Though this video was first released in 1985, the song had been around for quite some time before that. It was written by Nick Lowe in the late 70s and it was first a hit for Lowe’s frequent collaborator, Dave Edmunds, in 1977. The version that’s featured in this music video is a slightly slower version that Lowe recorded for his 1985 album, The Rose of England. This version was produced by Huey Lewis, who brought in the News to play on the album. Lewis played harmonica.
The video, itself, feels like a companion piece to several of Huey Lewis’s videos from the 80s. The sense of humor is the same type of humor that often appeared in Lewis’s video, as is the wistful acknowledgment of times gone by.
Today’s music video of the day features Pet Benatar as a Rosie the Riveter-type of character, working in a factory during World War II and having fantasies about being a flying ace. Judge Reinhold appears as a pilot while the much missed Bill Paxton plays an enemy radio operators. Interestingly, this video was filmed before either one of the two men became well-known. Reinhold had just starred in Fast Times at Ridgemont High but he wouldn’t play his best-known role, as Detective Billy Rosewood in Beverly Hills Cops, until a year after this video came out. At the same time that Reinhold was trading quips with Eddie Murphy, Bill Paxton was playing an ill-fated street punk in The Terminator.
Pat Benatar was not actually the first artist to record this song. The song was originally written by D.L. Byron in 1980 for a film called Times Square but it was rejected by both the filmmakers and Byron’s record label. The song was subsequently recorded by both Helen Schneider and Rachel Sweet before Benatar did her version. Of course, Benatar’s recording is the best known, climbing up to the third sport on the charts and inspiring even more artists to cover the original song.
If you’ve ever stolen a car in Los Santos, there’s a good chance you’ve heard Shadows of the Night on the radio.
I’ve been told that the Golden Globes are tonight so this seemed like a good song to go with. Everyone’s a winner, though not really.
This was Hot Chocolate’s 2nd biggest hit, right after You Sexy Thing. The music video, or “promotional video” as they were called back in the 70s, is a performance clip but what a performance! How can you not be jealous of that super keyboard?
Good luck to all of the Golden Globe nominees and enjoy!
Though the band may have been named after Chicago, the park referred to in this song is New York’s Central Park. Robert Lamm enjoyed spending the 4th of July in the park and he went on to write this song about it. It became one of Chicago’s biggest hits and it also became a song that was regularly featured in various Time Life musical compilations. Back in the day, anytime a Time Life infomercial came on TV, you knew that you were going to get this song’s chorus stuck in your head.
In one form or another, Chicago the band has been around for over 50 years. They were originally called The Big Thing before changing their name to Chicago Transit Authority. There’s an urban legend that the real CTA sued the band for copyright infringement but the official story is that the band changed their name because Chicago was a simpler name and easier to remember. By changing their name, the band allowed people to associate Chicago with something other than Mayor Daley, which undoubtedly helped to improve the city’s reputation.
I don’t know if you can get more 90s than with this video, which features Rob Thomas leading a camel through a bowling alley and then becoming a news anchorman while his bandmates do things like sell steak from an ice cream truck, work as a waitress, and appear in cereal commercials.
You can debate what all of the symbols mean. I suspect that it doesn’t mean much at all. This song and video were very popular when I was in high school but even then when we all secretly suspected that the way Rob Thomas sang, “head honcho,” would seem progressively less cool over time.
This is one of the many videos to be directed by Matthew Rolston. He’s also done videos for everyone from Jennifer Love Hewitt to Jewel to Jessica Simpson to David Bowie and Seal. You know that video for Kiss From A Rose that doesn’t feature any clips from Batman Forever? That was Rolston.
Kiss destroys a house, just through the power of their music. That seems like a Kiss thing to do. This video is back from when the moral majority still thought that KISS stood for Knights In Satan’s Service.
Significantly, this was not only the last video to feature Ace Frehley as a member of Kiss but it was also the last video that Kiss filmed before they officially took off their makeup. The “unmasked era” lasted for 12 years, from 1983 to 1995. Unfortunately, it turned out that Kiss, without the makeup, wasn’t really that interesting of a band. With the makeup, they were beings from another world. Without the makeup, they might as well have just been a slightly more talented version of Poison. Kiss eventually did the right thing, put the makeup back on, and got back to destroying houses.
The father in this video is played by Howard Marks, who was Kiss’s business manager at the time.
I wanted to begin this day on a positive note and luckily, Journey’s going to help me do just that with Be Good To Yourself. This song was written at a time when singer Steve Perry was going through an array of personal problems and he was also dealing with the failing health of his mother. Though Perry may not have written the song, he did say that he needed a life-affirming anthem to sing. Keyboardist Jonathan Cain came through with Be Good To Yourself.
The video was a performance clip. That was always the best format for Journey during the Steve Perry years, as anyone who has seen the video for Separate Ways can attest.
This is a song that has often been misunderstood throughout the years. I can say that because I’m one of those people who has often misunderstood it.
Of course, we all know that Stone Gossard wrote the music for the song when he was still a member of Mother Love Bone. (Gossard called the instrumental track A Dollar Short.) Even before he was formally invited to become the leader singer of the band that would become Pearl Jam, Vedder heard Gossard’s music and came up with the lyrics for Alive. The song deals with a boy who discovers that the man he thought was his father was actually his stepfather. That part is autobiographical. The song also tells the story of how the boy has an incestuous relationship with his mother. That part is definitely fictional.
The lyrics are pretty dark and Vedder has said that the “I’m still alive” chorus was originally meant to be an acknowledgement of a curse. With everything terrible that has happened, the song’s main character was still alive and still having to deal with all of his pain. However, people like me heard that “I’m still alive” and adapted the song as an anthem. We interpreted the song as saying that, despite everything, the singer is still alive. We saw it as a positive thing.
(Of course, we didn’t consider that Alive is the first part of a three-song mini-opera about a man who goes mad and embarks on a killing spree.)
According to Vedder, seeing the positive reaction to the song’s chorus caused him to realize that the song’s “curse” had been broken. That’s a very Eddie Vedder way of saying that it’s okay to see the song as being an anthem.
As for the music video, the shots of the ocean remind us that Vedder reportedly came up with the lyrics while surfing. The rest of the video was filmed at an actual Pearl Jam concert in Seattle. Playing drums for the video was sessions drummer Matt Chamberlain. Reportedly, the man who would become Pearl Jam’s official drummer (on the recommendation of Chamberlain), Dave Abbruzzese, was in the audience while this video was being filmed. The video was directed by Josh Taft, a childhood friend of Stone Gossard’s who also directed videos for EMF, Stabbing Westward, and Stone Temple Pilots.
“Young man is angry, girl is afraid She want to get high and he want to get paid
She had to jump up, he had to sit down When they heard those words about the trouble downtown He had to shout, she had to cry He wanted to kill and she wanted to die
City’s burning Cities burning
City’s burning Cities burning
Grab for the dial, tune out the fright But he turns left and she turns right She look for love songs, he buys the drive But all they can pull is bad news in tonight”
— Lyrics to City’s Burning
Though, at first listen, this might seem to be just another song about the difficulties of city life, Ann Wilson has said that the song was actually inspired by the death of John Lennon. The song tells the story of a couple who hear about Lennon’s death and who each has a different reaction. The man is angry and wants to take his anger out to the streets. The woman is frightened and wants to deal with it by getting high.
City Burning is one of Heart’s more underrated songs. It peaked at 15 on the U.S. charts but it seems like it should have gone higher. The song’s energy and anger is still relevant today.
The song’s popularity was probably not helped by this pedestrian music video. The weird pixilation at the start of the video is especially distracting. Of course, in 1982, music videos were still relatively new and bands like Heart, that were formed long before the creation of MTV, were still figuring out how to present themselves visually. As primitive as this video looks, it’s not that different from a lot of the videos that came out in 1982.
This song was originally used in the film Reality Bites. The film’s co-star, Ethan Hawke, was a friend of Lisa Loeb’s and he brought the song to the attention of director Ben Stiller. Hawke would then go on to direct the music video for Stay. This was not only Lisa Loeb’s first music video but it was also Ethan Hawke’s directorial debut. Filmed in a SoHo loft, the video featured not only Lisa Loeb but also Ethan Hawke’s cat.
Through the Shattered Lens 