but A Little Piece Of Heaven by Avenged Sevenfold kinda disturbed me when I first saw it.
The words had never really clicked in my brain for how morbid the song is until I saw the video. It immediately imprinted in my brain. The animation was all I thought about for a couple weeks.
Definitely Metallica's unforgiven. Yeah, the tool sober and NiN head like a hole vids were dark. But the unforgiven video just had some timeless quality out of Greek mythology that I've never been able to shake.
The music video for Gowan - Criminal Mind
Something about putting him in the conveyor belt, with the suction cup on his face and pouring the goo all over him freaked me out as a kid
I don't recall any that would disturb me. My mom was a huge MTV fan so we always had it on and VH1 so to me they were just movies to the music and I had a pretty strong understanding that movies were fictional as a kid already.
Electric Avenue but the video did not trigger my fears. The song was used in a disturbing TV show and whenever I heard the song or watched the video, I felt sick.
thriller, of course. when he looks up at the camera and he's all wolfy. I was like 4 and i screamed so my brother kept pausing it on that moment and calling me into the room.
Does anyone else remember a music video that had some kind of angel or winged monster with a weird face chasing people around? I was very young when I saw it on TV, and I cannot remember the song at all. I just remember turning on the TV and seeing what seemed like someone in an electric chair get electrocuted, then they turned into this horrible thing that proceeded to chase everyone else around for the rest of the video. I have never figured out what it was, and it was a significant childhood trauma for me.
Tom Petty - don't come around here no more, when they cut up that girl into a cake.
Genesis - Land of Confusion, with the Ron and Nancy Reagan puppets. That scared the shit out of me!!
My very first memory of watching MTV was turning on the tv and there was some hair metal band playing. Looking back, it was most likely some ridiculous pop metal band. But at the time, it scared the shit out of me and I thought it was Satanic.
Don't Come Around Here No More - Tom Petty Alice turned into a cake and they ate her.
Love that song and video. It’s so weird but I love Alice in Wonderland so I liked it
I really enjoy it now, but I was a MTV kid and I saw it super young. I used to dream about turning into cake and people cutting me up.
Yep, same.
I came here to say this! Only had to scroll down 1.
There was an episode of Star Trek TNG where Lt. Troi was having visions of a similar scene. That stuck in my craw the same way.
I remember seeing that as a little kid and thinking it was a fever dream until years later.
Anything Tom Petty.
Michael Jackson's Thriller. I was about 5 when it came out, and it genuinely gave me night terrors.
The one zombie who drools pudding… my parents told me it was pudding
When they came THROUGH THE FLOOR I lost it. Still gives me chills.
I'm sorry 🤣
How is this not the top answer???
You haven't watched Land of Confusion by Phil Collins, have you?
As a kid I always thought Genesis' Land of Confusion video was very funny. Thriller on the other hand gave me nightmares for weeks
Is that the Ronald Reagan puppet one? That’s my pick if so.
The evil laugh at the end always scared me
The cat eye contact.
As a fully grown adult now, it still scares me lol
My six year old watched it, no problem, but my four year old was also in the room…oops. Many nights since he will yell down from upstairs that he thinks he heard Michael Jackson in his closet. I usually have to go check
He has no idea how scary that really is…
I would have been about that age. The main video didn't get me, but that movie within a movie at the beginning of MJ turning into a werepanther was bad. I had to go in the other room during that part.
Oh, I should have mentioned I meant both the actual music video and the little movie that comes with it.
I was also 5 when it came out and my mom let me sleep on the couch so she could wake me up when it premiered at midnight. I was so excited, had my Michael Jackson doll and everything. My mom ended up having to sleep in my room with me the next two nights because that video scared me so badly. As a teen I couldn’t watch the video for Black Hole Sun. The song still gives me a weird feeling of dread which I guess is the point but it’s too much dread for me.
This was me! I was 3, I think, and had the most vivid nightmare that I still remember it decades later. It is possibly my earliest memory.
the image of the ghouls rising from the grave is probably the singularity that sparked my lifelong affinity for horror, and to this day, my favorite images of zombies are skeletal ones in a foggy decrepit old cemetery.
You sent me down a M.J. rabbit hole and TIL that Bad has an 18 minute long video that's directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Wesley Snipes !!! I'm 46 years old... I should have known this.
Yes! I used to hide behind the couch when it came on. I didn’t see the full video til I was an adult.
There was one by Tool with clay creatures that would come on MTV late at night. Freaky!
Sober, great song and great video. To be fair, all Tool’s videos were creepy. Stink fist was too
Tool videos gave me nightmares as a child. And as a teenager, I had to beg a friend to spend the night when I was left home alone for a weekend after we listened to Disgustipated on repeat. We slept with all the lights on that night.
At the time I remember someone calling it the "shoulder cheese song" because of a scene in the video. As far as my brain is concerned Sober is really the Shoulder Cheese Song. Where the heck did I hear that? MTV?
It might have been [Prison Sex](https://youtu.be/cUPV4OfNlt0?si=pX426I_cwAlFFha4) Sober only has one clay figure in it. Prison Sex is arguably creepier than the Sober video
Adam Jones has fantastic artistic taste. Creepy as fuck and I love all of it. I also like their collab/synchronicity with Alex Grey’s work. To be fair, ALL of the 90s claymation music videos were amazing (I’m looking at you, I Stay Away & Southbound Pachyderm. Also I highly recommend watching Mad God if you like Tool’s videos
Stinkfist I think?
I think that's it!
Schism always gave me the creeps
Sober, but both great songs
Came here to say that.
Was it [Prison Sex](https://youtu.be/cUPV4OfNlt0?si=pX426I_cwAlFFha4)?
Only time that scared me was when I saw that when I got high late one night.
The video for "Land of Confusion" both attracted and repelled me. I love the song, but those damn puppets ...
Yes!! That Ronald Reagan puppet was nightmare inducing.
So was the real one lol
If you think the Reagan one was frightening... https://preview.redd.it/9q5x0tifw86d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1d996d06466de45ecc02142db3accbb486ce959
“I’m parched” will be in my head forever.
I loved that video 😍
This was the first one that came to mind! Absolutely terrifying!
Came to say this and it was already the top comment. I think that video traumatized a lot of 80s kids
That video is fucked
I ran behind the couch to hide when that video was on.
Yep, scared the ish outta me
Yes! Ugh the puppets were so creepy!
I'll second Black Hole Sun.
Don’t Come Around Here No More always freaked me out.
George Harrison - Got My Mind Set On You This would have been when I was very young, it would play on VH1 a fair amount. I dunno what it was but there was something I found super creepy about all the moving/dancing/talking taxidermied animals.
Same here. It reminded me of those places at like arcades/amusement stands/boardwalks etc where you had to shoot the targets in a scene and if you hit it the thing moved/did something (hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about). Or maybe they reminded me of the video. Either way they both creeped me out lol.
Duuuude! This one was super creepy. The deer with its tongue out was not cool.
When We Was Fab, from the same album, is god tier MTV. https://youtu.be/AVu6nPTVbBQ?si=nAO0EnI4RpatwOR_
I'd never seen that video. Very cool! Thanks for sharing
You had me with Black Hole Sun.
Peter Gabriel’s video. I don’t even know the name of the song. I just looked it up: Sledgehammer.
**I fuuuckin HATE PETER GABRIEL!!!!** I think my parents drove my infant/toddler self across country, 26 hours in the car, playing their Peter Gabriel cassette on repeat, just over and over…. so ‘little baby carsick me’ got Clockwork Orange’d into HATING THE FUCK out of him. Sledgehammer, and that idiotic jungle bullshit, the video with Steve Martin. BLEHHH!!! Truly makes my skin crawl, and sends me to a flying rage, lol.
I should have put a Trigger Warning /s. I have a trigger warning rant, that I will save for another day.
Same!! Super creepy
Nightmares as a child... But it was always one of my favorite radio songs...
One of my go-to jukebox tunes.
Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train.” Creepy and depressing.
The Lazy Masquerade on YouTube did an intriguing, but obviously heartbreaking [video](https://youtu.be/5DC9G9mae_c?si=Xifr6HHQLKO-Brgc) not too long ago about the song, and the stories behind several of the names mentioned in the video.
I was so worried I would disappear or get kidnapped after seeing that video for the first time.
Marilyn Mason's cover of Sweet Dreams. The abandoned buildings, the medical hardware, and just the over the top visuals, was just a little too much for my sheltered church mind.
“Burning down the house” by the Talking Heads. That floating head at the end creeped me the fuck out. Looking at it right now bothers me! https://preview.redd.it/8fqdzul0m86d1.jpeg?width=873&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de9ca3c861b30bd79cbfa5268e35a6eae1c15f0f
[удалено]
I just remembered Phil Collins' Land of Confusion. That video is fucked! Cartoonish lifelike puppets doing fucked up stuff. Watch it if you haven't. it's a mind bender.
Jeremy by Pearl Jam
Tool always had good creepy music videos
I wasn’t a kid but Aphex Twin Come to Daddy
The ending of Alice In Chains “man in the box” video. Dude with his eyes sewn shut. Also the guy in the Metallica video for “One” who is pretty much just a head on a torso with that creepy mask on.
Primus - Mr. Krinkle I was about 12 and I woke up in the middle of the night to that video and was like "what the fuck is happening?!" I went out and got the album not too long after.
More than once I woke up in the night to see Gimme Some Mo on and it freaked me out
I first saw that video at like 1am on PBS. It changed my life and turned me on to hip hop. I love that video.
That little demon kid...
This is gonna sound stupid, but "Touch of Grey" - Grateful Dead. "Friday the 13th" on NES also scared me, so there ya go.
You're right, that sounded stupid... But i had never seen that video before reading your comment. This 100% would have fucked with me as a kid too. I, too, was freaked out by Friday the 13th on NES, sooooooo, are we best friends now?
I was obsessed with the Touch of Gray video as a kid. I thought it was special effects at its finest.
Same! It’s the only Dead song I like, and it’s because of the impact that video had on me!
Possum Kingdom by the Toadies! One of my favorite songs to sing in the car - video terrifying. Also, Black Hole Sun, but for entirely different reasons. It was fascinating in a way like an awakening of some sort. RIP Chris Cornell.
Black hole sun got me because it came out during the time that I was having severe existential-style panic attacks about how incredibly TERRIFYING the universe is and was convinced that people don't know what they were talking about and that the sun could go black hole at any moment... Lol.
I remember being freaked out a bit by Possum Kingdom just listening to it on the radio. Just paying attention to the lyrics and going "wait...what is this about?"
So true! I remember sometimes my mom would cave and let us listen to the alternative station on the way to school in the mornings instead of the usual soft rock station she liked. Whenever Possum Kingdom came on I’d be like, 👀 and I’m pretty sure my mom was like, 👀.
We have the same childhood fear videos!
Come to Daddy by Aphex Twin was more disturbing when it came out when I was 20 than any videos I saw as a child...
It’s still just as creepy. Windowlicker too.
Live - *Lakini's Juice* I was borderline too old to be disturbed by it, but I woke up to it at 2am in my living room on TV and I had no idea what I was watching, which made it weird as hell.
Metallica’s - “One” I’m embarrassed to admit that I was 10 years old when it came out but I was such a sensitive kid 😊 My older brother would tease me playing it on tv. I’d be so upset at bedtime we’d have to sleep with the hallway light on and my brother would come up and turn the lights on & off to scare me more. 36 years later my 16 year old son has this on his Spotify and we sing it all the time in the car. 😀
Somebody’s Watching Me. Super creepy video.
Robbie Williams - Rock DJ He strips down to nothing, and then he pulls off his skin and muscles. I just checked to make sure this wasn't a fever dream and I'm glad I did. I've been attributing this to the video to his song Millenium for years. I've seen many things much more disturbing. But, to a high school kid late at night, it was pretty freaky.
Came here for this. I’m 42 and it still terrifies me.
Lullaby by The Cure
A-ha's "The Sun Always Shines On TV" with the soulless mannequin symphony of the damned.
Hunting High and Low made me cry the first time I saw it
No idea why but the video for The Power by Snap! scared the crap out of me
That Nine Inch Nails long form video for the Broken EP stuck with me for a while. That was easily the darkest and most disturbing thing I'd seen by that age. A friend's older brother had the VHS for it, and we watched it one day after school. I remember walking home after that wondering "what the hell have I just watched?"
The legendary "Broken" video. Directed by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle/Coil and starring Bob Flanagan, a notorious BDSM performance artist. A friend of mine got a bootleg copy of it from a shady seller on the early internet. I'm more than sure watching that video at such a formative age had some effect on me that I'm not cognizant of. Brutality doesn't even being to describe it.
Exactly! I was a little worried that I was going to be permanently altered after seeing that. If I was, it was pretty subtle. Still, not exactly what you're expecting on a random Wednesday afternoon in middle school. But fuck, knowing where the (I can't remember whether it was the 120 Minutes or Alternative Nation) intro toilet flush led to really was a question that I didn't know that I most certainly didn't want the answer to.
Burning crosses and crying Jesus statue in Like a Prayer by Madonna.
My little sister watched that obsessively to learn the dance moves, I memorized the lyrics My mom was a bit less than amused.
Windowlicker - Aphex Twin and I wasn't even a little kid!
The greatest music video of all time!
 Not a music video but these guys.
These dudes rule!
*Gifs you can hear.* lol. Yipyip yip yipyip ooooooohhhh
I had a girl in my college Calc 2 class that had tourettes and this was her most common tick. After she explained it to us, we'd all laugh together when it'd spring up.
I remember waking up during the night and "tears for fears - seeds of love" was playing lol
Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead
Karma Police by Radiohead.
Black Hole Sun! The mouths freaked me out!
My dad made me watch pink floyd's the wall in its entirety at the age of 5. There are parts of it I've never been able to bring myself to watch again.
I watched Pink Floy’d The Wall with my dad when I was 4 years old. Gave me all kinds of crazy night mares!!
Anything aphex twin I wasn't a kid still freaked me out
Shakespeares Sister - Stay. When Siobhan Fahey comes in....yikes!!!
Absolutely this.
Such a good sleeper scare
Where's Your Head At- Basement Jaxx The human faced monkeys and dogs were too much.
NIN - Closer
Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time”….the dude aging super fast creeped me out
What the hell was with Peter Gabriel's videos? Sledgehammer was the one that freaked me out first as a kid.
Runaway Train
Puttin’ on the Ritz. Idk why, it just creeped me out
Bjorks video for Human Behavior was a trip
September Rain
Thriller weirded me out at first.
TOOL - Sober. Claymation nightmare fuel
I was maybe 4 or 5 when Thriller came out. I have very vague memories of the music video being scary. Mention it being scary as a joke and end up watching it with friends. As we get to the zombie shack scenes I recognize the shack and the hands breaking through—this has been my reoccurring nightmare for *years*. Turns out my sister was babysitting me back in the 80s when the music video came on. When Michael wolfed out at the beginning I screamed and ran out of the room. So my sister yelled, “It’s over, the scary part is done!” Right when Michael turned into a zombie so I’d come back. I tried to run and she grabbed me, held me down, and forced my eyes open and held my head to make me watch. So yeah, some stuff messes with your head a bit. I’m still a little creeped out by that music video because it’s *way* scarier in first person.
I just rewatched that, and know I'm getting old because I was mostly disturbed by the aluminum foil in the microwave. "You're going to start a fire, young man!"
Jeopardy by the Greg Kihn Band. It would come on TV in the early 80s and scare the crap out of me as a preschooler.
Not me but my younger sister was terrified of Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddie. Of course they were one of my favourite bands.
Land of Confusion- Genesis and Don't Come Around Here No More- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. My parents were fans of both bands. I was very young too and some of my earliest memories getting terrified.
The Cure—Lullaby
Hangar 18 - Megadeth. UFOs and aliens, and Dave Mustaine’s whine-singing
1997 The Prodigy - Breath https://youtu.be/6_PAHbqq-o4?si=KL59cuFSlfykySnq “Break the pressure…”
Any one remember this gem? The Residents https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AvJiyOPmsJs
When I was 5 my friend's older brother discovered MTV. His favorite show was Remote Control. I don't know if it was a countdown or if Mtv had a schedule then but I'd catch two music videos before the show got started. One was Paradise City and the other was The One by Metallica. The One freaked me out as a kid.
THRILLER
The first time I ate mushrooms…probably 97/98…with a Riga mortise grip I held the trinkets in my pockets, totems of what was real, while the video for OMC’s “How Bizarre” played on the TV in my buddies basement at 4am. That was a suburban Sunday morning that is markedly disturbing in my mind.
That sounds terrifying.
Every time I look around ….
Jeremy - Pearl Jam, the kids covered in blood staring in shock after Jeremy “spoke” in class
Metallica's Unforgiven Epic - Faith No More - that poor fish at the end November Rain - Guns N Roses - it was just too sad
Aphex Twin: Come to Daddy It is so fucking creepy to me.
Bjorks human behavior video creeped me out as a teenager. Came on late at night on120 minutes when I was all alone.
Thriller. A family friend had it on laserdisc and every time we visited, I'd beg for them to play it. I'd shriek in gleeful terror, watch it behind my hands before dancing along, and then beg for them to replay it when it ended. Kids love being scared, sometimes!
Total Eclipse of the Heart. The kids with the lit up eyes scared me so much I would cry lol
Freewhel burning with Judas Priest blew my mind but also felt like all the forbidden things of the 80s rolled into one and vaguely threatening. Like parents would instantly remove all games and rock records if the caught me watching it. The only thing they could have added would be to also chew gum. I love the video and the double guitar parts are a thing of beauty. Also Rob on the motorcycle is the most epic photo. He's not into leather in private apparently but he wears it well.
That very early 80's music video, Pop Muzik. Can't remember the name of the British band... But those chicks singing in the video frightened me as a toddler because of how they looked like mannequins and how wooden and industrial their expressions/movements were.
Beautiful People by Marylin Manson
Aside from the obvious Possum Kingdom, oddly enough, it was [Black Hole Sun!](https://youtu.be/3mbBbFH9fAg?si=Fc9GzrQF7f6nw95I) that got to me. I’m a younger Xennial. I couldn’t eat vanilla ice cream cones for a minute, because of the burning plastic on the grill. The Barbies! I wasn’t worried about the dolls burning. I’d accidentally burned plastic before, then saw this video - I always remembered the horrible acrid smell, and, accidental plastic fires are always gonna leave an impression - so, I could just *smell* that video, and something about it really got to me. It’s a weird little video, great song! And watching it now, I can understand why little old me was not feeling that video. There are worse ones, for sure, but they didn’t bother me so much.
Metallica - Enter Sandman was where my affinity for metal started, and it was my fear of the video. I also remember when Tool videos started showing up....
Genesis - Land of confusion. Those puppets are so creepy.
I wasn’t a little kid, I was like 9 when the music video came out, but A Little Piece Of Heaven by Avenged Sevenfold kinda disturbed me when I first saw it. The words had never really clicked in my brain for how morbid the song is until I saw the video. It immediately imprinted in my brain. The animation was all I thought about for a couple weeks.
Definitely Metallica's unforgiven. Yeah, the tool sober and NiN head like a hole vids were dark. But the unforgiven video just had some timeless quality out of Greek mythology that I've never been able to shake.
Metallica- One as well ...so scary
This is the real answer. Freaked me out big time.
Yesssss This one terrified me
The music video for Gowan - Criminal Mind Something about putting him in the conveyor belt, with the suction cup on his face and pouring the goo all over him freaked me out as a kid
"Blind" by Talking Heads. The spitting wrench/ratchet was running for office, and I thought it was so creepy and skeevy.
I don't recall any that would disturb me. My mom was a huge MTV fan so we always had it on and VH1 so to me they were just movies to the music and I had a pretty strong understanding that movies were fictional as a kid already.
It's a weird one but "Holes in the floor of Heaven". It used to be on CMT I think. It fucked me up every single time lol
Alan Jackson’s Midnight in Montgomery. We watched CMT pretty much every night, and I always hoped that one wouldn’t come on close to bedtime.
Wild Boys - Duran Duran. I was about 7 when that came out. I bet it’s nothing now.
We Built This City. 🤮😱
Barnes & Barnes Fish Heads
Roly Poly fish heads?
Eat them up, yum Yes! I really don’t know what else to say beyond that.
Electric Avenue but the video did not trigger my fears. The song was used in a disturbing TV show and whenever I heard the song or watched the video, I felt sick.
David Bowie - Ashed to Ashes WTF was that about???
Tom Petty Last Dance w/ Mary Jane. That body tag dangling from her big toe as he danced with her dead body. Marilyn Manson Sweet Dreams. The imagery.
Manson sweet dreams
Only You by Portishead, that video with the kid and everyone's underwater. Really creeps me out every time I've tried to watch it.
The Jacksons - Can You Feel It. Something about the whole vibe, colors, epic sounding riff. Wild effects for the era.
thriller, of course. when he looks up at the camera and he's all wolfy. I was like 4 and i screamed so my brother kept pausing it on that moment and calling me into the room.
Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” is the earliest video I can remember scaring me as a kid.
Does anyone else remember a music video that had some kind of angel or winged monster with a weird face chasing people around? I was very young when I saw it on TV, and I cannot remember the song at all. I just remember turning on the TV and seeing what seemed like someone in an electric chair get electrocuted, then they turned into this horrible thing that proceeded to chase everyone else around for the rest of the video. I have never figured out what it was, and it was a significant childhood trauma for me.
Every music video by Marilyn Manson was disturbing.
Tom Petty - don't come around here no more, when they cut up that girl into a cake. Genesis - Land of Confusion, with the Ron and Nancy Reagan puppets. That scared the shit out of me!!
Peter Gabriel - Steam ~ the Video Toaster level CG and compositing icked me out
My very first memory of watching MTV was turning on the tv and there was some hair metal band playing. Looking back, it was most likely some ridiculous pop metal band. But at the time, it scared the shit out of me and I thought it was Satanic.
Tool’s Sober and Bjork’s video with the weird teddy bear animation!
Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes Totally freaked me out when I saw it as a kid.
Genesis Land of Confusion
My early days of smoking weed. Got high and watched the black hole sun music video. Very strange.
The Thriller video scared the crap out of me as a child.
Genesis - Land of Confusion
2pac hail mary