The Must-Visit Destinations Your Favourite Music Videos Were Shot
Have you ever tuned into Rage bleary-eyed one morning and ended up with a new dream holiday destination? Yeah, same.
Some of the most memorable music videos have been shot in covetable spots around the world, from renowned museums to storied hotels and pristine beaches — all places you actually visit IRL.
[related_articles]69201,68900,68408[/related_articles]If you need a little holiday inspo — or you just want to admire Kylie in the peak of her noughties fame — here’s our guide to the shooting locations of your favourite music videos.
Beyoncé and Jay Z – ‘Apeshit’
The location: The Louvre, Paris
Who else but Beyoncé and Jay Z could hire out the entirety of The Louvre as a set for a video clip? Music’s most famous couple upstaged works like The Venus de Milo, Coronation of Napoleon and, yes, the Mona Lisa in their six minute tour de force for ‘Apeshit’.
The clip helped boost visitors to Parisian museum to a record 10.2 million last year — that’s almost 30,000 people a day — which means this video is definitely the emptiest you’ll ever see the place.
If you’re inspired to visit, check out the tour to the spots featured in the video.
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbMqWXnpXcA[/media_embed]Len – ‘Steal My Sunshine’
The location: Daytona Beach, Florida
As you cruise towards the ocean in Daytona, Florida, you’ll pass underneath a sign declaring this “The Most Famous Beach On Earth”. I’d like to think that notoriety is at least somewhat the doing of Len, Canada’s foremost ’90s alternative rock duo.
They shot the clip for ‘Steal My Sunshine’ on Daytona’s storied shores — legend has it the band spent most of their $100,000 video budget on alcohol and flying their friends out to Florida for a party, shooting the whole clip on the fly without a script or storyboard. They were also, apparently, very hungover as they filmed. Iconic.
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1fzJ_AYajA[/media_embed]Spice Girls – ‘Wannabe’
The location: St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London
Spice Girls superfan? Time to book a stay at the St Pancras, then. The famous five-star London hotel was the shooting location of the iconic clip for ‘Wannabe’, where Posh, Ginger, Sporty, Baby and Scary backflipped on tables and accosted posh patrons in the name of girl power.
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ[/media_embed]Kylie Minogue – ‘Come Into My World’
The location: Paris, France
Kylie was stuck in a glitch in the matrix on the streets of Paris in her 2002 video for ‘Come Into My World’, the work of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry. We can’t promise the exact same dry cleaner is still there, but you can seek the filming location out at the intersection of Rue du Point du Jour and Rue de Solférino in Boulogne-Billancourt.
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vqob-MljQ[/media_embed]The Killers – ‘Read My Mind’
The location: Tokyo, Japan
If Brandon Flowers standing in the middle of Shibuya wasn’t your teenage fantasy then, well, I don’t know what to say to you. The Killers had a quintessentially Japanese experience in their video for ‘Read My Mind’, donning geisha attire, sleeping in a capsule hotel and soaking up the neons of the world’s most famous pedestrian crossing.
BRB, booking flights.
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=zc8hbSM1zVo[/media_embed]
Beastie Boys – ‘Intergalactic’
The location: Shinjuku and Shibuya Stations, Tokyo
…but when it comes to music videos shot in Japan there’s none more iconic than ‘Intergalactic’. The Beastie Boys classic saw the trio land their spaceship and run into the “futuristic” surrounds of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, way back in ’97 before the country became a travel hotspot and still looked fittingly out of this world. Bless.
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qORYO0atB6g[/media_embed] [related_articles]63841,52661,43834[/related_articles]Solange – ‘Losing You’
The location: Cape Town, South Africa
The Knowles sisters sure know how to shoot a music video.
Solange showed a different side to Cape Town in her video for ‘Losing You’, ringing in a bunch of Congolese Sapeurs to star and drenching the township of Langa in woozy pastels. (For an IRL version of that colour palette, make a beeline for Bo Kaap, also in Cape Town.)
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy9W_mrY_Vk[/media_embed]Lorde – ‘Perfect Places’
The location: Jamaica
The song’s is called ‘Perfect Places’ and yeah, it looks pretty damn idyllic. Lorde tripped through Jamaica’s beaches, rainforests and waterfalls in a video that is basically a classy version of the Fyre Festival trailer. May your holiday wardrobe be as good as Ella’s.
[media_embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0DjcsK_-HY[/media_embed]
