1) Rudimental – Waiting All Night, BMX
Let’s kick the list off with one of our favourites. The video for Rudimental’s smash drum and bass hit revolved around the story of Kurt Yaeger – the San Francisco-born BMX rider who became an amputee after an accident in 2006.
The video captures Yaeger’s journey back to the bike in brilliant style, and it makes for a damn fine watch. The London-based quartet clearly like their riding too, because there’s plenty nice bike work in the video for ‘Not Giving In’ as well.
2) Doves – Winter Hill, Trials Riding
The Doves may not be the most upbeat band aorund, but after featuring a little known trial rider in the video above, they managed to make a video that’s definitely worth your attention.
Yes, that’s right, they managed to bag a 24-year-old Danny MacAskill back in 2009, just two months after the now global-superstar had released his breakthrough edit ‘Inspired Bicycles April 2009‘. That video, of course, now has over 36 million hits.
3) Moon Duo – Animal, Skateboard
Richie Jackson stars in this outrageously creative edit for space-rock group Moon Duo, and no, we don’t have a clue what “space-rock” is either.
Seriously though, Rickie takes skating to new levels here. He literally kickflips a pitchfork at one point, and if that’s not enough for you, there’s also tea trays, keyboards and car roofs in there as well.
Oh, and for one reason or another he walks pretty weirdly throughout the video. We’re not sure why.
4) Florida Georgia Line – This is How We Roll ft. Luke Bryan, Motocross
Anything that Travis Pastrana and the Nitro Circus team are involved in has the official Mpora seal of approval, normally before we’ve even seen the footage.
Whether it’s nailing the first double backflip on a motocross bike, the first triple backflip on a mountain bike, or pulling some insane stunts behind a group of wailing country singers, it’s all good with us. That’s just how they roll.
5) Magnetic Man – Getting Nowhere ft. John Legend, BMX
The world of electronic music seems to favour BMX over the majority of other sports when it comes to shooting videos.
Magnetic Man is somewhat of a supergroup made up of pioneers Benga, Skream and Artwork, and the video above is littered with all sorts of meaningful nonsense. The four BMX riders have the shadows of horsemen and the feature makes regular references to ‘the seven sins’.
We don’t really care about any of that though. There’s some sick technical work in here, so just sit back and enjoy the show.
6) Souls of Mischief – Medication, Snowboarding
Not only is this one of the few music videos to include snowboarding, it was also the soundtrack for legendary snowboard part True Life from Chris Dufficy. Safe to say it should now be written into any true soundtrack of the sport:
7) OPM – Heaven is a Halfpipe, Skateboarding
So you’re going to try and pretend you don’t like this song are you? That you didn’t have it on repeat on your CD walkman for four years of your youth?
Well, we know your lying. And we know that as soon as you press the play button above, you’re going to go back in time and love every second again. And again. And again.
8) OFF! – Over Our Heads, Skydiving
Ever wondered what it’s like to go skydiving on acid with none other than Jack Black as your personal instructor? Yeah, this is weird. But you know you’re going to watch it now. We can feel the anticipation.
9) Lupe Fiasco – Kick, Push, Skateboard
It all started with skateboarding for good old Lupe Fiasco. This was the first single from his debut album, and it’s a good old fashioned story about growing up as a skater and meeting a female companion you’d like to see some more of.
Apparently, Lupe has since clarified: “I’m not a skater and I don’t want to keep putting on the faces of people who’ve been skating for 20 years and actually lived out ‘Kick, Push’,” but to be fair, the song actually it isn’t bad.
When prompted to use ‘kick push’ in a sentence for example, Urban Dictionary suggests: “If you are a skater (or not) you will love this song (kick push) about being rebelious.” And yes, they did spell rebellious wrong.
10) Meek Mill – Ima Boss, Motocross
There aren’t many motocross music videos out there, and we can near enough guarantee that this is the only one featuring Rick Ross riding a quad bike around the streets of a major city. Our bet? He definitely doesn’t know how to ride a dirt bike.
11) Dinosaur Jr. – Over It, BMX and Skateboard
Quite the effort went into this video! WeThePeople were involved on the BMX side, as were FMB Bike Company, while when it comes to the skating, it was all down to Dinosaur Jr. lead singer J Mascis. Not bad, right?
12) N*E*R*D – Provider, BMX
Pharrell Williams is always banging on about how much he loves BMX, popping up in adverts for the sport and even in edits alongside Nigel Sylvester.
It’s good to see that he was actually still at it before he became super-duper famous and started wearing fedoras then. Who knows, maybe the reason he never ages is actually down to his riding…
13) Flobots – Handlebars, Road Cycling
I CAN RIDE MY BIKE WITH NO HANDLEBARS, NO HANDLEBARS, NO HANDLEBARS. LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, HANDS IN THE AIR AND IT’S GOOD TO BE ALIVE.
14) Bat for Lashes – What’s A Girl To Do, BMX
This, my friends, is the most highly acclaimed video that features on our list. The footage sees Bat For Lashes (a.k.a Natasha Khan) spookily riding her BMX along a forest road while a variety of crazy creatures roll out some sick tricks behind her.
The song was voted in at number 138 on NME’s list of the 150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years in 2011, which was a weird year to have such a poll, and the video debuted in film festivals, as well as winning the 2007 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video.
Apparently if you ask Kanye though, Destiny’s Child had a few videos that year that were much more deserving of the prize.
15) Netsky – We Can Only Live Today, Longboard… Luge?
Netsky is a Belgian drum and bass producer, and his music pretty much lends itself perfectly to action sports. It’s high tempo, extreme music that leaves little time for thinking about anything else.
Saying that though, longboard-meets-luge seems like a pretty strange choice of topic for your video. One thing’s for sure though, it makes for an original watch… and we’d lying if we said that straight after watching, we didn’t want to give it a go.
16) Naughty by Nature – Feel Me Flow, Snowboarding
This video comes from Grammy award-winning American hip hop legends Naughty by Nature, from back in the day when beepers were a thing.
Spanning from the sun and sounds of the city to some sort of giant snowboarding rap community in the mountains, not only is this a great song, it’s a great video too. We’re going to try and start a party exactly like this next time we hit the snow.
17) Robin Thicke, When I Get You Alone – Commuting on a MTB on Pavements and in the Middle of the Road
Why did this make our list? I thought this was meant to only be the greatest and most enjoyable music videos from the world of action sports?
Well, if you can honestly look us in the eye and say that a 2007 Robin Thicke making a dick of himself doesn’t make you giggle, then we sincerely apologise and ask you to readjust your sense of humour.
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