Some time ago (last week) we foreshadowed an impending animated music video listicle, only to find that someone else had sort of beat us to it. Fortunately, fasthack’s Top 11 Most Excellent Animated Music Videos is far from perfect (though two of their entries figure here) and includes some mostly-live action entries, like Blur’s brilliant video for “Coffee & TV”.

Long considered a cop-out by performing artists too busy to shoot a proper (and supposedly inherently better) live-action video, animated music videos were long trapped in the video-rotation dustbin of disappointment. The entries presented below have helped to reverse this (not entirely unfounded) conventional wisdom by taking advantage of animation’s limitless possibilities to inject unparalleled levels of artistry, creativity and fun into the music video form. Without further ado, Listicles’ Top 6 Animated Music Videos:

6. Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love”

An exuberant splash of delightful colors and shapes, this indie-animation classic matched the 80s pop hallmark’s overwhelming sweetness with its smile-inducing cacophony. Though it’s number 6 here, if ever there were a “Best Happy Music Videos” listicle (coming soon), it would be a top contender for the number one spot.

5. Kanye West, “Heartless”

Because the Universal Music Group is evil and greedy, we can do no better than to link to Kanye’s latest video. One of the few rap artists still doing something interesting with the music video format, Kanye’s sob-story walk down Lonely Lane melds the introspective animations of Waking Life to the psychedelic imagery of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

4. White Stripes, “Fell in Love with a Girl”

Michel Gondry brings his wacky D.I.Y. aesthetic to the animated music video in this stop-motioned Lego assemblage. A brilliant gem of post-MTV low-cost production, “Fell in Love with a Girl” shows how much can be achieved with very little blocks of plastic.

3. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Love Rollercoaster”

This wacky video co-starring Beavis and Butthead matches a fun narrative to a fun song, and the result remains a classic despite the Chili Peppers’ attempt to outdo “Love Rollercoaster” years later with the videogame-inspired “Californication”.

2. Gorrillaz, “Clint Eastwood

The video that introduced Gorillaz and their animated avatars to the world features some great zombie-movie references and an excellent verse by one of the oft-overlooked geniuses of rap, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien.

1. Daft Punk, the Discovery saga (represented herein by “Aerodynamic”)

Turning their entire Discovery album into an anime epic, Daft Punk redefined their musical style into a shiny synth-pop landscape with appropriately poppy visual counterparts. Part movie, part backstage sci-fi musical epic, and some small part music video, there hasn’t been anything quite like it since.