We’ve been spelunking in the MTV video archives again, but we felt in this day and age the number of videos you’d actually forgotten has to be pretty small. Hence we will be switching it up to bring you venerable videos from classic artists.

Our first cut is Elliott Smith’s “Son of Sam”, directed by longtime Smith photographer Autumn de Wilde. The song is from Smith’s final album before his death and came at a time in his career when he was surrounding himself with extremely reputible producers and musicans like Joey Waronker, Jon Brion and Janet Weiss but emotionally slipping further into drug abuse and depression.

This leaves much interpretation as to the mean of the red balloon in the video. Could it symbolize his drug habit? The success and public acceptance he displayed a craving for by signing to a major label? Perhaps it’s simply an allusion to “The Red Balloon”?