The thing I miss most about music video culture being in the mainstream is how much a video can really be discussed amongst other people. Nowadays, people discuss YouTube clips, but many years back, it was great when a song was both really popular, and accompanied by a spectacular video. And one video that truly built a great buzz in 1999 was Korn‘s rap-metal classic, “Freak on a Leash”. To review it today just goes to show how unique music video culture was back then.

“Freak on a Leash” debuted on Total Request Live in February of the final year of the 90s, and it was an instant success, receiving heavy airplay for a majority of the year. There wasn’t a moment when it wasn’t on daytime TV, or being discussed on the school bus. The song itself has always been one of the band’s most popular tracks, and there’s a reason behind that: It’s a damn good song. The lyrics suggest being trapped somewhere whether it’s prison, Small Town, U.S.A, or in your head, because vocalist Jonathan Davis is insane. But Davis’ delivery, the catchy yet terrifying guitar riffs, and the gibberish breakdown that can rock a building to its foundations are beyond great. This video would have been a success just on the music itself, but they took it one step further.

Korn has always had some creepy cover art for a mainstream metal band. Sure, Iron Maiden and Slayer make some terrifying covers, but they’re generally cartoonish. Contemporary bands like Metallica and Rage were trying to make a statement. Korn’s covers made you think a schizophrenic serial killer was following you through a deserted playground, as on their self titled album. For Follow the Leader, the band’s best selling album to date, they got renowned graphic artist Todd McFarlane (Spawn) to do the album cover, which featured a creepy group of kids watching a girl play hopscotch on a cliff.

Album art may seem disconnected from music videos, but Todd McFarlane’s work was the basis of the video for “Freak on a Leash”, as if the album art had come to life. McFarlane directed the video, alongside with filmmakers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (now famous for Little Miss Sunshine), and the three composed quite a visual masterwork. In the video, the hopscotch game is interrupted when a gun is accidentally fired by a security guard. It doesn’t hit the girl in the red dress, but it does fly out of a Korn poster and into our reality. The bullet goes through a number of objects in every day America. Whether or not there is any symbolism in all the items destroyed by the bullet is up for argument – regardless, the special effects are pretty cool.

Cool enough that the video went on to truly be a positive mark on the band’s career, boosting them from nu-metal pit igniters to (essentially) pop sensations. The video won Best Short at the 2000 Grammys, as well as Best Rock Video and Best Editing at the VMAs (when that award actually mattered), and was #2 on MTV’s 1999 New Year’s Countdown (only to be beaten out by “I Want it that Way”).  When music video culture is someday picked apart and looked at closely, Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” will definitely be something mentioned. It was a stand-alone work that brought the band’s popularity to new highs.

Revisit the video at Cluster 1!