Mansun - Taxloss

What this video is

Released April 1997 at the peak of Britpop's commercial saturation, 'Taxloss' and its video stood apart by abandoning the genre's characteristic performance-and-Swinging-London iconography entirely. Instead, Coppola orchestrated a real-world situationist stunt — distributing £25,000 in public — to generate authentic documentary material. The act engaged directly with Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite anxieties about…

Why it matters

A landmark conceptual music video within British 1990s alternative rock, 'Taxloss' represents the rare fusion of situationist art-action, documentary filmmaking, and pop promotion. Its total absence of band performance, use of real news footage, and deliberate provocation of public chaos place it…

The director

Roman François Coppola (b. April 22, 1965, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) is an American filmmaker and music video director, son of Francis Ford Coppola. Founder and owner of The Directors Bureau production company. His music video career spans Moby, Daft Punk,…