"I feel disgrace because you're all in my face" - Sabotage, The Beastie Boys

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The video for the Beastie Boys song Sabotage isn't just one of the greatest videos made in the 90s. It's one of the influential music videos of all time. 
In the DVD commentary for the 1996 film Trainspotting, Danny Boyle credits the film's opening credits to those used in "Sabotage."
Actress Amy Poehler reviewed the music video for Sabotage in 2018's Beastie Boys Book saying that "there would be no Anchorman, no Wes Anderson, no Lonely Island, and no channel called Adult Swim if this video (Sabotage) did not exist."
If you haven't seen it, you should watch it twice. Once with the subtitles on, to fully appreciate the lyrics and humour of the song beyond the angry delivery. And secondly to marvel at aesthetic the video itself. It feels like something you've seen before. In fact, it feels like every 70's snd 80's american cop shop you've ever seen.  
The song was first conceived when Adam Yauch (MCA) played the signature bass line one day in the studio and it immediately caught the band's attention. Both Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) and Mixgael Diamond (Mike D) picked up their respective instruments and started building on it. According to the 2018 Beastie Boys Book, the song, which was originally called Chris Rock (after a sound engineer called Chris who thought it rocked), was a humourous jab at their producer Mario Caldato Jr.'s repeated urgings that the Beastie Boys actually get some work done. 
As Ad-Rock stated in the 2020 Beastie Boys Story documentary, the lyrics are a fictitious rant about how Caldato "was the worst person ever and how he was always sabotaging us and holding us back."
It was the last song recorded for their ill communication album, and the first single released. 

The accompanying music video for "Sabotage", directed by Spike Jonze and played extensively on MTV, (when they were still a fucking music channel!) is a homage to, and parody of 1970s crime drama shows such as Hawaii Five-O, The Streets of San Francisco, and Starsky and Hutch. The video is presented as the opening credits of a fictional 1970s-style police show called Sabotage, with the band members appearing as the show's protagonists. 
Spike Jonze created the "Sabotage" video by embracing a low-budget, high-energy approach akin to his high school videos and skate films, using a small crew to film around Los Angeles without permits. He had previously directly the Weezer Buddy Holly video.
Jonze's use of fake mustaches, wigs, fast cuts, and extreme closeups helped capture the video's over-the-top, B-movie feel, making it a landmark music video.
In the Beastie Boys Book Jonze talks about the day they went to the wig and mustache warehouse, and basically "cleaned them out." The Beastie boys had a desire to dress up and play out being their characters even when not filming for the video. 
Some scenes had to be removed when the video was shown on MTV, including a knife fight sequence, a scene in which a man is thrown out of a car into a street, and one where another man is thrown off a bridge and is shown violently hitting the ground (although it is clearly visible that the bodies thrown are stunt dummies).

Warning: Watching this video will make you want to hang around in a cop car, eat donuts, and go on a stake-out. The energy of this song and its video is addictive. 




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