Not everyone can get Gwen Stefani and the notoriously private Sade to sing their praises.

In the male-dominated world of music video directors, it is, in fact, a woman that has lead the aesthetics of pop for decades. From Sade&rsquo;s &ldquo;No Ordinary Love&rdquo; to No Doubt&rsquo;s &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Speak,&rdquo; from The Killers&rsquo; &ldquo;Mr. Brightside&rdquo; to Selena Gomez&rsquo;s &ldquo;Good for You,&rdquo; Sophie Muller has brought her fantastical sense of creativity to countless iconic works for Beyonc&eacute;, Annie Lennox, Blur, Garbage, and more throughout her 36-year-long career.&nbsp;

It all started with watching The Sound of Music (&ldquo;Oh my god, it&rsquo;s amazing.&rdquo;) and listening to Kate Bush&rsquo;s Hounds of Love. &ldquo;[That] record, to me, was quite experimental&hellip;and it was very beautiful, and she was in charge, and she&rsquo;s a woman, and she produced it, and wrote it, and sang it,&rdquo; says Muller.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

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&quot;I&#39;ve always admired that Sophie has this unique ability to bring out an artist&#39;s true style and emotion.&quot;

&mdash;Gwen Stefani

Bush&rsquo;s rule-breaking was influential during Muller&rsquo;s time at both Central Saint Martins and then the Royal College of Art, where she earned her master&rsquo;s in Film and Television. In school, Muller bucked conformity, too. &ldquo;I was the weird artsy one. I didn&rsquo;t make films that they were talking about. I experimented with film. The first video I did was this Eurythmics song called &lsquo;I Need a Man.&rsquo; When I look at it now, it was pretty radical,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp;

As weird as she was, Muller found kindred spirits among her classmates, including the incomparable Sade. &ldquo;[Sophie and I] met at Saint Martins in London in our late teens. We used to hang out in the library and write abstract poems,&rdquo; says the singer. &ldquo;By the time I&rsquo;d made my second album, Sophie was directing videos, so we made &lsquo;Love Is Stronger Than Pride.&rsquo; Sophie hired a car and the two of us drove out to Zuma Beach for a recce. As we drove west there was the most brilliant sunset we had ever seen. The sky was on fire.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

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&quot;Sophie is somebody who finds beauty in everything. Anywhere she goes is always the best place she&#39;s ever been because that&#39;s what she makes it.&quot;

&mdash;Sade

Intimate videos are something of a signature for Muller. Many of her early works in the late &rsquo;80s with Annie Lennox were done one-on-one, and so was Gwen Stefani&rsquo;s touching &ldquo;Used to Love You.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sophie shot it with just her and I, one camera in a dressing room&mdash;one take. It&rsquo;s a perfect example of how Sophie is able to capture a raw and authentic moment and the true emotion of a song,&rdquo; says Stefani.&nbsp;

And what aesthetic rules does the prolific director follow? &ldquo;I&#39;ve never let blue get into things,&rdquo; she states frankly. While she means the color, Sade sees it from a different perspective. &ldquo;Sophie is somebody who finds beauty in everything. Anywhere she goes is always the best place she&rsquo;s ever been because that&rsquo;s what she makes it.&rdquo;

Sophie Muller Is the Legendary Director Behind Your Favorite Music Videos

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