Cover Shot at Barcelona’s Olympic-era Piscina Municipal de Montjuïc, Dua Lipa’s ‘Illusion’ is travel mood board meets fitness inspo. These music videos could inspire your next destination. (Photo: YouTube)
Shot at Barcelona’s Olympic-era Piscina Municipal de Montjuïc, Dua Lipa’s ‘Illusion’ is travel mood board meets fitness inspo. These music videos could inspire your next destination. (Photo: YouTube)
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These 10 music videos double as dreamy travel mood boards, taking you from icy landscapes to sun-soaked streets
Music videos can do more than showcase a song. The best ones can feel like a journey, whisking you away to places you’ve never been and inspiring the same sense of wanderlust as flipping through a travel magazine. They capture the rhythm of a city, the quiet beauty of a remote landscape or the pulse of a cultural moment, all within a few minutes. Whether shot in real locations or artfully staged to evoke a destination, these videos blend music with vivid backdrops and storytelling. Here are 10 music videos that double as your passport to another world.
Read more: 5 millennial songs from film and TV that shaped the rhythm of our lives
1. ‘Wannabe’ – Spice Girls
Above ‘Wannabe’ was shot in a single-take style at the Midland Grand Hotel in London.
Shot in a single-take style at the Midland Grand Hotel (now St Pancras Renaissance Hotel) in London, the video captures the group racing through grand Victorian neo-Gothic interiors as if on a mission to disrupt the status quo. Originally planned for Barcelona, the switch to London added a certain chilly glamour. They rehearsed all night with a Steadicam before delivering those chaotic, iconic corridors.
2. ‘Born to Die’ – Lana Del Rey
Above The concept for ‘Born to Die’ was created by Del Rey herself.
Filmed in October 2011 at the Palace of Fontainebleau outside Paris, the video remakes the palace as a haunted Romanian castle. Del Rey appears on a throne between two tigers in the Trinity Chapel, a guarded performance filmed separately from the animals. Flashbacks of car rides, seduction and a fatal crash unfold through the François I Gallery and Grand Parterre. The concept was created by Del Rey herself and realised by director Yoann Lemoine.
3. ‘Paradise’ – Coldplay
Above The ‘Paradise’ music video follows an elephant-suit ritual across London and South Africa.
The video follows an elephant-suit ritual across London and South Africa. Filming captured landmarks from London’s Tube to Paradise Wildlife Park, plus a swift bike-shop cameo in Woodstock Cycleworks, Cape Town. Filmed during the Mylo Xyloto Tour, with the band ending their concert in elephant masks, the journey continues through Cape Town, the Klein Karoo and Johannesburg. The production was arranged on the fly and filmed in perfect summer weather.
4. ‘Desert Rose’ – Sting
Above For ‘Desert Rose’, Sting filmed himself with a handheld camera.
Sting’s understated travel mood board opens with him driving through the Mojave Desert in a Jaguar S-Type, filming himself with a handheld camera. The journey shifts to a vibrant Las Vegas nightclub where he performs with Cheb Mami. The contrast acts like a visual haiku between isolation and nightlife.
5. ‘I’ll Show You’ – Justin Bieber
Above Iceland’s ring-road scenery stars in ‘I’ll Show You’.
Iceland’s spectacular ring-road scenery stars here: Seljalandsfoss waterfall, Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon, Reynisfara’s black-sand beach and the glacier lagoon emerge in raw cinematic strokes. There is no storytelling clutter here only natural drama so stark it replaces narrative.
6. ‘Frozen’ – Madonna
Above ‘Frozen’ was shot in California’s Mojave Desert.
In California’s Mojave Desert at Indian Well Valley, the land was colour-graded into a spectral winterscape. Madonna appears as an apparition in this boundary-blurring vision of desert as ice. Madonna originally considered filming in Iceland but rejected the idea, anticipating discomfort. Despite choosing a desert setting, the shoot proved unexpectedly brutal anyway, so definitely come prepared if you’re thinking of visiting.
7. ‘What Was That’ – Lorde
Above ‘What Was That’ is an urban travel mood board that feels vividly alive.
Set across New York City rogue-style, Lorde navigates textured streets, cycles through varied neighbourhoods and upstages a pop-up in Washington Square Park. Her route through the city includes crossing the East 63rd Street pedestrian bridge above FDR Drive, with ominous smoke trailing in the background—visual metaphors for emotional decay and aimlessness. The effect is an urban travel mood board that feels improvised yet vividly alive.
8. ‘Come Into My World’ – Kylie Minogue
Above ‘Come Into My World’ transforms a Parisian street into a surreal personal tour.
Come Into My World was directed by Michel Gondry at the quiet intersection of Rue du Point du Jour and Rue de Solférino in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris. Critically, the video has earned cult status. Slant Magazine placed it at the top of its “Best of the Aughts: Music Videos” list. As a travel mood board, it transforms a mundane Parisian street into a surreal personal tour—a looping, urban deluge of style, symmetry and increasingly crowded authenticity.
9. ‘Subway’ – Chappell Roan
Above ‘Subway’ was filmed within a decommissioned subway car repurposed as a strobe-lit club.
Filmed in Manhattan within a decommissioned subway car repurposed as a strobe-lit club at the New York Transit Museum, the video was shot on 35 mm film under the direction of Amber Grace Johnson. Layers of gritty glamour in New York City appear among fire escapes, subway cars, street-level windows and Washington Square Park. The juxtapositions stitch together a fragmented travel mood board that embodies youthful exhilaration and latent unease.
10. ‘Illusion’ – Dua Lipa
Above ‘Illusion’ feels like a vibrant choreography-driven escape.
Filmed at Barcelona’s Olympic-era Piscina Municipal de Montjuïc, the video feels like a vibrant, choreography-driven escape rather than a standard performance. Director Tanu Muino stages Dua in a bold black bodysuit dancing atop a poolside structure as synchronised swimmers, divers and dancers animate the water below, all against panoramic views of the Catalan skyline—including a careful frame of the Sagrada Família. As a travel mood board, the video layers place, tradition and texture with cavernous, brutalist pools and architectural choreography.
Music videos have a unique way of turning melodies into moving postcards, blending rhythm with rich visual storytelling. Each of these picks could slip straight into a travel mood board, sparking daydreams of far-off places and the adventures waiting there.
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Chonx Tibajia is a senior editor at Tatler Asia’s T-Labs team, where she writes widely on lifestyle subjects including beauty, style, entertainment and travel. She has a long career in journalism, including roles as a columnist at The Philippine Star, and is the founder of the creative platform Pineappleversed. Beyond Tatler, her bylines appear in regional lifestyle and business publications, showcasing a broad portfolio that spans beauty trends, travel guides and culture pieces.
