I haven't seen a topic on this yet, so I apologize if it's a repeat. In part this has been inspired from viewing some of the commentary by Brian and Roger from the GVH series on youtube: especially their comments on Body Language and It's A Hard Life. Bo Rhap seemed to have started a move away from a TOTP video presentation AND it suited the surreal aura of the song, and since then the band had either gone for music videos that were presented a live performance or something with a sort of story in it. For instance the animation in Save Me allowed for the live performance to be intricately connected with the actual story by continuously morphing the dove into Freddie...which kinda enhanced my pleasure in the song for me. Friends will be friends placed focus on the anthemic quality of the song by having their fans participate as a live audience, with their voices heard at the end.
Somewhere along the way, the videos AND the songs changed, but beyond that some of the videos ended up doing very little to match the subject of the song, and then later by the time of Innuendo, they returned to simpler stuff that suited the song. I remember finding It's A Hard Life TERRIBLY distracting, and I wonder if it was just the prawn costume. Calling All Girls I think is another example: the plot of the video had nothing to do with the song, which really is an ordinary romance based pop song. The band did have ideas for their videos some of the times: the Coronation Street parody was Roger's idea, Body Language definitely was something Freddie wanted to do (the fun part for me really was the look on John, Roger and Deaky's faces while they were clicking their fingers xD IIRC, Brian almost forget he was in the video at all during the commentary), but in others they just didn't seem to have much of a say.
A song like One Vision for instance, shows a simple jamming session: a group that above all enjoyed making music together and having their fun while they were at it, and so - I think - did something like Headlong.
For me the videos were just as important a part of the Queen fabric as the songs were, especially towards the end: their attempts to mask Freddie's illness to the general public resulted in some of their best and most imaginative videos to date. Even Freddie's swansong in TATDOOL, while simple, has such amazing touches to it.
Which are the videos you like most, in correspondence to the song, and which ones do you feel really never suited the song at all? Were there songs you liked that the video seemed to completely ruin for you?
Brian and Roger had - in certain interviews - mentioned that the videos themselves could be restrictive for the individual viewer who might have a different idea about the song itself in mind...would you agree?