Who can forget Britney Spears' pink-feathered pigtails? "She went off to wardrobe and came back with those braids," says Nigel Dick, who directed Spears in ...Baby One More Time , her 1998 video debut. "I don't know a lot about hair—I have none myself," he quips. "But I thought the style looked cool so we went with it." Though he faced scrutiny from his peers for taking on a little-known Mouseketeer, Dick wasn't dissuaded. "I enjoy working with new artists and it was an extraordinary three-minute pop song," he says about Spears' now-famous first single. "I met Britney before shooting and she said, `You know, I'd really like to do something in a school where there's lots of dancing and cute boys.' So that's what we did."
Dick, who originally suggested jeans and T-shirts for the video, says the controversial schoolgirl uniforms were Spears' idea. The memorable dance sequence where Spears bares her midriff was shot at Venice High School because of its wide hallway. "We'd looked at a number of other schools, and in many cases the corridor was very narrow, winding, or dark," says Dick.
Spears has since gone from high school hallways to dance club stages, where she's now a femme fatale. But her bubblegum-pop persona, forever frozen in ...Baby One More Time, is still a fan favorite. "It's interesting, the reverence by which people refer to the video," says Dick. "I don't feel it's mine anymore. It's as if it's become—dare I be so pretentious—part of the world, and I enjoy that quality. It's rather nice."
Michael Jackson's 1983 Thriller is legendary for many reasons, not the least of which is its spine-tingling special-effects makeup. "That was one of the reasons he wanted to do the video," says Rick Baker (pictured at left), who famously transformed Jackson into a werewolf and zombie. "Michael was a big fan of An American Werewolf in London, a film I'd done with Thriller's director, John Landis."
The first time Jackson came to Baker's makeup studio, Baker says the shy star brought his pet snake, Muscles, for support. "I was fine with the snake," says Baker, "but there was a publicist there who took off screaming and ran out of the building. We never saw her again!"
For his scenes as a zombie, Jackson wore a prosthetic mask that circled his cheekbones and eye sockets. "It was a minimal covering—we wanted to keep a lot of Michael in the makeup so that you could still see it was him," says Baker, who made other zombies more elaborate for close-ups. "I'd crafted some teeth for Michael so he'd match everyone else but John—who was totally right—said, `No, he's still got to be good-looking.' The teeth were just a little too creepy."
"We didn't have much time to prepare and had a lot of looks to create—during preproduction I was just concentrating on getting everything done," says Baker. "But when we were in downtown Los Angeles shooting the zombie dance, it finally hit me how cool Thriller was going to be. As I'm standing there watching Michael do this amazing performance, Landis says to me, `You know, people are going to remember you more for this video than anything you've done,' and I told him he was crazy. But today it's the one thing I can mention that everybody's seen."
For more on Thriller, check out Michael Jackson: The Making of "Thriller": 4 Days/1983, an illustrated tribute with behind-the-scenes photos by Douglas Kirkland.
Lady Gaga made her catwalk debut at the Thierry Mugler show in March—but her makeup artist, Billy B., says her runway potential was evident long before then. "It all started with Bad Romance in 2009 when she strutted across the floor in Alexander McQueen stilettos," he says. "She became a fashion model in that moment."
Besides bringing couture to the screen, Gaga also brought a freakishly wide-eyed stare. "That effect was created in postproduction," says Billy B., "But it's amazing how many YouTube makeup tutorials it has inspired!"
There's no question that Lady Gaga is a fan of makeup—the M.A.C cosmetics spokeswoman always hits the red carpet with a smoky eye or bold lip. But in Bad Romance, Gaga shocked fans by going surprisingly minimal during the crying sequence. "Nobody knew what she really looked like—at that time, we were constantly experimenting with makeup to transform her visually—and so that scene became a big deal. People were calling it the `unveiling' of Lady Gaga," says Billy B.
Gaga's tear-drenched vulnerability stands in stark contrast to the last scene of Bad Romance: Wearing a full face of makeup behind a pair of shades, she confidently walks toward her captor to set him ablaze. "She wore tons of makeup," says Billy B. "It broke every makeup rule but that's how she's wired. She feels her fans deserve over-the-top glamour; when you're creating a character, you don't cut corners."
The character from Bad Romance definitely hit home with Gaga's followers. According to Billy B., even after the release of subsequent videos like Telephone and Born This Way, he still gets asked most about Bad Romance.
She's been in the music biz for several years, but it was 2010's Tightrope that propelled Janelle Monáe toward commercial success. Showcasing her signature pompadour-and-tuxedo combo, Tightrope takes place at a futuristic mental institution where dancing is forbidden. "Janelle breaks the rules and creates the Tightrope dance, which allows her to travel through time and space," says director Wendy Morgan. "Unfortunately when she escapes, the mirror-faced attendants—who are inspired by Sun Ra's 1974 film, Space Is the Place—are not far behind and bring her back."
Morgan says the infectious choreography was the brainchild of Monáe and the Memphis Jookin' Society, dancers who played her fellow inpatients in the video. "Dance greats like James Brown served as references," says Morgan.
"Her image is really important to her," says hairstylist Ted Gibson of Monáe, who claims she sleeps and bathes in her tux. Also a major part of Monáe's image: her pompadour hairstyle. To keep the singer's trademark 'do in place during high-energy dance routines—like her performance at this year's Grammys—Gibson uses hairpins from Paris: "The French ones tend to be sturdier and the quality of metal is better."
Though she's never appeared in a video without her pinned-up pomp, Gibson says Monáe does actually wear her "naturally wavy and shoulder-length" hair otherwise. That said, when she veers from her famous style, it's under a veil of secrecy—a head wrap, to be exact. "She loves Hermès scarves," says Gibson.
Another singer who prefers a pompadour: Gwen Stefani. "She's always been a fan of the pomp," says her hairstylist Danilo, who created Stefani's jailbird one in 2007's The Sweet Escape . "She looked perfect in that prison—so gorgeous and pinupworthy."
Stefani's Rapunzel moment—where she lets down her hair so her Harajuku girls can save her—is Danilo's proudest achievement from The Sweet Escape. "I had never done two 50-foot-long cornrow braids before but the Rapunzel scene called for it," he says. "My two assistants and I holed ourselves up in a room and built the braids using ropey material and synthetic hair. Then we attached them to Gwen's head. I don't know how she stood it—all that hair weighed a lot!—but the final results were beautiful. I remember taking a photo of her in her `G' apartment with the braids trailing across the room. I still have it today."
"Hung Up ," the first song released from Madonna's 2005 album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, revamped ABBA's 1970s disco anthem "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" and became one of the bestselling singles of all time. Its music video, directed by Johan Renck, experienced similar success—and showed off Madonna's killer dance moves. "She identifies with dancing and wanted to do a video that celebrated that art form," says Renck. "We found a crappy old dance studio in London that was nothing fancy but that had cinematic properties. The whole video had a very Saturday Night Fever ring to it, really, and she liked that. In fact, the part where she walks through the street at night is a direct reference to John Travolta's dapper strut at the start of that film."
Just weeks before the video shoot, Madonna broke several bones in a horseback-riding accident. "They were serious injuries—she'd broken some ribs, and I think she might have even fractured her collarbone," says Renck. "She was so passionate about the video, though, she never uttered a word of complaint when dancing."
Madonna didn't always throw caution to the wind, however. Renck recalls how, before he signed on for Hung Up, Madonna offered to let him hear the unreleased track: "She didn't want the single to leak so she had her guy come over to my studio—he had a burned CD, a Discman, and headphones. I thought it was a pretty epic dance song and agreed to do the video. But I wasn't allowed to keep the CD!"
Although Madonna is the obvious star of Hung Up, anyone who's seen the video knows she shares the spotlight with a pretty awesome boombox. "I'd gotten it at a yard sale in London years ago," says Renck. "I suggested to Madonna that we use it between the various dance scenes like an Olympic torch—as the glue holding everything together—and she liked the idea." Unfortunately for Renck, a longtime boombox lover ("growing up, I carried one everywhere!"), he had to part with his beloved stereo when the video wrapped. "Madonna liked it so much, she asked if she could bring it on tour. I said, `Yeah, I'm sure we can find a similar boombox,' and she said, `No, I want that one,'" says Renck, chuckling at the recollection. "I never saw it again."
"The video was inspired by a Bob Fosse dance performance from The Ed Sullivan Show, says Beyoncé Knowles' longtime stylist, Kim Kimble, of 2008's Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) . "It was all about female power—definitely a Sasha Fierce video. Look what she's telling him! She's saying, hey, if you like me you should show it."
Knowles was so fierce, Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) even made Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, and Bobby Moynihan explore their feminine sides; the stars re-created the video for Saturday Night Live with Timberlake, Samberg, and Moynihan serving as Knowles' backup dancers (leotard and heels included).
To complement the strength of Sasha Fierce and her titanium robo-glove, Kimble says she and Knowles chose a hairstyle with "an androgynous quality to it. It was a mix of feminine and masculine—long and straight in the back with a pompadour at the front."
"In the '50s and '60s, men were the ones who wore pompadours," explains Kimble. After blow-drying Knowles' curls straight, Kimble fashioned the pouf by teasing hair upward with a comb and hairspray and pinning in place. Flatironing the back portion of Knowles' mane created a sleek finish.
Only Cher could upstage a larger-than-life ship! In 1989, the artist wore her famously revealing one-piece in If I Could Turn Back Time , which was filmed at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in front of the USS Missouri. Even MTV deemed Cher's outfit too scandalous and, after briefly banning the video from the network, relegated its airings to after 9 p.m. "Cher showed me the wig and costume before the video and asked me what I thought—I looked at the outfit and it was barely anything!" laughs Serena Radaelli, Cher's longtime hair guru. "I figured if she wasn't going to wear much clothing she could wear more hair, so I styled the wig with a lot of height and curl."
Last September at MTV's Video Music Awards, Cher one-upped the network by wearing her itty-bitty getup again—this time to present Lady Gaga with a Video of the Year award. She also wore a wig that was bigger and better than ever. "Oh my God, I spent three hours teasing and curling it," says Radaelli, noting that Cher prefers wigs so that her naturally thick, straight hair stays healthy. "Cher wanted the wig even bigger, and I said, `If you make it any bigger, Lady Gaga will disappear!'" Radaelli adds: "I have so much fun with her, and over the years I've realized what an amazing woman she is. There's Lady Gaga and Madonna, but Cher was the first one to do everything—she's fearless."
Written by Christina Aguilera, Linda Perry, and Mark Ronson, Aguilera's 2006 single "Hurt" was a major power ballad—with a majorly powerful video. Hurt tells the story of a circus starlet who becomes wrapped up in fame and forgets what truly matters—namely her father, whose death causes her to regret her wrongdoing. "It was a beautiful, poetic song and the video was very cinematic. It had a Water for Elephants tone to it," says Kristofer Buckle, who did Aguilera's makeup for the shoot. "We filmed in the desert, where they'd built these beautiful tents. They blew down during a terrible storm and took days to rebuild!"
While Aguilera's makeup in the flashback scenes is "bright and upbeat," Buckle aptly chose a darker, more sedate look for Aguilera's introspective moment. "She's wearing an old-Hollywood silk gown, and I wanted her makeup to be like Joan Crawford's in the '30s—a thin, tweezed brow with smudgy downturned eyes and an overdrawn port lip," he says. To tie Aguilera to her circus environment amid the Hollywood references, Buckle used a dab of eyelash glue to adhere a Mylar confetti tear to her cheek: "I chose Mylar because it catches the light at certain angles but is barely noticeable otherwise."
Blondie, founded by singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Klein, was at the center of New York City's 1980s bohemia. "I moved to New York in 1980, and it was a blast," remembers Danilo. "It was such a formative time."
Blondie's 1981 video, Rapture , revealed Harry's perfectly platinum hair and purple eye shadow—a look she continues to wear effortlessly, says Danilo, her current hairstylist: "She looks stunning! She's an amazing talent and her voice is still wicked."
Besides Harry's evident beauty, Rapture was notable because it was the first rap video to air on MTV. While walking and rapping down a graffiti-lined New York City street, Harry calls out hip-hop pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash. She also encounters Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quinones, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as Uncle Sam, a Native American, and a goat. "I love that part," recalls Renck. "It's so weird and good."
Perhaps the weirdest thing in the video is the "Man From Mars," aka the mysterious guy in the white tux who peers at Harry through a window, then dances with her in the street. (Cool but kind of creepy!)
Katy Perry's E.T. might be new, but its out-of-this-world hair and makeup have already left their mark (have you checked out YouTube and Perry's Facebook page lately?). Though three beauty looks are featured, hairstylist Pamela Neal and makeup artist Kabuki agree that the ethereal version of Perry was the most difficult to create.
Neal spent five days crafting Perry's crown. "Using tiny pliers, I built a freestanding structure that was held together by boning and wire," she says. "I wrapped hair extensions around everything, gluing braids onto the outside pieces." For a seamless connection between Perry's own braids and those on the headpiece, Neal painted the base of the crown the color of Perry's hair and sewed it onto her head: "The whole process took about two hours."
Kabuki also put in plenty of prep time prior to the video shoot. The makeup maven drew the delicate patterns he planned to airbrush on Perry's forehead and cheekbones, then transferred them to a silkscreen. "I created the stencil on the model of a head so that it would work in three dimensions," he says. Of the makeup's overall appearance, Kabuki says he was inspired by the "out-there" retro glamour of David Bowie and Grace Jones. "I didn't know how Katy's fans would react to seeing her in such strange makeup, but I'm really pleased with how it worked out," says Kabuki. "She brought the makeup to life and revealed a type of otherworldly beauty you don't normally see."
Though it didn't win Video of the Year (it was nominated), Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun did snag the Best Female Video title at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. And it's no wonder; the catchy, upbeat video tells the hilarious story of a girl who—yes, you guessed it—just wants to have fun. (Even if it means angering her "Daddy dear," played by Lauper's wrestler friend Captain Lou Albano, pictured at left.) Made on a shoestring budget, the video displayed not only Lauper's orange, half-shaved head of hair but also her quirky sense of humor. "That woman is an amazing nut," laughs Danilo, who styled Lauper's tresses for years.
For the memorable dance sequence in the street—where Lauper and her friends (played by secretaries at her record label) pick up followers along the way—Lauper is wearing a dress she found at NYC vintage store Screaming Mimi's, which still exists today.
Last but not least is Robert Palmer's unforgettable 1986 video, Addicted to Love . Nevermind that the models in the background don't have a musical bone in their bodies (the "keyboardist" looks like she's ready to pass out). According to Teri Marguerite Ryan, one of Palmer's girls, they were actually instructed by the video director to act like mannequins.
The most standout thing about Palmer's video, however, is the ultra-bold makeup! "If I had a dollar for every time I've referenced the makeup in Addicted to Love, I'd be rich," says Billy B. "It was very influential to me and absolutely iconic, there's no question about it. It was such a clever concept; with the hair slicked back, it was all about the face. The makeup had elements of over-the-top Paris runway looks from the '70s and '80s. It was like a mix of Helmut Newton and Yves Saint Laurent."
