Lyrics/Video Mismatch

"After all, what image best fits a song about inner strength than a child running for his life?"

— Todd in the Shadows on David Guetta ft. Sia's "Titanium"

This describes the situation where a Music Video follows a distinct conceptual narrative — but it's a narrative which has absolutely nothing to do with the song's lyrics or theme nor with the band's overall image, save (perhaps) only the thinnest of connections. Typically, no justification of the concept (such as All Just a Dream) is ever attempted.

Many videos which qualify as homages might fit into this category. If taken too far, you can end up with a Surreal Music Video. Sometimes this results in Music Video Overshadowing.

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Examples:

Alternative Rock

• Barenaked Ladies' cover video for "Lovers in a Dangerous Time". The song, originally written by Bruce Cockburn, contrasts new love with the (then-probable) Cold War. The video is about two women (who may or may not be lovers) running across Scarborough to get to a meet-and-greet with the band, who are driving through the city making all kinds of joking references to Canadian life.
• Lit's Miserable is about being addicted to someone despite them making you feel terrible. The video is them serenading a Giant Woman in a bikini who eats them.
• Asian Kung-Fu Generation's "Kimi No Machi Made" is about a guy who wants to fly over to his lover's town like a bird. The music video, on the other hand, is about a synchronized swimming duo persevering despite getting attacked by a giant lobster in the middle of a competition.
• Big Country's "In a Big Country". The lyrics are about encouraging someone who's feeling depressed. The video is some sort of spy drama involving scuba diving and rappelling down a cliff.
• The Birthday Massacre's "In The Dark" is a song about a screwed-up relationship where everything is going wrong. The video is about a strange doll that comes to life, leads the singer through a very weird landscape and abducts her.
• Blonde Redhead's "Silently" is kind of vague, but has something to do with romance, forgiveness, and possibly stalking. The music video is a series of text cards describing the plot from Madonna's "Like a Prayer" music video: a woman sees a man arrested for a crime he didn't commit, hugs a statue in a church the looks just like that man, and eventually convinces the police that the man is innocent.
• Cracker's "Low" is basically a Love Is a Drug song. The video, however, is mainly about their frontman David Lowery entering a boxing match with a woman (comedian/actress Sandra Bernhard)... and losing pretty badly. It could be some sort of metaphor about dysfunctional relationships, mind you.
• Crash Test Dummies:
  • Their cover of "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" is about a martyr in Italy who discredits the Vatican by coming into town and spreading wealth and generosity around, which eventually results in him being crucified on television. The music video (a tie-in to Dumb and Dumber) follows Jeff Daniels' Harry, who's visiting Canada, stopping a robbery at a church and getting unfairly blamed for it. He then gets locked up and tried in court before being visited by an angel and hanged (and falling to the ground unhurt before fleeing the crowd). Notably, this mismatch is highlighted in the video - guest vocalist Ellen Reid sings "Peter Pumpkinhead was too good, had him nailed to a chunk of wood" before panning the camera over from the tied-up Harry to a noose.
  • "Keep a Lid on Things": A Call-and-Response Song where the singer asks a number of questions to a second person ("Who put your granny in the granny house?/Who put whitey in the White House?"), while also being portrayed as a hypocrite (and asking the other person to keep things quiet while they're gone). The music video is... not that. Lead singer Brad Roberts is a human-like robot being piloted by a miniature version of himself. When the Brad-Robot's battery runs low, the miniature version must fly out in a jetpack and secure a replacement, moving past other fallen "robots" (the other band members) on his way. Upon replacing the battery, all of the band member "robots" get back up and continuing walking awkwardly down the street.
• Foo Fighters:
  • "Everlong" is a heartfelt love song... with a Surreal Music Video where the sparse romantic elements are Played for Laughs.
  • Likewise, the video for "Big Me" is an Affectionate Parody of Mentos commercials out of a tender ballad.
  • "Learn To Fly" is an introspective song about spirituality and coming home, while the video is a bizarre Airplane! reference in which Tenacious D guest stars and several band members appear in drag that was inspired by a then-recent event where someone was trying to smuggle cocaine by stashing in the nose of a commercial jet.
• Foster the People have three infamous songs where the videos do not mesh well with the band's Nice Guy motif or their sweet lyrics.
  • "Don't Stop" is about what a child would do if he ruled the world; the video involves a con man posing as a driving instructor with a fake mustache (Mark (Foster)) who fights with his student (Gabourey Sidibe), causing them to drive all over sidewalks and through buckets of paint, attracting the attention of police officers (Mark (Pontius) and Cubbie) who are after the con man and eventually stranding them all in the desert with nothing but the police cruiser and all the presumably stolen money.
  • "Helena Beat," as well, contrasting a song calling out denial of drug addiction and self-destructive tendencies with a video set After the End in which a man (Mark (Foster)) gets kidnapped, severely beaten, and separated from his dog by a group of wild children, strapped up to a machine with an older guy at the other end, and turned into a child himself.
  • "Best Friend" is all about the singer vowing to be a true friend to the listener, who will support and comfort them no matter how bad things get. The video is about a crazy cannibal supermodel devouring her fellow models to appropriate their best traits and make herself look better. And then she gets a Karmic Death when she partially barfs up her last victim's dress on the runway, and chokes to death.
• Garbage's "Special" looks like a clip out of Crimson Skies and it has nothing to do with the song.
• Gin Wigmore's "New Rush" was a song about how her new lover (her eventual husband) revitalized her life. The music video has her escaping pursuit from an arrow-shooting man.
• Imagine Dragons:
  • In "Radioactive," the singer experiences empowerment after "the apocalypse" causes him to awaken in "a new age." In the music video, a young woman rescues Imagine Dragons from Lou Diamond Phillips, by sending her teddy bear to slay a puppet monster. It still delivers themes of empowerment, just not in a way that takes the song's lyrics literally. The band commented that they felt that showing an actual post-apocalyptic setting and interpreting the lyrics literally wouldn't have worked out well.
  • "On Top of the World" details the nervousness of declaring love for someone. The music video sends the band to The '60s to televise a staged moon landing.
• Panic! at the Disco's "Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time" is about Brendon Urie waking up after a party and struggling to find out what actually happened last night. The music video, on the other hand, is about Brendon Urie going to a club, meeting a woman, and going back to her house.... only to find out she's actually a shapeshifting alien, who proceeds to kill and eat him, allowing her to turn into him, and then returns to the club the next day to repeat the scenario.
• Pavement's "Gold Soundz" is a bittersweet song about the end of a relationship. The music video shows the band dicking around suburban California while dressed up in Santa Claus suits.
• A Perfect Circle's "The Outsider" deals with someone trying to convince their friend to go cold turkey, and eventually concluding that if the friend does decides to use drugs, they should do so far away from him. The music video has a woman escape from jail and meet up with a crew of female criminals called the "Bikini Bandits", who proceed to cause reckless destruction on people's properties and in a convenience store before being arrested. The video tries to justify this by calling the lead female "the outsider", and having people quote the lyrics "why would you throw it all away like this" and "they were right about you, suicidal imbicile", but it doesn't work.
• P.O.D.'s "Youth of the Nation". The song examines the causes and impact of youth depression and suicide, as seen through the perspective of three teenagers (two of which die to gun-related incidents). The music video follows four disaffected teenagers who embark on a road trip across the U.S., all while they play pranks on each other, hang out in different locales and ponder the meaning of life. The music video tries to get around this by showing the photographs of teens in the band's performance space (who may or may not have taken their own lives), but the mismatch is highlighted when the first verse talks about a teen being shot at school while the protagonist picks up a smiling, joking couple.
• In Poets of the Fall's "Lift," the lyrics depict someone struggling to articulate both enthusiasm for and anxieties about their romantic relationship. The video follows a Mad Dreamer prisoner undergoing psychiatric evaluation. In a bit of Lampshade Hanging, the psychologists transcribe the lyrics as his speech, and treat it in-universe as the rantings of a Talkative Loon.
• The Postal Service's "We Will Become Silhouettes". Song: A morbid reflection on post-apocalyptic life, as told by one of the survivors. Video: A suburban family (dressed in fashions from The '70s) sings karaoke in their living room, packs some supplies, goes on a bike ride and enjoys a picnic lunch on the foothills of a nearby mountain. Even with the vague inference that the music might be set After the End (as evidenced by a handful of homes the quartet ride by, which are shown with cracks in them), any connection is non-existent.
• Radiohead's "There There (The Boney King of Nowhere.)" is about paranoia and being afraid of things that aren't there. The music video is a blend of CGI and live animation in which Thom Yorke is forcibly turned into a tree.
• Sloan: While the song The Other Man is about a love triangle, the video seems to be about a student who is late for class.
• Starflyer 59's "No New Kinda Story". The lyrics are pretty vague, but seem to be about the singer's life being no different from a story. The video is a tribute to 8 1/2 and The Seventh Seal, with a man getting poisoned by his car's air conditioning and then losing a chess match against Death.
• Taking Back Sunday's "Faith: When I Let You Down" is about Adam telling his friend not to lose faith in him no matter what. The video tells the story of an anthropomorphic cat called the OMGWTFTBS Cat who abandons Taking Back Sunday for fame in Hollywood. He gets famous, parties really hard, pretends Taking Back Sunday don't exist, his career crashes, he gets overshadowed by a non-anthropomorphic cat, and he finally returns home to his friends, Taking Back Sunday.

Country

• Music video director Roman White is notorious for this. Among his examples is Carrie Underwood's "So Small", which somehow turns a song about The Power of Love into a scene of a teenager trying to commit suicide by jumping in between two cards, only for the scene to then reverse and have her jump out of the way at the last second.
• Easton Corbin's "All Over The Road" is about a guy explaining to the cop who pulled him over that no, he's not drunk; he just can't drive straight because his overly-amorous girlfriend keeps distracting him with her affections. The video is about a beautiful woman robbing a convenience store and taking the singer hostage, leading to some epic car chase scenes when the cops start chasing them.
• Sam Hunt's "Take Your Time" is about a man intending to strike up a conversation with a woman at a bar. The music video instead depicts the same man witnessing a Domestic Abuse scenario between a man and a woman, and then fighting with the man to allow the woman to escape.
• Tracy Lawrence had nine music videos in the 1990's that connected themselves with a time travel plot, with Lawrence hopping out of/into an electrified portal at the start and end of each video. The videos were often only tangentially related to the song they were made for. Some standouts include:
  • "If the Good Die Young," which is a song about young rebellion with a video entirely about NASCAR.
  • "As Any Fool Can See," about a man anticipating his wife will leave him, being set on a pirate ship and tavern
  • "I See it Now," a You Never Did That for Me ballad when an Old Flame is seen with her new beau being set at a high school prom.
  • "If the World Had a Front Porch," about how the world would be better if we all just talked to each other more, which has a video that deals primarily with an IT team fixing issues with the virtual reality greenscreen background behind the set piece Lawrence is standing on.
  • "Is That a Tear," about a man trying to interpret if his Old Flame is still in love with him after listening to a phone message, has Lawrence as a taxi driver who gets into a high speed chase with the feds for reasons never explained.
• "The Wind" by Zac Brown Band is a song about The Power of Love. The music video? A redneck We Can Rebuild Him story. Yeah...

Dance/Electronic

• Art vs. Science's video for "Parlez-Vous Francais". The song is about asking French girls to take off their shirts and something about spying on the sexy, Cha-Cha-ing neighbours. The video, on the otherhand, is about a bad mime picking a fight with another mime after being shown up at miming (or...something) and the escalating mime-battle that ensues. It's actually quite well choreographed.
• Cut Copy's "Hearts on Fire" is a song capturing the feeling of being in love. The video, however, shows frontman Dan Whitford being followed by a Personal Raincloud after a break up.
• David Guetta ft. Sia's "Titanium" is a short film about a boy who discovers Mind over Matter powers and is chased by the authorities for it, while the song's about good empowerment, being impervious to criticism and feeling well about yourself.
• Inna's "Endless" is lyrically a "please don't go" Break-Up Song, but the video is about her getting out of an abusive relationship.
• Many of Fatboy Slim's videos. Best known is "Weapon of Choice", which despite the lyrics portrays Christopher Walken dancing and flying on a hotel.
• Most of Project Pitchfork's videos are surreal mind screws that have little to do with the song lyrics.
• The Boomtang Boys' "Pictures". The song revolves around a woman remembering the summer she spent with a man, and how the only things she has are photographs to remember him by. The music video has a girl become infatuated with a cardboard standee of a man (which somehow becomes animated and can move around), makes out with it, then goes on a date with him (and eventually ditches him for another cardboard standee) while her friend looks at her like she's lost her mind.
• C Block's "So Strung Out" received an "Ibiza Deep Summer Remix 2015", with a video that matches the name of the remix. The song itself is about an Addled Addict.
• Love Inc.:
  • "Here Comes The Sunshine" is about pulling oneself back together after a difficult breakup and embracing life again. The video has Chris Sheppard (piloting a poorly-rendered CGI biplane) flying through a tunnel as he's chased by a woman who stops the music she's listening to so she can go after him on a hoverboard, and is eventually led to a place full of modern-era buildings and similar-looking dancers.
  • The lyrics for "Homeless" are Exactly What It Says on the Tin — trying to cope with being homeless and surviving day-to-day. The music video is a 1984-esque 20 Minutes into the Future world where helicopters search for "subversive elements" and the world looks empty and abandoned. Two of the members of the group steal a prized briefcase from a vehicle and attempt to get to safety while being pursued by armed guards and running through empty warehouses.
  • "You're A Superstar": The lyrics have a fairly-standard inspirational message about going for your dreams and being the best you can be. The video is about the group (which includes an anthropomorphic rabbit) breaking into a high-tech laboratory to steal a serum and rescue other rabbits who are being used for testing purposes.
• Italo Disco artist Ken Laszlo's signatureSong "Hey Hey Guy" is ostensibly about a gay relationship, but the video depicts a heterosexual Childhood Friend Romance.
• Purity Ring's "begin again" is a semi-abstract love song about an on-again off-again relationship. The music video is a deeply abstract story about a young woman grown in the roots of a tree made of meat, who is sacrificed to give an old woman a new body to live in. Probably.

Folk

• The Polish band Shannon's music video of the Breton folk song Tri Martolod, which is about three Breton fishermen who sail to Newfoundland, consists of... a random string of Celtic and Medieval cliches? Nolwenn Leroy's version is not much better, being a video about children lost in the woods...

Hard Rock

• The Darkness' "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" features an alien attack straight out of the 1950s.
• Def Leppard, "Bringin' On The Heartbreak" (second version). The giant silos, a guy walking through a machine shop/factory, weird bondage fetishes on a raft with two guys wearing gas masks — none of this has anything to do with the song itself.
• Bon Jovi's "Runaway" is a straightforward song about a girl who runs away from home. The music video is about a girl whose family died in a freak nuclear accident in New Mexico. Then there's the random dancing near the end.

Hip-Hop

• "Fly" by Epik High, an upbeat hip-hop song which is about how you can "fly and do anything". The music video, however, shows a man who goes crazy and thinks that he has no reason to live so he goes and holds a woman hostage.
• Drake's "Best I Ever Had" is a standard Silly Love Song. The video is about Drake coaching a girls' basketball team (dressed in Stripperiffic outfits) that loses horribly to a team of overly tall and muscular women.
• Pretty much all of Childish Gambino's videos:
  • "Bonfire" is a Boastful Rap consisting of one long seemingly-freestyled verse; the video is a ghost story.
  • "Heartbeat" is a depressing Anti-Love Song; the video is Gambino riding around in a limo and eating cheetos.
  • "Firefly" is an upbeat Rags to Riches song; the music video is a science fiction story. When you think about it, though, it's kind of appropriate.
  • "Telegraph Ave. (Oakland by Lloyd)" is somewhat of a Silly Love Song with the narrator discussing his life and potential future with his girlfriend. The video is fairly standard, with Childish Gambino and Jhené Aiko touring Kauai, until the ending has Gambino turn out to be an alien.
• In Missy Elliott's "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", during the Signature Line "Beep beep, who's got the keys to my Jeep?", she's instead driving a Hummer.
• The Black Eyed Peas's "The APL Song" is a brief autobiographical account of apl.de.ap's early life and his subsequent visit to his home country. Though the music video did incorporate archive photos of Apl's life prior to joining the group, it had more to do with the tale of an elderly World War II veteran at a care home being visited by his family. Indeed, the music video was meant to shed light on the struggles veterans were facing, most especially the benefits they long since fought for considering their service to both America and the Philippines.

Industrial

• Angelspit's song 'Toxic Girl' is about a very evil woman. The video... shows three people who buy a sex doll, use it and are supernaturally compelled by it to kill themselves. Vividly.
• "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails is a mix of Obsession Song and Love Is a Drug, with the theme of losing yourself. The music video is about Trent Reznor as a man mourning his dead son and going into an absinthe-induced rampage, all taking place in an Edwardian setting.

Metal

• Amon Amarth's song "The Way of Vikings" is about well... vikings, but the music video is about an underground fighting ring.
• Anthrax's video for "Nothing." The song is about a friendship (or relationship) falling apart; the video is just one long gag about the band's name (the band is seen playing the song under a microscope on the back of a cow, get it?).
• Blind Guardian's "A Voice in the Dark" was inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, which is set in a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to medieval England, but the music video is for some reason set in a Mesoamerican temple.
• Dio's "Holy Diver" looks like a somehow cheaper rendition of an Ator movie.
• Dragonforce's "Operation Ground and Pound"... tentatively linked, in a general sense, but the song does not mention Starcraft-esque ships at all. Also, the guitar solo features Herman and Sam playing a fighting game on a TurboGrafx-16.
• Iron Maiden's "Holy Smoke" calls out Corrupt Churches. The closest thing resembling this in the intentionally ridiculous video are shots of people dressed as priests.
• Lordi's "It Snows In Hell". In the lyrics, the narrator rises from his grave to kill his treacherous lover. In the video, Mr.Lordi saves a girl from being burnt at the stake.
• Sabaton:
  • The music video for The Lost Battalion— a song explicitly about a battle in the Argonne Forest on World War I's Western Front— depicts street fighting on the Eastern Front of World War II.
  • Enforced for the video for "Primo Victoria", which depicts the band fighting a tank battle against German Army tanks in an Ace Custom post-WWII Centurion tank, set to a song about the D-Day invasion. The video was made thirteen years after the song as part of a cross-promotion with World of Tanks, begging the question of why they didn't use "Panzerkampf" (about the Battle of Kursk) instead.

Nu-Metal/Alternative Metal

• Slot's video for 'Лего' (Lego) is a gore-less take on the Saw franchise, in which lead singer Daria Stavrovich - aka Nookie - takes on the Jigsaw role and "kills" her bandmates one by one. Cache is killed in a bomb blast, Dudu is asphyxiated when the air is pumped out of his room, ID is poisoned by a glass of spiked champagne and Nixon is handcuffed, tied up inside a bath and drowned.

Pop

• Ayumi Hamasaki, "Angel's Song" features Ayumi transforming into a werewolf and fighting off bad guys from her using kung fu.
• Will Young's "Friday's Child" opens with Will learning to swim and moves on through him improving, winning medals and eventually swimming the English Channel.
• Lights's "Ice". The lyrics are about a boyfriend who's a male Ice Queen, the music video is about Lights fighting her Evil Twin.
• "My Oh My" from Aqua. The lyrics involve references to medieval kingdoms and Robin Hood, but the music video is about how pirates treat their captives.
• "Take Me To Your Heart" from Rick Astley. The lyrics are about dating, but the music video is about studio work.
• Lady Gaga:
  • The video for "Telephone" is the queen of this trope, taking a song about a woman wanting to party but being interrupted by calls and making a story about a murderer being broken out of prison and proceeding to kill more people.
  • The "Alejandro" video might top "Telephone" in sheer lyrics/video disconnection, as the Break Up Song instead gets a Surreal Music Video, without even the benefit of a narrative that "Telephone" had.
• Maroon 5:
  • "Payphone" is about a breakup. The video is...about a guy that works at a bank getting involved in a skirmish with criminals and then being chased by cops. While a payphone does appear in the video, it doesn't really have anything to do with the plot.
  • "One More Night", also. The song is about a man in an abusive relationship with a woman, but every time he wants to leave her, she forces her love onto him, making them stay together yet again. The video is about a boxer who's wife leaves him with nothing while he's in a match for...who knows what reason.
  • "Maps" hits this trope pretty hard. The song is about a man still feeling for a woman no longer in a relationship with him. The music video starts off with Adam Levine rushing to the hospital and seeing a woman in urgent care, flashing back to the woman getting hit by a car, flashing back to Levine cheating on the same woman while at a party, finally flashing back to Levine and the woman getting ready for the party. Not helping is the Soundtrack Dissonance, as while "Maps" is very upbeat, the music video is most certainly not.
• The video to David Hasselhoff's version of "Hooked On a Feeling". The song is about falling in love. The video features motorcycle riding, riding a dogsled, meeting elephants, and just about every cheesy thing you can think of.
• Katy Perry:
  • "California Gurls". The song is an anthem to the beautiful ladies of California. The video features Katy in Candyfornia, complete with a matching dress.
  • In the song "E.T.", Katy portrays herself as human and her love interest as a metaphorical alien. In the music video for that song, Katy is a literal alien and her love interest is human.
  • The song "Dark Horse" is about, in Katy's own words, "a witch warning [a] man to not fall in love with [her]", and if so, she would be his last. The video, while not entirely out of touch with the song, as it features Katy using magic of sorts, features her as the queen of an overly-colorful Ancient Egypt, complete with blue-skinned servants.
• Olivia Newton-John's music video for "Physical" is set in a gym where she is exercising with many muscular men... while the song is about getting "physical" in the biblical sense.
• The 1984 song, "Yo, Little Brother" by Nolan Thomas is about the older brother finding out the titular little brother has gotten into the wrong crowd that he himself escaped from in the past. The music video, on the other hand, had the older brother looking like a 1950s child version of Max Headroom, the little brother like a 7-year-old Billy Idol and the "wrong crowd doing things they shouldn't oughta do" are a kid dressed up as Prince (that can't dance,) a mini-Rick Ocasek, a mini-Bruce Springsteen and a mini-Cyndi Lauper who simply play Charades. Aside from a more Lighterand Softer approach to the song, it was a prequel to Milli Vanilli as the kid in the video, Nolan Thomas was lipsynching Elan Lanier's song in an obnoxious case of Executive Meddling.
• Of Monsters and Men's Little Talks is either about a woman speaking with her husband's ghost, or about an old woman with dementia being comforted by her husband. The video for the song is about five Steampunk explorers who discover a goddess who fights monsters for them.
• "This is How a Heart Breaks" by Rob Thomas is about a bitter breakup. The video shows Rob being chased by a hooded assailant.
• The video for "Can't You See" by vaporwave artist Skylar Spence is about a boy trying to get a girl to notice him. The song itself is about Skylar's humble beginnings and his insecurities as a teenager.
• One Direction's "Steal My Girl" is about the fear of having your significant one taken away by other potential suitors. The video takes a meta, perhaps satirical approach as the band films an increasingly bizarre video directed by Danny DeVito. Similarly, "Drag Me Down", a song about thanking someone for their utmost dedication and support, for whatever reason portrays the band as astronauts.
• The lyrics for Auryn's "Make My Day" seem to be about the guys attempting to tell the girl they like about their feelings. The music video takes place in a dystopian world a la Mad Max, in which the water is so scarce that stealing it has replaced murder as the worst crime (as explained in the intro); and they play five mercenaries chasing a water thief.
• Melanie Martinez song "Tag, You're It" is about the main character's pursuit and violent kidnapping. In the video, she goes about her day, watched by the kidnapper until she eats some of his drugged ice cream after shopping. This mismatch is fairly jaring, since Melanie is heavily involved in her own songs and videos, making the differences a conscious choice.
• Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson's "Say Say Say": The song is a plea to a lover to come back. The video is about Michael Jackson and Paul and Linda McCartney in 19th century England making money in such pursuits as medicine shows, vaudeville acts, and pool sharking, then giving it all to a local orphanage. The only moment with any hint of romance to it is a very brief scene at the very end of the video, where Jackson's character meets a new love interest (played by Latoya Jackson, oddly enough).
• Kero Kero Bonito plays this for laughs with "Forever Summer Holiday", a song about celebrating the summer by going to the beach as "the sunshine says hello." The video starts off as the trio doing just that, and even as they're hit with a sudden rainstorm at night, they're still having a blast.
• Britney Spears: "Break the Ice" has a sci-fi animesque music video inspired by Ghost in the Shell (1995), which has nothing to do with the love song (and Intercourse with You-laden) lyrics of the song.
• BTS' music videos within the BTS Universe rarely are directly about the topic of the songs, though they do somewhat connect thematically to its respective album while sticking to the main story of the seven boys:
  • "I NEED U" is about a relationship with a girl falling apart with the singer still desperately clinging to her, jumping back and forth between love and hate for her, while the video (which in its Original Version is the introduction of the BTS Universe as a whole) shows scenes of the boys suffering alone (through poverty, abuse, addiction, depression, suicide, and murder) intercut with scenes of them happy together.
  • "RUN" is (as a mirror to "I NEED U") about a Destructive Romance where the singer can't fall out of love even though the relationship is doomed or already ending. In the video, we see the characters physically jumping back and forth between their moments of happiness and their dysfunctional present, seemingly losing sense of reality.
  • "FAKE LOVE" is about a relationship that comes to a messy end because the singer can't stand hiding their true self and suffering from the other anymore. In the video, Jungkook goes through hallways in a mansion where each room has one of the other boys locked in, forced to face their fears and traumas.
• Candy☆Boy, an anime about Incest Subtext between fraternal twin sisters, started out as a long Animated Music Video for the song "Candy Boy" by Meilin. The song has nothing to do with twincest.
• Pabllo Vittar: The music video for "Buzina" features Pabllo dancing on an alien planet, which has nothing to do with the lyrics.
• Camila Cabello's "My Oh My" is about a girl who wants a bad boy. The video is about an actress who is frustrated about being Typecast as a Damsel in Distress, and acts out until she gets a role as a swashbuckling heroine.
• Toni Braxton's "Unbreak My Heart" is lyrically a Break-Up Song, but the video depicts the death of her boyfriend in a hit & run accident and her mourning afterwards.

Pop Punk

• Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" is a rather sad song about the relationship being, well, complicated. The video is about Avril and her friends having fun in a mall.
  • "Sk8er Boi" Lyrics: An image-conscious girl misses her chance to be with a boy who later became a success because her friends thought he was uncool, and the singer is happy she took a chance on him and criticizes the girl for not doing so. Video: Avril and her friends set up an impromptu concert in the middle of the street, attracting the attention of the police at the end. Neither the girl nor the skater boy in question appear in the video.
• Just about any video by Coheed and Cambria. Considering how the band works, it isn't surprising.
  • Their video for "Welcome Home" actually shows us much of what the song is about. "Devil in Jersey City" also shows us things in The Amory Wars, though not actually stuff that happens during the song. "The Suffering", however...
    • The video for "A Favor House Atlantic" isn't just as far from the content of the song as you can get, it shows a fake band playing the song.
    • And the video for "The Broken" has giant mechas blowing each other to bits.
• Fall Out Boy has a few:
  • If anyone is willing to explain what "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me" has to do with vampire hunting, please enlighten us.
  • If anyone can see the connection between the lyrics of "Sugar We're Going Down" and human-deer hybrids, that would seriously en-deer him/her to us.
  • Let's not even get started with their Young Blood Chronicles series of music videos. They start out okay, with the "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)" video seeming to be a pretty direct interpretation of the song, but that quickly goes south with "The Phoenix" and particularly "Young Volcanoes", a song about a triumphant young group, with a music video that involves eating things that should not be eaten.
• A good number of Zebrahead's videos. Two good examples are "Broadcast to the World", which has the band as news reporters and has sock puppets destroying a city, and "Postcards From Hell", where the members of the bands are mysteriously dying. At the end, it's revealed that they were murdered by a man in a teddy bear costume.
• Green Day, somewhat: While most of the stuff from American Idiot ("Holiday", "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "Wake Me Up When September Ends") has a video relatively relevant to the song, the videos aren't related to the plot of the Rock Opera itself.
• The Linda Lindas: Their song "Talking To Myself" is about obsessive thoughts with a touch of Go Mad from the Isolation. The video was inspired by the "Living Doll" episode of The Twilight Zone (1959). Four dolls become sentient, and angry about being excluded from band practice take their anger out on the band members. The violence is played for laughs.
• Marianas Trench. The videos for Ever After follow the plot of the album and the videos for Masterpiece Theatre make sense, but the Fix Me videos - while hilarious -are just plain weird given the context of the songs. "Say Anything", which is about self-harm and angst, depicts one band member selling the increasingly strange embarrassing secrets of the others to the press, "Decided to Break It" has the band training for some sort of athletic competition, and "Shake Tramp" (which is either about BDSM or an abusive relationship) has the lead singer hallucinating dancing really badly in what looks like Pleasantville.
  Josh Ramsay: Nothing says I came here to win! like jazz hands.
• "DVP" by Canadian pop punk band PUP. The lyrics are about the protagonist who feels all drunk and messed up in the head, while the sister of the protagonist's friend thinks the protagonist has drunk too much and "[needs] to grow up". The music video on the other hand... well, let's just say that it's a montage of the Video Games of the 1980s and the 1990s with the song's lyrics over the in-game text... and none of the games have anything to do with being drunk and/or messed up.
• "We're All To Blame" by Sum 41 is a song about war, greed, fear and the power of corporations, amongst other troubles happening in 2004. The music video decides to ignore all of that and instead focus on the band appearing on Solid Gold, complete with dancers and other wacky editing effects.
• Yellowcard:
  • "Hang you up" is a wistful song about a former relationship. The video is about Ryan Key working at a fast food joint.
  • "One Bedroom" has a video about children being abducted and forced to become Child Soldiers, which is an odd choice for a love song.

Pop Rock

• Duran Duran, "Come Undone". The lyrics appear to be about offering to help a person who's coming apart at the seams. The video is about a woman performing an underwater escape from chains and a male transvestite, among other images.
• Gotye, "State of the Art". The song is about a family's purchase of a top-of-the-line electronic piano. The video starts with that, only for the piano to turn out to be possessed, expand into an enormous pipe organ, convert the terrified human family into singing robotic pipes, and fly away into space.
• Jellyfish, "Baby's Coming Back". The song is about a man whose wild lifestyle has driven his girlfriend away, seemingly more than once. When he finds out his girlfriend is willing to give him another chance, he resolves to put his life in order. The video, which was animated by Hanna-Barbera, has a cartoon version of the band on the run from a giant baby, before becoming live action themselves.
• Noah:
  • "Bintang di Surga" is about wishing for something beautiful that the singer can't have. The music video and its remake, on the other hand, is about a hostage situation.
  • Ariel outright says that the director for "Mendekati Lugu" video didn't try too much to describe the lyrics with the video. It shows; the video focuses on characters dancing and nearly drowning while wacky visuals happen instead of the Love Makes You Stupid theme.
• Pulp, "Disco 2000." The song itself is about the singer's unrequited love for a childhood friend called Deborah, but loses her when she becomes popular with guys after puberty, and meets her at a class reunion in 2000 by which time she has married someone else. The video is a love story about a completely different couple who meet and hook up at a disco in the 1970s (although the woman's name turns out to be Deborah.)
• Scissor Sisters, "Mary". The lyrics are gentle encouragement for the titular Mary (Jake Shears's best friend) not to be sad. The video is about a bored woman working in a call center who tunes out and envisions an animated fantasy sequence based on Rapunzel (and produced by Don Bluth.)

Rock

• Don Johnson's "Heartbeat". The song is about a man who laments lost love, and is looking for someone who shares the same feeling he does. The video (cut down from an hour-long special to fit the length of the song) follows Don, a photographer, as he ponders whether he saw a beautiful woman in a war-torn country, and (maybe) has to deal with the local warlord before he can get back to the U.S. and examine the footage.
• Any number of Huey Lewis and the News' videos.
  • "Hip to Be Square": The song lyrics have the protagonist rejecting a "cool and rebellious" life to be more normal, and realizing he enjoys mediocrity. The video is a performance piece, shot from the perspective of Huey's microphone, focusing almost solely on him the entire time as he mugs and poses for the camera. He didn't cut his hair, either.
  • "The Power of Love", a.k.a. "Intercourse with You: The Song". The music video would otherwise be a standard "band plays in club" music video... but it also has a framing device with Doc Brown parking the Delorean at a club where the band is playing, and then letting a pair of clubgoers drive it... which leads to them travelling in time (off-screen) and returning at the end of the video.
  • "Doing It All For My Baby": A casual day for a couple, where the singer simply expresses his love for his partner. The video has the band getting caught by Dr. Frankenstein and Huey is turned into a Frankenstein Monster so he can be made a mate for the Bride, who screams in horror when Huey's true face is revealed.
  • "Stuck With You": Lyrics - a couple's relationship is on the rocks, but they both come to realize they have so many things in common (including friends and their mutual ages) that they'll be "stuck together" for the rest of their lives. The music video has Huey, who is attending a high-society party, taking a yacht ride with a beautiful woman and getting stranded on an island, then having to deal with all manner of natural dangers while Huey's bandmates attempt to rescue the pair.
• Hoodoo Gurus, "My Girl": lead singer Dave Faulkner plays a racing greyhound trainer preparing his hound (named My Girl) for a big race. Totally tongue-in-cheek (but poignant in its own way), but people took it literally and assumed the song itself was about a dog! Eventually whenever reporters asked the band to explain any of their songs' lyrics, they'd always say "it's about a greyhound."
• Les Trois Accords skirts between this and Surreal Music Video. Then again, their songs are rife with surrealism and Word Salad Lyrics.
• "It's Inevitable" by Charlie is set in a huge bakery, and looks at first like its boy-stalks-girl lyrics will be played out by two of the chefs. Then one character's clumsiness kicks off a gigantic food fight, making it "inevitable" that everyone on the set will get a faceful of frosting.
• This trope may have been the reason why Canadian rock band Rusty's reputation suffered poorly in the late 90s. "Misogyny" is a song that deals with spousal abuse, and how women keep going back to their abusers, even after the latter apologizes and swears to be more respectful. The music video mixes performance footage with a mid-90s Sunset Boulevard-ripoff/softcore drama called "Hustler White", where a journalist goes to Los Angeles and becomes infatuated with a male prostitute. The confusing music video led to accusations that the band was gay, which would haunt them until their dissolution several years later.
• Soundgarden's "By Crooked Steps" is a fairly serious song. The video, directed by Dave Grohl, is a goof, where a biker gang hijacks a concert from a DJ, who calls the cops, and then they attempt to run... in Segways!
• Theory of a Deadman's music videos have vague interpretations of the titles... and nothing else:
  • "Make Up Your Mind" is about a man telling his girlfriend that they have to patch up their differences if they want to maintain their sanity. The music video is about a bride who begins having second thoughts as she's walking down the aisle at her wedding, starts making out with several men in the aisles while the groom watches, and eventually kills herself by jumping off a nearby cliff as the wedding party watches.
  • The lyrics for "Santa Monica" are about a man who watches as his girlfriend drives him to the breaking point (including pouring gasoline on his bed and lying about everything) before breaking up with him and leaving for Santa Monica. The music video not only gender-flips the perspective (it follows the girlfriend instead), but the narrative is completely different. The girlfriend loves her boyfriend but doesn't tell him where she's going, moves to Santa Monica and becomes a model before being driven to prostitution and having a breakdown (while her boyfriend doesn't feel guilted and moves on with his life), then moves back and goes to reconcile with him as the video ends.
  • "Since You've Been Gone" deals with a man who's in a turbulent relationship with a woman and is constantly begging her to stay with him, to the point that he's trying to guilt-trip her by insinuating that she has nowhere else to go. The music video takes place on a ranch with a husband who is forced to watch as his wife succumbs to a vague illness, and eventually remembers the time they spent together.
  • "Dinosaur" features a message about the destruction of humanity due to infighting and a breakdown in social order. The music video is a satire, apparently set in a prehistoric-era world where much of the entertainment revolves around "Caveman TV", a television station which features programs riffing off shows like America's Got Talent. The band members eventually decide to take on a group of humanoid-sized dinosaurs (or rather, people in brightly-colored dinosaur suits) before the world gets blown up by a meteor — the only direct relevance to the song, which is functionally a countdown to the end of the world. Except it's All Just a Dream, as the lead singer wakes up at a bar and shrugs when he sees one of the dinosaurs posing for pictures with someone.
• The Blue Öyster Cult's "I Love The Night" is a ballad about a newly single man meeting a lonely lady vampire who'd quite like a boyfriend who shares her interests. As the lyrics make very clear, he accepts and discovers he can no longer shave himself (mirrors don't work any more) nor can he go out by day without risking serious sunburn. But the official video tries to shoe-horn in an anti-drugs message where the guy is desperately trying to get the girl to scale back her use of white powder. The mismatch between the lyrics and the drama being played out is painfully obvious - the song isn't even symbolically or inferentially about drug abuse.
• Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" is a Rock Opera about commitment in a relationship. The music video is a nearly eight-minute-long mini-film that is basically The Phantom of the Opera crossed with Beauty and the Beast. It involves flying helicopters, Meat Loaf in extensive facial prosthetics, a police chase after Meat Loaf's character has killed an officer, a large castle, and lots and lots of candles. And it was directed by Michael Bay. Yes, that Michael Bay.

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