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November 09, 2009

It Almost Takes a Decade to Read... Paste's 50 Favorite Music Videos of the 00's...

Apologies to Kanye, but while Beyoncé had some great videos over the last 10 years, none of them were quite strong enough to make this list. And hold on just a minute, Taylor Swift—that goes for you, too. Mr. West, though—childish public outbursts aside—did land a couple videos on our list.

Two months ago, for a moment there, it seemed all of America was debating or lampooning the VMAs debacle. Soon after the chatter died down, though—after Paste let everybody finish—it wasn’t long before we got busy scouring the Web, trying to compile an unequivocally amazing list of the best videos of the aughties.

In a decade defined more by fragmentation and the rise of the niche than anything else, there were no longer two or three definitive outlets for the music video like there had been in the past. For the first time, videos often went straight to the web and were available on countless sites with large and small audiences, and while this was happening, budgets for videos got a lot smaller, too. But after watching hours and hours of videos, we discovered that this didn’t mean people stopped making incredible videos. Here’s proof…