Videodrone #17: Everything's Ruined

Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century. 

Everything's Ruined (1992)

Last week, I wrote about one of the most expensive (and ridiculous) music videos ever made, MC Hammer's 14-minute magnum dopus, "2 Legit 2 Quit." But what happens when you don't have much of a budget to make a video?

In 1992, Faith No More was at an interesting spot. The Bay Area band had been around since 1983 (under that name; previously the group was called Sharp Young Men and Faith No Man). They scored a rock radio hit in 1987 with "We Care a Lot," but things blew up for FNM after the addition of new singer Mike Patton and the release of their 1989 album The Real Thing. Specifically, it was the single "Epic," a Chili Peppers-esque hybrid of funk and metal that took off, especially thanks to the video getting popular on MTV. 

The band rode that album for nearly two years, touring extensively, playing Saturday Night Live and the MTV Video Music Awards, and maintaining popularity in both the alternative and metal scenes. For their follow-up, Patton was more involved in the writing process and the results were unexpected, as the band completely moved away from the funk-metal sound of the previous albums and into weird and wonderful territory. Released in June 1992, Angel Dust sold well, but fans of The Real Thing weren't quite sure what to make of it.

The first two singles, "Midlife Crisis" and "A Small Victory," received expensive, high concept video treatments, and by the time the band wanted to release "Everything's Ruined" as the third single, their video budget from Warner Bros. didn't have much left. So FNM and director Kevin Kerslake, decided to make the cheapest video possible.

The song itself is pretty straightforward by Angel Dust standards, a catchy ripper of a song. But the video is something else. It features the band (and some kids) performing in front of random B-roll footage of a couple getting married, wildlife, explosions and some graphic surgery. The extras in the video were found through a competition on MTV's Most Wanted, an MTV Europe show. In one scene, the band pretends to run away from footage of a giant tortoise. It's simultaneously ridiculous and awesome.

"It was our idea to take this further and make a video as cheap as humanly possible, in one of those video booths like they had at county fairs, where you sing and dance in front of a blue screen," keyboardist Billy Gould wrote in response to a question on the FNM blog. "We didn't quite get to do that, but we got it as close as possible."

I never saw "Everything's Ruined" on MTV back when it came out, as it likely got played infrequently and late at night. But thanks to YouTube, you can now watch it for yourself and see how, like one commenter noted, it's both the worst and greatest rock video ever.