10 Weird, Wonderful Music Videos Directed by David Lynch

Not many filmmakers have such a unique style as to become an adjective, but David Lynch was one of them. His uncanny, dream-inspired style extended beyond film, too. If music is described as “Lynchian” you probably know what they mean: a hazy, smoky, atmospheric sound often rooted in the earliest days of rock n’ roll and country that is both alien and beautiful. (It can also, like his films, be something that gives you the creeps.) Lynch admittedly said he didn’t really come to music as a creative outlet until meeting Angelo Badalamenti, who would end up scoring most of his films from Blue Velvet on. Music and sound design are a huge part of Lynch’s films and life; he would go on to make music with a variety of collaborators and on some occasions his worlds would collide in the form of music videos.

Unlike David Fincher and Michael Bay, visionary filmmakers who came up through the world of music video, David Lynch mainly directed videos for people he knew and loved who he would also cast in films (or work with behind the scenes). He also made videos for a few of his own songs. We picked 10 David Lynch-directed videos which are across a variety of musical styles, some live action, some animated, some in between, they all bear his unique, Lynchian stamp.

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10 STRANGE, UNSETTLING MUSIC VIDEOS DIRECTED BY DAVID LYNCH

Chris Isaak – “Wicked Game” (1990)

When people call music “Lynchian,” this is the blueprint. Chris Isaak channeled Roy Orbison by way of California surfer cool for a throwback sound that was dreamy, smokey and sexy which was perfect for Lynch’s cinematic visions. Lynch used an instrumental version of “Wicked Game,” from Isaak’s 1989 album Heart Shaped World, for 1990’s Wild At Heart, which in turn led to the song becoming a hit. Lynch then directed the music video for “Wicked Game,” which mixed black-and-white performance footage with scenes from the film. (Lynch would go on to cast Isaak as an FBI agent in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.) “Wicked Game” would become a bigger hit, though, in 1991 when Reprise Records decided to make a new video for it with director Herb Ritts and supermodel Helena Christensen which upped the “sexy” factor of the song considerably. It’s one of the most iconic videos of the ’90s, but Lynch’s original has its own atmospheric charms.

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Thought Gang – “A Real Indication” (1992)

Angelo Badalamenti first worked with Lynch when he was brought on to be Isabella Rossellini’s singing coach for Blue Velvet and ended up scoring the film. (They worked together on all of Lynch’s other films.) Lynch and Badalamenti also began writing songs together, starting with “Mysteries of Love” for Blue Velvet, that was sung by Julee Cruise. They would write and produce two albums with Cruise, and then David and Angelo made music together as Thought Gang in the early ’90s, which ended up being used in a few Lynch projects, including a short film for “A Real Indication” that has Badalamenti scatting in jazz poetry mode. Thought Gang’s recordings were finally released as an album in 2018 and the lo-fi “A Real Indication” video was officially shared with the world.

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BlueBob – “Thank You Judge”

Another of Lynch’s musical projects, BlueBob was his “industrial blues” collaboration with audio engineer John Neff who sang and played most of the music. (Lynch provided bass and lyrics, some of which had been kicking around in his head for decades.) BlueBob started in 1998, around the time Lynch started working on Mulholland Drive, which was originally a TV pilot that he turned into one of his most-loved films. The BlueBob album came out in 2001, the same year as Mulholland Drive, and Lynch directed the video for single “Thank You Judge” which has Neff singing about his divorce in front of some familiar looking deep red curtains. The video also stars Naomi Watts as the woman who seems very happy to no longer be married to Neff.

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Moby – “Shot in the Back of the Head”

A speech on creativity by David Lynch inspired Moby to make his 2009 album Wait For Me, which he said was recorded “without really being concerned about how it might be received by the marketplace.” Lynch was then nice enough to direct the video for first single “Shot in the Back of the Head.” The a black-and-white hand-animated short features many Lynch earmarks: fire, shocking violence, love and disembodied heads.

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Ariana Delawari – Lion Of Panjshir

In the 2000s, David Lynch had a record label, Absurda, that mostly released his own projects but also Lion Of Panjshir, the debut album from Afghani-American singer-songwriter Ariana Delawari. It was recorded in Afghanistan but finished with the help of Lynch, who mixed the album and produced the song “Suspend Me.” He also directed a promotional video for Lion Of Panjshir featuring five songs from the album and the blurry, fluttering, stop-motion like visual style he has used many times before and since, not to mention putting her in front of a signature red curtain.

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Interpol – “I Touch a Red Button” / “Lights” (2011)

When Interpol played Coachella in 2011, their performance of “Lights” was accompanied by an animated short film by David Lynch titled “I Touch a Red Button” which was later released as a music video for the song. In it, a demented clown-like creature is obsessed with smashing a big red button and the style feels almost like Lynch is zooming in on his TV, giving it all a too-close-for-comfort feel. That, of course, is right in the director’s discomfort zone.

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David Lynch – “Crazy Clown Time” (2011)

After years of making records with Badalamenti and others, David Lynch made his solo debut in 2011 with Crazy Clown Time. Recorded with sound designer Dean Hurley (Inland Empire, Twin Peaks: The Return), the album has everything from hazy blues to trip hop and techno, and features Karen O on opening cut “Pinky’s Dream.” Most of the album, though, has Lynch singing lead in an unsettling falsetto, and it gets none more creepy and Lynchian than on the seven-minute title track that describes a wild party gone horribly wrong. Actually it gets even more David Lynch with the music that sets the lyrics to firey life in vivid surreal digital video. “It was really fun!,” Lynch sings but this is pure nightmare fuel.

This is Lynch’s best music video by a longshot.

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Nine Inch Nails – “Came Back Haunted” (2013)

Trent Reznor produced the soundtrack from Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway which was loaded with aggro alt-rock (as well as a score by Angelo Badalamenti and Barry Adamson). They teamed up again 16 years later as Lynch directed the video for “Came Back Haunted,” the first single from Nine Inch Nails’ 2013 album Hesitation Marks. Shot in a jittery, strobe heavy style that Lynch had become fond of, “Came Back Haunted” is full of creepy visions of even creepier flesh-blob creatures. Haunted indeed.

A few years later, Nine Inch Nails would appear in episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return, which is one of the scariest, weirdest, Lynchiest things David Lynch ever made.

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Donovan – “I Am the Shaman” (2021)

David Lynch and folk icon Donovan shared a love of transcendental meditation, a friendship grew, and the filmmaker offered to produce a song. “He had asked me to only bring in a song just emerging, not anywhere near finished. We would see what happens,” Donovan said at the time. “It happened! I composed extempore…the verses came naturally. New chord patterns effortlessly appeared.” The result was “I Am the Shaman” that also features Lynch on his Modal Chord Guitar (plus “effects”). It is both very Donovan and very Lynch, and they collaborated on the music video as well, which has the singer performing in stark black and white while starry effects blend with the song’s production, transcending space and time.

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Chrystabell & David Lynch – “The Answers to the Questions”

David Lynch and Chrystabell made three albums together over 25 years, and the third, Cellophane Memories, would be his last work as a creator before his death in January 2025. (Chrystabell also played FBI Agent Tammy in Twin Peaks: The Return.) Lynch also made the video for the hazy, dreamlike single “The Answers to the Questions,” an ironic title give that he rarely offered answers to questions in his own work.

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Read tributes to David Lynch.