music videos with a radically different mix/version of the song than the album version

if they specifically print "Main Mix" I think it's fair to divine intent. US radio programmers were probably either just playing the album without thinking about it, or being scared of the rappity-rap lady.

Wyclef Jean - Cheated - actually a different song entirely, a meat-n-potatoes midtempo rock ballad with a big hooky chorus, melodic verses with totally different lyrics, basically just starting from the ground up with the word "cheated" and Wyclef Jean as the artist

I wasn't familiar with this, but have listened and to be fair to Wyclef, he appears to have written and recorded a single called Cheated that is indeed formally a different song to the one called "To All The Girls" on his album, bar sharing a quote from Hal David and Albert Strokedad?

https://i.imgur.com/Yd7i5TF.jpg

(and then, Missy-style, included a minute of the B-side at the end of the video too)

XP

In "No Scrubs" case, it might be something where different versions were pitched to different formats. I kinda remember hearing the rap-less version on Top 40 & Adult Contemporary (and sometimes they'd cut that part out on TRL too) and the longer version on Hip Hop radio.

being scared of the rappity-rap lady

There's probably even newer cases of this, but our Clear Channel Adult Contemporary station plays "California Girls" w/o the Snoop verse.

Happy Mondays - Wrote For Luck

Soundgarden's Fell on Black Days is a filmed in-studio performance.
Beastie Boys's Jimmy James had the samples cleared after Check Your Head came out.

Happy Mondays - Wrote For Luck

do you mean that the video is for the single version, not the six-minute album version, or that there was another video the next year for "WFL (Vince Clarke Mix)"?

(Jimmy James was on the single as "Jimmy James (Original Original Version)"

Wrote For Luck and WFL videos b2b.

(iirc both may have been made for the first single, then only the sweaty ecstasy version was re-cut for WFL?)

Sleater-Kinney's "Modern Girl" video is filmed live performance in a house.

it was so weird to me that the version of "no scrubs" w/ left eye's rap was not only not on the album, but also not on any non-12" versions of the single either (at least in the us)

i was gonna say that the video version of donell jones's "u know what's up," also w/ a rap from left eye, wasn't on its album, but it looks like it got tacked on as a bonus track

Janet Jackson's "You Want This", they used the Flyte Tyme remix for the music video, which featured a rap verse from MC Lyte. even weirder is that in the music video version, the drums drop out during the first part of her verse, which is completely dope. but on the single version on the radio, which was also the Flyte Tyme remix, there....were drums for that whole verse

Soundgarden's Fell on Black Days is a filmed in-studio performance.

! I never realized this. after I got Superunknown in high school I never did an A/B comparison again. listening to video version now, it's definitely easy to tell.

U2 "The Streets Have No Name" filmed live on top of a liquor store in downtown LA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzZWSrr5wFI

Is that radically different from the album version though? I'm not so sure... No Eno nor Lanois to add synth textures.

Bon Jovi - Born to Be My Baby (deconstructed mix isolating various instruments)
Talk Talk - Dum Dum Girl (live vocal)

It’s been ages since I saw it but I’m pretty sure the movie version of “Jailhouse Rock” is a lot different from the single.

^^Yup, added horns and a vocal chorus.

Before mp3s I used to make mixtapes dubbed from VHS's of 120 Minutes -- I got used to hearing a few video versions which were tough to find later digitally or on streaming. Also MTV did not tag the song titles as remixes which made it more confusing:
Bjork "Alarm Call"
Eels "Your Lucky Day In Hell"
Ben Lee "Nothing Much Happens"
Roni Size "Brown Paper Bag"
There's definitely a lot more from this era.

80s stuff:
Michael Jackson "Bad" crudely replaced the key/organ solo with a different arrangement.
I guess "Opposites Attract" -- the album version has no rap interludes.

our lady peace’s “automatic flowers” video is either a complete re-rerecording of the song (imo yes) or a live performance (less likely)

oh and my favorite example of this is.... “every heartbeat” by amy grant. video mix > album mix

Janet Jackson's "You Want This", they used the Flyte Tyme remix for the music video, which featured a rap verse from MC Lyte

Sinead's I Want Your (Hands On Me) also used the single version with MC Lyte on it (two remixes on the single additionally included Lyte's rap, or parts thereof - she got headline With status on the front sleeve)

(Hands On Me Dance Mix is mostly Lyte vocals over a housey/freestyley mix, Street Mix is kinda 50/50, over a lightly dubbed-out version of the track. Each of these might include an exclusive verse?)

Can't believe no one's mentioned Madonna's "Express Yourself" this deep into the thread.

aren't looooads of Madonna's videos for single versions? is Express Yrself an especially unusual one?

Madonna’s “What It Feels Like For A Girl” video uses the Above & Beyond remix.

“California Love” is a big one

Also, ATCQ’s “Can I Kick It?”

Biz Markie’s “Vapors”

Shania Twain's European videos from the "Come On Over" era

wasn't the whole lp different in Europe? I was always confused as to why she was supposed to be a country artist until I eventually heard the US versions.

Not just a video issue: Whitney’s “I’m Your Baby Tonight” was released in two very different versions: a new jack swing one on for North America and an uptempo house one for Europe and (apparently) the rest of the world. Not just the single release was different in both territories, the parent album as well. I didn’t hear what the Americans heard until years later and I was shocked. Never been able to get into that rockabye baby version after having lived with the breathlessly (over)excited original-to-me-and-millions-of-others.

The videos for both versions can still be found side by side on YouTube:
(US video, 9.6M views:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0oRnyXxIrY
(EU/international video, 11.9M views:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H-jLOoz-YY

Also, ATCQ’s “Can I Kick It?”

Track A1 on the US single

be thankful it's not the UK hit version

Beastie Boys Body Movin' - the video has the Fatboy Slim remix

Also Brimful Of Asha, of course.

The Delerium Silence video uses neither the original album version, nor the (11 minute) Tiesto remix that became a huge club hit, but the Airscape remix.

re: Wyclef: okay, i'd definitely misremembered that the album track "To All the Girls" had "Cheated" in the title. so maybe it doesn't really count. but releasing the rock song, not on the album, and third track on the single, as the video version, under the title "Cheated (To All The Girls)" is still pretty confusing, right??

glad to see i wasn't the only one bothered by the Left Eye rap problem at the time. (the last big singles i can remember with the rapper erased for top 40 radio are indeed "California Gurls" and "Payphone" around the same time but i'm sure it did not stop there and this probably has its own thread.)

Pom absolutely otm about the “All Is Full of Love” video mix which destroys any other version. And there’s the Sonic Youth “Silver Rocket” video which is an incendiary live in studio thing. Did R.E.M. do the same for “So. Central Rain”?

Def Jam put out two videos for the different single mixes for Rihanna Umbrella (the original and the Seamus Haji remix) but the original clearly became the bigger hit.

some related threads from the mist of time:

Different Versions Of Songs For Different Radio Formats

Artists that constantly release new mixes of their hits on their "Best Of" albums rather than releasing the original hit versions

Single mixes that were considerably different from the original
Doctor Casino already feeling the “Big Time Sensuality” blues in 2006!

^good excavation

Beasties liked that Fatboy remix so much they even used it on both their best-of comps.

Another obvious one: Babylon Zoo's Spaceman disappointing early buyers off the back of the Levi's advertisement, such that they pulled the single and made a new radio/single version that opened and closed with some of the cool-sounding bits of the Arthur Baker remix which the ad had used.

Then made a video for this version, amplifying disappointment when ppl bought the album off the back of it becoming the biggest-selling single in 30 years, and got the dirgey original instead. The album crashed out of the top 40 after 3 weeks.

re: Wyclef: okay, i'd definitely misremembered that the album track "To All the Girls" had "Cheated" in the title. so maybe it doesn't really count. but releasing the rock song, not on the album, and third track on the single, as the video version, under the title "Cheated (To All The Girls)" is still pretty confusing, right??

R. Kelly used to break out in hives if he released three singles in a row without making one of them basically a whole new song written on the theme of the album version. At least Wyclef changed the title*! The fact that the b-side is him versioning a riddim with Spragga Benz is another precedent / different approach.

*("Cheated (To All The Girls)" appears to be the title of the release, not the song, fwiw. one might argue this was helpful annotation rather than misleading.)

pretty confusing, right??

Or fun, and good value! Does this read as confusing particularly from a US 1990s perspective, when physical singles were being strangled by major labels, so you just weren't used to buying different versions of songs from the album version?

ha :D from that Doc post:

"Southern Hospitality" also has that Missy thing going on in the video where they cut into another song from the album briefly. I suppose this doesn't really count as a "single mix," but it definitely changes the way the song is experienced. "One Minute Man," for example, is livened up considerably by that freaky part in the middle where she's crawling along the floor like a snake, whatever that song is. "Woo-Ha!" feels just a little more weird and sinister with "Everything Remains Raw" tacked onto the beginning, etc. Is there a thread about this somewhere?

also 2006 was three years ago iirc, rude

if you read those threads it feels like yesterday, true

The video mix for Dizzee Rascal's "I Luv U" resembles the album version for 2.5 minutes before abruptly becoming a 1 minute excerpt of "Vexed" for some reason.

It was pointed out on another thread that Crowded House's video mix of "Weather With You" brings the first chorus forward so it comes after the once-off bridge about a minute into the song. The more readily available version seems to be exactly the same material but sequenced verse-bridge-verse-chorus-chorus-chorus. (Not really 'radically different' admittedly.)

I think at least one, maybe two, of the "Republic" videos from New Order had a different mix. Maybe "World (The Price of Love)"? "Spooky?" For some reason I think "Round & Round" from "Technique" had a different mix for the video, too.

Pearl Jam's "Alive" video was a live performance. But intriguingly, while I always thought the "Even Flow" video was a live performance, too, and its visuals were in fact cobbled together from a few live performances, the song itself is actually from an alternate *studio* recording the band made while recording the "Singles" soundtrack.

I think the version of "Sledgehammer" Peter Gabriel used for the video is at the very least longer than the album version.

Doc and I both associate it with Missy, but Woo-Hah! was the first place I remember noticing it, so could well be a Hype Williams invention.

xp

World had basically the same video for both the radio edit, and the edit of the Perfecto mix by O&O. Spooky used the Fluke Minimix for the video. In both cases those mixes were the first track on the CD1.

Pretty in Pink - so many versions!

is it not just the 1981 recording having a 1981 video, and the 1986 recording having a 1986 video?

the first time i remember this phenomenon happening (and subsequently blowing my mind) was the first time i saw the video for da brat's "give it 2 you" on bet. solid groove. and way better than the album version.

i think these stand out to me cause the music industry in the 80s/90s seemed like this very slick, smooth, professionalized product pipeline, and then to have the video promoting a version of the song that was not the one they are actually hoping you'll buy seems so odd and clunky, total mismatch and fuckup by some intern somewhere derailing this gigantic and ostensibly seamless marketing campaign

sic, thanks for that! unortunately I can’t watch that video bc it’s region locked - does it match the album version? I used to prefer the 86 version because that’s the one I heard first, but the saxless one certainly sounds better now. :)

d'oh! / I think so but am no expert

to have the video promoting a version of the song that was not the one they are actually hoping you'll buy seems so odd and clunky, total mismatch and fuckup by some intern somewhere derailing this gigantic and ostensibly seamless marketing campaign

but 97% of these are in fact the single version!

I was thinking about Pet Shop Boys in this context but, yeah, I think seemingly peculiar mixes in their videos overwhelmingly corresponded to what was on a contemporaneous single.

@ sic: they were not hoping i would buy the single version! the singles were barely available if at all!

like their whole mentality was hoping dumb teens would spend $19 on an album at sam goody (or les elsewhere obviously) rather than $6 on a CD single

yeah US single sales were minuscule compared to other countries

I brought that up first, but the rest of the world still existed and bought English-language pop music

I think Peter Gabriel may have a few of these

Video for I Have the Touch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPTyNDqOzpM
Album version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydiW-QnTUpY

Sorry I guess that’s not a proper video. Agh, I was sure he did this sometime though

@ sic - fair! i guess i just think, myopically, of mtv and mtv culture as being us-centric.

like you'd think they would have just had US vs "international" versions of the videos, or slapped the single mix on at the end of the US edition of the album as a bonus track, or ... something

Gloria Estefan - “Live for Loving You” (seeing that video totally blew my ten-year-old mind. and it was on vh1 all the damn time.)

clearly i need to spatially expand my horizons
or end up in a class with scrubs - never risin'

Probably this was the PG one I was thinking of
I Don’t Remember https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k_ZRyws8Uc

Yeah, i've never heard that version of the song (never seen that video either). Almost sounds like a demo.
.

The original single/video version of ‘First Day’ by the Futureheads is much better than the one on their debut album, which has a much busier performance/mix.

Another version of this is when sound effects and dialogue are added to the video. 95% of the time this is annoying but 5% of the time the actual song sounds like it's missing something vital when you finally hear it by itself. First example I can think of - This Is America

My favorite example of that is from Jump by Van Halen

yeah that brings up the obvious opposite example, "Black or White" by Michael Jackson which for some reason includes the entire dialogue from the first minute of the video, totally breaking up the flow of the album

"eat this!"

tbf I always kinda loved the instrumental that plays under that part, kinda want to hear it in full

I think it’s funny how “Oops... I Did It Again” (the track) includes that corny Titanic-themed dialogue from the video.

that INFURIATED me at the time and does not seem any less dumb now

"Steal My Sunshine" seems like a reversal of the norm; it has dialogue in the album track but not in the music video.

oh good call --- if you'd asked me i would have guessed the reverse! ugh. "KAREN.... I LOVE YOU!!!!"

Here's Neon Neon doing the Hype/Missy trick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMenxKvBGe4

I've been on a pre-Chronic rap kick lately. The video version of Big Daddy Kane's "Taste of Chocolate" has a great extra rap ("Big Daddy Kane's the one and only. You wanna say it three times, like Tony Toni Tone") that's missing from the album version. Big Daddy then split the album version up into two parts and put one at the beginning of the album and one at the end, just to piss off his fans even more.

Really, the music industry should've been sued for pulling this shit.

aren't looooads of Madonna's videos for single versions? is Express Yrself an especially unusual one?

"Express Yourself" was actually released in two different versions (same picture, different music). One's probably better known than the other, but here's what was posted elsewhere:

First I'll start with the US promo CD. It has four tracks on it:

1. (7" Remix) 4:30
2. (Remix/Edit) 4:50
3. (Non-Stop Express Mix) 7:54
4. (Local Mix) 6:20

(7" Remix) is the version that was released on 7" vinyl and cassette single in the US. It sounds similar to the Like A Prayer album version, but was remixed by Shep Pettibone and includes more overdubs of synths, horns and string sections.

(Remix/Edit) is Shep Pettibone's dance remix of the song which is a totally reworked house version (some of the same synth & string parts that were added to his (7" Remix) are also included in this mix.

(Non-Stop Express Mix) is Shep Pettibone's extended dance version of his (Remix/Edit).

and (Local Mix) is Shep's extended remix version of his (7" Remix).

A dub version of his dance remix version was also released on the "Express Yourself" 12" single, (Stop & Go Dubs) 10:50, but it wasn't included on the promo CD.

For the video, there were two mixes released. Version 1 [probably the more famous one] uses (Remix/Edit) as the soundtrack, but the intro is replaced with the intro from the (Local Mix) but with additional echo added to the line "do you believe love." Version 2 uses (7" Remix) as the soundtrack, and the intro is also replaced with the intro from the (Local Mix), but this time they left the audio as it appears on the (Local Mix), without additional echo on the line "do you believe in love," and since the (7" Remix) is shorter and fades out, the second video ends earlier with the soundtrack cutting to the ending from the (Local Mix) of the song.

Version 1 was officially released on the Celebration DVD and Version 2 was officially released on The Immaculate Collection VHS and DVD.

Another version was released on the Celebration compilation CD but this 4:00 version is basically an attempt to recreate the 1990 Immaculate Collection length edit using the (Local Mix) intro and the (Remix/Edit). It's missing the additional echo on "do you believe in love" so it does not include the same audio as the Version 1 video. (which means you can only get that intro on the Celebration DVD).

And I called it an "attempt" to recreate The Immaculate Collection edit because after the 3rd chorus they end up cutting further than they should to the wrong part of the song (they cut to the second time she sings "and when you're gone he might regret it," instead of the first time she sings it) and then they give up editing the rest of the song cuz it ends up being 4:00 after their strange edit. (She doesn't stop singing in this version of the song! The 1990 version has an instrumental break in the middle and a two more edits after that.)

Peter Gabriel's 'Kiss That Frog'. In the UK at least, the single version was an edit of the album version, but the video is the 'Midnblender' mix, the thing to promote his 3D simulator ride thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Y7SeZSq70
^ this version appears to remove the frog noises

Not radically different, but quite a few videos have been made with a live vocal, particularly from singers who don't like miming to a track. I think Springsteen's done this at least twice - "Brilliant Disguise" and "Streets of Philadelphia."

high-quality content, birdis!

thanks sic!