the videos

the ten

1. thank u, next (2018). four films from the 2000s rebuilt shot for shot, with the original cast members turning up in them. it broke the youtube 24-hour record on release, and it is the only music video of the last decade that functioned as a piece of internet folklore rather than a promotional asset. the full story of the song is a separate piece.
2. god is a woman (2018). dave meyers, and the densest thing either of them has made — the creation of adam, the thinker, romulus and remus, a cerberus, and madonna delivering a monologue in the middle of it. the piece on it unpicks what is actually being referenced.
3. no tears left to cry (2018). an impossible city that folds, with her walking up the wrong side of it. also the video with the single best final shot in her catalogue, for reasons explained here.
4. we can't be friends (wait for your love) (2024). a short film with evan peters, built on the plot of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. it won best cinematography at the 2024 vmas from five nominations.
5. 7 rings (2019). the pink one. a single location, a colour palette borrowed from nothing, and the video that fixed the visual grammar of the entire thank u, next era.
6. positions (2020). she plays the president. shot by dave meyers again, released a fortnight before an american election, and considerably sharper than it was given credit for at the time.
7. break free and side to side (2014, 2016). the two that established she could carry a video on choreography, which the ballads had not required.
8. the way (2013). the debut. a studio, a sofa, mac miller, and nothing else. it is on this list because of what it is not: there is no concept and it did not need one.
9. imagine (2019). a lyric video that is not a lyric video, and the only one on this list that is genuinely sad.
10. yes, and? (2024). a dance studio, a room of critics, and a premise that only works if you know what the previous eighteen months had been like.

the director

dave meyers made no tears left to cry, god is a woman, positions and several others, and he is the single biggest reason the sweetener era looks the way it does. his signature is the impossible space — a room that keeps going, a floor that is a ceiling — and it suits a catalogue whose recurring subject is disorientation rather better than the beach-and-a-car alternative would have.

what the videos are for

most pop videos in the streaming era are a delivery mechanism for a thumbnail. hers are not, consistently, and the reason is structural: her eras are visual before they are sonic — each one has a palette, and the video is where the palette is set. you can watch the whole career as eight colour schemes, which is precisely what the era pages do to this site as you move through them.