LAS VEGAS — It all began with Bono in the back of a laundry van.
That’s what the U2 singer and his bandmates used to travel from their first gig at the Thomas & Mack Center to downtown Las Vegas on April 12, 1987, when they shot the video for “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
With Bono kissing strangers, clambering atop the hood of sports cars idling at stoplights, slapping low-fives to saucer-eyed kids out past their bedtime, the clip remains one of the most famous music videos ever shot here, three decades after the fact.
But while “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” continues to the top the list of the most iconic clips filmed in Vegas, it’s hardly alone, as dozens of artists from Bruno Mars to Florida Georgia Line, Calvin Harris to Sam Smith have shot videos here.
Here are nine more of the wildest Vegas music videos:
- Monster Magnet, “Spacelord”
Shot largely outside the Plaza with its gleaming canopy of lights, this supremely rocking, air guitar-inspiring video will make you feel as if your eyeballs have been swapped out for a pair of pulsating neon bulbs. Come for the 100,000-watt glow, stay for the fireworks, dancers in tight red get-ups, and bare-chested elderly men with “mother” scrawled across their chests.
- Ellie Goulding, “On My Mind”
It’s pretty much everyone’s dream to ride a horse through a casino, then take the creature to the hair salon before capping the night off by raining money down from the roof of the El Cortez Casino. British popster Elli Goulding checks all those boxes here. Bravo!
- Imagine Dragons, “Follow You”
Shot in a vacant, gorgeous Venetian Theater, this shirt-doffing, fake mustache-enhanced video features “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” stars — and real-life husband and wife — Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson attending a private concert by the Imagine Dragons to the delight of the latter and the dismay of former — he’d hoped for the Killers. Speaking of which …
The Killers have shot a number of videos in their hometown, but this clip, where frontman Brandon Flowers plays five different Vegas male archetypes — gambler, ladies’ man, lounge act, Evel Knievel-esque daredevil, karaoke singer, all of whom see good times give way to bad beats — is perhaps the purest distillation of the ever-shifting fortunes inherent in the city from which they hail.
Rapper Flo Rida, who attended UNLV for a time, returns to his college stomping grounds in this ritzy, “Great Gatsby”-inspired video shot in Planet Hollywood and the casino’s now-shuttered Pussycat Dolls Burlesque Saloon where cigars are puffed and Seagrams Gin is poured in a very conspicuous example of product placement. Hey, these video shoots don’t pay for themselves, you know?
- Afrojack & Steve Aoki ft. Miss Palmer, “No Beef”
These two superstar EDM DJ producers team up to raid Vegas souvenir stores in oversized foam cowboy hats, light a crap ton of fireworks, guzzle some mood-enhancing Afroki elixir and get matching chest tattoos. Typical Tuesday for us.
- Starship, “We Built This City”
Some might argue that this “City” should be razed, considering that the tune in question was named the worst song of the ’80s in a 2011 “Rolling Stone” poll, while “GQ” and “Complex” magazine have also branded it among the crappiest songs of all-time. Yes, this video, with its giant tumbling dice and green screen images of Fremont Street, is cheesy enough to cause stomach cramps among the lactose intolerant, but like the deep-fried Twinkies and foot-long margaritas peddled in said district, some things are just so bad they’re kind of good.
- The Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize??”
Fake rabbits and real elephants take over Fremont Street in this beatific video where costumed bunnies and dancers cavort with Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne, who levitates at one point. You too will feel like you’re floating on air during this blissful clip.
- Katy Perry, “Waking Up In Vegas”
Vegas was once known for its buffets, and true to that over-stuffed past, Katy Perry offers up a smorgasbord of Sin City signatures — Elvis wedding officiants, slot machines galore, palatial suites, still more elephants on Fremont Street (when did that become a thing?) — in a very Vegas-y storyline where a winning streak invariably comes to an end. Hey, that’s what you get for kicking Penn and Teller out of their hotel room.
