Mercury Rev - Goddess on a Highway

What this video is

Released November 1998 as the lead single from Mercury Rev's fourth studio album Deserter's Songs, 'Goddess on a Hiway' marked the band's transformation from noise-art chaos to orchestral, cosmic Americana. The Corbijn-directed video embeds the song within a US border-crossing road narrative rich with themes of displacement, harassment, and perseverance — imagery that resonated with late-90s anxieties around…

Why it matters

A landmark of the late-90s art-rock/cosmic Americana revival, this single and its Corbijn video positioned Mercury Rev alongside contemporaries like Flaming Lips and Spiritualized as architects of a grandiose, orchestrally-inflected indie aesthetic. The pairing with one of rock music's most…

The director

Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn (born 20 May 1955, Strijen, Netherlands) is a Dutch photographer, music video director, and feature film director. He began his career as a music photographer around 1975 and moved to London in 1979. He has directed over 75…