In stores this week is I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum's excellent new oral history on the golden age of Music Television. In the book, Billy Squier's career-killing "Rock Me Tonite" clip is cited as the worst video of all time. Below, Tannenbaum explains why, and the Grantland staff remembers 10 other videos that were almost as bad.

Billy Squier, "Rock Me Tonite"

Rob Tannenbaum: “I Want My MTV includes interviews with more than 400 people, and no two agreed on the best music video of all time. The options are too disparate: Do you prefer the physical comedy of “Hot For Teacher,” the unknowable symbolism of “Let’s Dance,” the dynamic grace of “Beat It,” or the demented junior-year-abroad absurdity of ”Total Eclipse of the Heart”? But when we asked about the worst music video, there was one unanimous answer: Billy Squier’s “Rock Me Tonite.”

Squier’s 1984 video gets an entire chapter in I Want My MTV because it’s an MBA case study in How To Make A Bad Artistic Decision. When Squier’s manager saw the video, he told us, “I was speechless.” When Squier’s label saw it, an executive said, “The immediate consensus was that Billy’s performance was disturbingly effeminate.” Squier, who sat in my living room for three hours to recount the event in detail, said, “When I saw the video, my jaw dropped. It was diabolical.” Squier also said the video snuffed out his career, after two huge-selling albums. “How can a four-minute video do that? OK, it sucked. So?”