Five Cool Music Videos Set in San Francisco
♫ Everywhere you look, people bippin’ cars ♫
In the age of modern music, the music video is among the few constants. A successful musical artist will shoot a music video to accompany a hit track, and San Francisco is a cute place to do it. Dozens of bands and musicians have shot music videos in San Francisco, some well-known, others less so. Whether for their backstories, degrees of separation or just personal preference, these five are pretty cool.
Third Eye Blind – “Jumper” (1998)
Starting with a local band only feels appropriate. Yes, Third Eye Blind formed in San Francisco. It’s crazy how many people don’t know that.
San Francisco changes fast. It only makes sense that every music video filmed here doubles as a cultural time capsule. Symbolic of a pivot from 90s alternative towards the pop-rock sound of the new millennium, “Jumper” bridged ‘98 and ‘99. The city was wildly different. Heroin chic had given way to skinny and strung out. Meanwhile, the upper crust busied themselves with the first tech boom affectionately known as the Dot Com bubble. Do not let the canyon between classes here fool you into thinking it’s new.
“Jumper” captures San Francisco’s seedier underbelly at the time. The band set the music video in a grungy underground club with a dreamy-eyed Stephan Jenkins singing through the crowd. It cuts to figures dancing at the top of Kearny Street, the Transamerica Pyramid and 555 California stationed behind them, bathed in pre-dawn light. Third Eye Blind recorded another segment of the video in the Broadway Tunnel, its glossy white tile the perfect mirror for the eerie yellow light they introduced.
Some brave Shutterstock employee snagged this pic of the Broadway Tunnel from the middle of the road. I want there to be some little graffiti on the wall, like, “3rd 𓂀 ╳ wuz here”
On the song’s twentieth anniversary, Jenkins looked back fondly on the experience.
“Usually when I make videos, I’m kind of just like, ‘I don’t know about this.’ But this one was like, ‘I kinda like Jumper.’ I think that’s why I have a relaxed look on my face. I have an easy smile. That’s my look of, ‘I don’t give a fuck!’”
Jenkins grew up in the Bay Area. He and bandmate Kevin Cadogan founded Third Eye Blind in 1993. The band signed a contract with Elektra Records in 1996. It was important to Jenkins that this song, which he wrote, represent the people that inspired it.
“I was involved in the casting because I wanted it to look like San Francisco and people from San Francisco. I thought we did pretty well.”
4 Non Blondes – “What’s Up?” (1992)
Stephan Jenkins was still a Brokeass living in San Francisco when he composed his infectious “Semi-Charmed Life.” In 2017, Jenkins told Billboard about workshopping the song with another musician.
“I remember sitting in a room with this other songwriter who worked down the street—she was a waitress—and she came up and sat on the bed and we played each other some songs.”
He demoed “Semi-Charmed Life” for her. She played him a song in turn. That songwriter was Linda Perry of the 4 Non Blondes. Years later, Jenkins realized that…
“…the songs we played each other had sold 17 million records…She sang me a song called ‘What’s Going On…’”
…Now known as “What’s Up?”
Save for an iconic shot from Potrero Hill of someone seemingly skateboarding the city skyline, the music video doesn’t feature San Francisco and the Bay Area so much as it evokes it. In a black bucket top hat with goggles strapped to the crown, lead singer Linda Perry looks like she came straight from a cardboard mat at People’s Park. I can’t tell which park Perry is swinging in but the faraway mountains draped in fog and crowded hills in the middle distance tells me it’s Buena Vista (if you can name it, let me know!).
The yawning Victorian living room in which they shot the video has no doubt shed its punky lining in favor of a yuppie interior. I can only imagine how much that house would sell for now.
Cypress Hill – “Insane In The Brain” (1993)
Since I can’t legally post a picture of Cypress Hill, here’s a Cyprus tree on a hill. Thanks, Shutterstock!
While we’re talking nineties, it would be criminal to skip hip-hop. The genre arguably hit its stride in the era and my racist Midwestern parents highly discouraged me from listening. I wish I could say I rebelled by listening to hip-hop as a teenager. My hip-hop journey started after high school as an obsession with TLC (RIP, Left Eye) and the rest is history.
“Insane In The Brain” crashed through layer after layer of reference and parody to reach me. An appearance in Scary Movie 2 reminded eleven-year-old me that the song even existed. It hasn’t featured that heavily in the media since but that’s because it has already fixed itself in legend. A track that catchy is unforgettable.
It is SF lore that the Southern California-based Cypress Hill filmed the entire video for the song inside DNA Lounge. It’s an appropriate yet relatively tame setting for a party tune that evokes a more rambunctious scene. The club contains the comparatively wild song as the skull does the brain. DNA Lounge in the 90s left an indelible mark on the memories of its Gen X demographic. The club received recognition from the city in 2017 as being a San Francisco legacy business.
Frou Frou – “Breathe In” (2002)
Frou Frou, favorite of gays and their fag hags, is a duo of producer Guy Sigsworth and musician Imogen Heap. You’ve heard “Let Go” even if you don’t know it. Once Zach Braff put it in Garden State (2004), Frou Frou joined the constellation of mid-aughts indie darlings. Moms who adored Jude Law heard it in 2006’s The Holiday, which also subjected Kate Winslet to Jack Black. “Let Go” is arguably their most popular song, but my favorite is “Breathe In.”
That “Breathe In” didn’t enjoy the success of “Let Go” doesn’t diminish the quality. Imogen’s fans get what they want, basking in her breathy lyrics and dreamy persona. Frou Frou set the music video on the F-Market streetcar line featuring abundant Market Street landmarks. Electricity arcs from the trolley poles while Imogen in her divine omnipotence explores the consciousnesses of her fellow passengers. A cabbie’s car overheats on a hill above the Financial District. A shoe shiner working at the foot of California Street receives a generous tip, grateful but no better off. Fans of 1996’s The Craft will instantly recognize Robin Tunney riding along in a white dress, her windblown hair and dazed expression evidence of a ruined wedding day. Frou Frou caught San Francisco in the new millennium, but most great SF-based music videos were shot in the 90s.
Green Day – “When I Come Around” (1995)
It feels right to end here for now on another Bay Area rock band, Green Day. The punk trio hails from the oily Rodeo, California, becoming a significant presence in Oakland and Berkeley in the mid-nineties. Some people mistake their well-known album Dookie for Green Day’s first when it was their third. I got to work backwards from American Idiot, which debuted in 2004 while I was suffering through junior high. Green Day won us Millennials with American Idiot, securing a new fan base that would eat up their discography.
Before American Idiot, the war on Iraq and eighth grade, there was Dookie. Four tracks became singles including the fuzzy hit “When I Come Around.” Green Day honored the punk band music video tradition of walking-as-narrative. Like Third Eye Blind’s video for “Jumper,” the music video for “When I Come Around” captures San Francisco in the 90s. It leads the band down a grungier Mission Street and through a cleaner Powell Street BART for three minutes. Public transit nerds will appreciate the old-school, pre-extension BART map, when Concord was the end of the line.
The boys of Green Day stroll punkishly past this old BART map in the music video for “When I Come Around” (1995). Public domain, BART.gov
San Francisco serves as a great setting for film and television, and as it turns out, music videos. Something about the dynamic landscape and compact urban environment helps communicate the density of music. Heaps more videos have been shot here, too many for one article. Do you have a favorite?
Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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