The song pick this week is one of the more iconic audio and video clips from the early ’90’s. The song is fantastic and the video is totally unforgettable.

Sabotage was the first singe from the Beasties’ fourth album Ill Communication. The single was released in January of 1994, while the album was a few months behind in May. The single had a rather light performance conventionally, landing at 18 on the US Alternative Airplay chart and 19 on the UK Singles chart. The album was a smash success, claiming a Billboard number 1 and hitting 3 times platinum in the US.

The Beastie Boys were always a genre-bending outfit, combining elements of hip-hop, rock, metal, punk and whatever else around the house wasn’t bolted down. In the music environment of 1994, Sabotage simply qualified as a rap-rock song, nothing unusual to find on the radio or MTV at the time. Of course, the Beastie Boys were also one of the primary influences on the fusion of rap and rock, so no great surprise that another single of theirs would be right at home among a host of music they helped influence.

Lyrically, Sabotage is a venomous rant against the music industry and specifically a producer that had screwed the band over – except that nothing of the sort really happened. Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz relayed in the 2020 Beastie Boys Story documentary that they were simply spewing a fictional rant at Mario Caldato, the song and album’s producer. Caldato was not truly doing anything untoward, it was just a way that the Beasties came up with lyric ideas.

Sabotage is inseparable from its music video, which was what truly launched the song into immortality. The clip was helmed by director Spike Jonze and was styled as the opening credits to a 1970’s-era cop show. Each member of the band played a member of the police force, with Adam “MCA” Yauch getting two roles in the video.

The video is simply amazing. It does truly look like a cop show from the time period it represents and could easily be mistaken for a trailer to a real show. Just ask Beavis, who is probably still wondering where the real Sabotage show is. All of the Beasties look the part and the high-flying action is captured perfectly. MTV did originally censor portions of the video, including the parts with bodies flying out of a car and off of a bridge, though it was abundantly clear that dummies were used in the “stunts.” The YouTube clip above features the full uncensored video.

The video was in constant rotation on MTV and was the catalyst to the song being played over and over again for anyone tuning in throughout 1994. The video was nominated for five awards at the 1994 VMA’s but was infamously shut out, mostly losing to Aerosmith’s Cryin’ video. That should be considered a crime, honesty. In 2009 MTV created a new award centering around videos that should have previously won awards and Sabotage was the winner.

Sabotage and Ill Communication would help turn the Beastie Boys into total household names, something they had been well on their way toward anyway, but the ever-present MTV video and success of the album would be the point of no return. No doubt that Sabotage is one of the defining songs and videos of the time period.