90s Videos of Dead Ladies in the Water: Happy Halloween

The 1990s was a scary decade. Marilyn Manson personally killed several people at his concerts.¹ The deadliest job was "attractive young rock star," and the second deadliest was "attractive young actor." With the American homicide rate reaching 9.8 per 100,000 people², the third deadliest job was "citizen of the USA." The AIDS epidemic, shrinking rainforest, Rodney King riots, ebola, and America On-Line showed us that, even though the Russians weren't going to vaporize us, the world was closing in around our throats. Sex, violence, jealousy and revenge were the order of the day, as evidenced by OJ Simpson, Lorena Bobbitt, Tanya Harding, and Amy Fisher. We didn't start the fire.

So, how did our pop culture reflect this? By creating rock videos about dead ladies in the water. Beginning with Tom Petty and "Mary Jane's Last Dance," we have the 5 best watery dead ladies of 1990s rock videos, after the jump.

Tom Petty- Mary Jane's Last Dance



Just when you thought easy-going, white-suited Tom Petty couldn't get any creepier! Wait, what?
Mr. Petty threw the rock world a curveball by departing from his usual stance of freefallin' and not backin' down, to quite unambiguously embracing necrophilia. But by "unambiguous," I mean "it's also about smoking marijuana."


The Toadies- Possum Kingdom



Toadies did for creepy misogyny what Gin Blossoms did for tuneful wistfulness, and The Rembrandts did for the Friends theme song. That is, "they got a solid one-hit wonder out of it." Watch for the shocking twist ending!


Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue- Where the Wild Roses Grow



Here it is: incontrovertible proof that Nick Cave is a murderer, as if we didn't already know that by his menacing brow ridge, and that 70% of his songs are murder confessions.

Facts: Nick Cave wrote this song based on an Appalachian murder ballad.
The video is inspired by the 1852 painting Ophelia, by John Everett Millais.³


Richard Marx- Hazard

As if he had a premonition of the crack I am going to make about his hair, Sir Richard Marx doesn't allow embedding on his videos. Watch the amazing video here.

Sir Richard Marx is not amused.


This video is groundbreaking and underappreciated, like if David Lynch collaborated with Bruce Springsteen. The song is well-written, and would sound great with some eerie slide guitar and haunting vocals. Instead, we get elevator synths. But let's not gloss over the real victim here: Richard Marx's hair.

PJ Harvey- Down By the Water



PJ Harvey takes the cake here. Her song is unsettling and sexy, sultry and disturbing. In every other video, a male singer takes on the role of a creep. Here, Polly Jean imagines herself as a (possibly male) creep. As a metaphor for blah blah blah, you know the deal. PJ Harvey rules. Happy Halloween. Stay dry.

¹ This didn't happen.
² Department of Justice Bureau of Crime Statistics. By the way, by most accounts, the crime rate in the US dropped dramatically during the decade, despite the homicide rate reaching a 30-year peak in the early 1990s.
³Wikipedia.