Tricky - Makes Me Wanna Die

JUL 01 1997 · 12:00

Tricky - Makes Me Wanna Die (1997) Director: Floria Sigismondi Era: Post-Millennium Anxiety / Mid-90s Trip-Hop Peak (1997) - A pivotal moment in British alternative music when Bristol's trip-hop scene collided with industrial noise, hip-hop deconstruction, and punk aggression, set against global Y2K cultural unease. High curatorial value as a documented intersection of two major 1990s avant-garde forces: Tricky at the peak of his critical recognition and Floria Sigismondi at the precise moment her visual grammar was crystallising into one of the most influential styles in music video history. The video's confirmed broadcast on MTV's 120 Minutes, its Canadian production origin, and its place within the Pre-Millennium Tension campaign make it a primary document of transatlantic alternative culture in 1997. Sigismondi's videos from this era now hold institutional status, with contemporaneous works in MoMA's permanent collection. Context: Released in April 1997 as a single from Tricky's second album Pre-Millennium Tension (Island Records, 1996), the video arrives at a high-water mark of British experimental music. The track samples Eric B. & Rakim's 'To the Listeners,' fusing Bristol trip-hop with New York hip-hop's roots and embodying Tricky's intentional move away from the 'trip-hop' label toward something rawer and more confrontational. Sigismondi's visual universe, shaped by hyper-surrealism and corporeal distortion, is a precise match for Tricky's sonic deconstruction of genre and gender. The video's warm-toned, high-saturation imagery counterpoints the track's psychic dread, reflecting the broader pre-millennium cultural mood of ambient anxiety. The clip was broadcast on MTV's 120 Minutes, cementing its place in the canon of alternative music television. Director notes: Directed for production company U Ground (Canada); released April 14, 1997 (United States). Produced by Kelly Norris Sarno (also credited as Cordelia Plunket on some releases). The video was featured on MTV's 120 Minutes (Radiohead/Tricky episode, 1997). This commission sits within Sigismondi's landmark mid-1990s period, concurrent with her iconic work for Marilyn Manson ('The Beautiful People,' 'Tourniquet') and early David Bowie collaborations, during which her trademark dilating, jittery camerawork and hallucinatory figure-based staging became widely influential. The 'Makes Me Wanna Die' video is cited by FACT Magazine as one of her iconic early clips alongside Manson's 'The Beautiful People.'