reference frames

The official music video for Tommy Tutone's 1981 hit 867-5309/Jenny. The chorus is built around a phone number.

Tom Lehrer's satirical song about Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who went from the Nazi missile program to the US space program. It includes the famous line about not caring where the rockets come down.

Music video for Public Service Broadcasting's "Go!" from the album The Race For Space, built from NASA audio and archival material of Apollo-era voices.

The official music video for Kylie Minogue's Come Into My World, directed by Michel Gondry, built around a looping scene with multiplying copies of Kylie.

Wintergatan's video of the Marble Machine, a hand-built music instrument that plays a song using about 2000 marbles on a mechanical clockwork-style mechanism.

The Pruitt-Igoe sequence from Koyaanisqatsi set to Philip Glass's 1998 re-recorded score, showing the housing project's demolition.

The official music video for They Might Be Giants' "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" from the 1990 album Flood.

The viral Dumb Ways to Die music video, a cheerful animated song created for a Melbourne rail safety campaign. It lists absurd ways to die and ends with warnings about trains.

A live 2007 performance of Todd Snider's song 'Statistician's Blues' at the Great American Music Hall. The song satirizes statistics and how readily people believe them.

Johnny Cash's live performance of A Boy Named Sue at San Quentin in 1969, a comic country song about a man named Sue seeking revenge on his father.

The official music video for Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, taken from Discovery. It is a chapter of the anime film Interstella 5000 supervised by Leiji Matsumoto.

The Rubberbandits perform "Horse Outside", a comic Irish song about a horse waiting outside, from the RTE show Republic of Telly.

Afroman's music video for a song about police damaging his door, built from home security footage of an officers' raid on his house.

A 1991 Amiga tracker module, 'Space Debris' by Captain (Markus Kaarlonen), uploaded as a video of the music. It is a well-known piece of demoscene-era computer music.

A fan-made music video for Jonathan Coulton's song 'Code Monkey', about the life of a programmer, using World of Warcraft footage. It was made by Mike Spiff Booth.

The official music video for The Chemical Brothers' Star Guitar, directed by Michel Gondry. Visuals of a passing landscape are synced to elements of the music.

A very short animated song and public service announcement saying it is fine to dislike things as long as you are not rude about it.

Julia Ecklar's recording of "The Eternal Flame," a filk song about God writing the universe in Lisp, written by Bob Kanefsky. It is a geek-humor song set to a familiar tune.

The official 1986 music video for Paranoimia by Art of Noise featuring the computer-generated TV personality Max Headroom. It is a synth-pop and sampling-era piece of 80s pop culture.

PSY's music video for Gangnam Style, the K-pop hit that became a global viral phenomenon.

A solo performance of Steve Reich's Piano Phase, with one pianist playing both parts, recorded in 2004 with Reich in attendance. It is a 15-minute minimalist phasing piece.

The 1990 Public Enemy song 911 Is a Joke from the album Fear of a Black Planet, about slow emergency response.

The classic MrWeebl animated music video Badgers, a short looping song of badgers, a mushroom and a snake. It is a staple of early internet absurdist humor.

Raw footage of nerdcore rapper Monzy performing outside Stanford's computer science building, shot for the documentary Nerdcore for Life. The set includes his song about the kill -9 Unix command.

The 1982 novelty song "Valley Girl" by Moon Unit Zappa with Frank Zappa, a new wave track that became a cult classic. It parodies the speech of Southern California teenagers.

The classic 1950s recording of Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 'Sixteen Tons', a song about a coal miner trapped in company-store debt.

The official music video for Rammstein's 2004 song Amerika, a satirical take on American cultural dominance and its export around the world. It was shot in the ruins of a former chemical site near Berlin.

The full Malvina Reynolds recording of the folk song 'Little Boxes', a satire of identical suburban tract housing, later popularized as the Weeds theme. The upload includes the lyrics.

The music video for Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall from the 1982 film The Wall, combining The Happiest Days of Our Lives and Part 2. It includes the schoolchildren and meat grinder imagery.

The official music video for Billy Joel's 1989 song We Didn't Start the Fire, a rapid-fire list of historical events.

Music video for the LazyTown song "You Are A Pirate" from the children's show. It is a short, catchy kids' number.

The official music video for Rebecca Black's 2011 viral pop song Friday.

The official 4K upload of Michael Jackson's 14-minute short film Thriller, directed by John Landis. It is widely regarded as a landmark music video.

A Top of the Pops performance of The Wurzels' 1976 novelty hit Combine Harvester (Brand New Key). It is a West Country English comic cover of a pop song.

The 1992 SIIA anti-piracy rap video Don't Copy That Floppy, warning kids against copying software, remastered and uploaded.

Tom Lehrer performs his satirical song about poisoning pigeons in the park, in a rare 1967 Norwegian broadcast recording.