Apollo 9 is a part of what has been referred to as being Adam Ant’s “Rockers in Space” phase. Though the album on which it appeared was not one of Ant’s more commercially successful offerings, Apollo 9 was a hit in the UK.
This video was directed by Daniel Kleinman, a British commercial director who has also directed music videos for just about everyone. Kleinman has also designed the title sequence for every James Bond film since Goldeneye.
Enjoy!
If you go to YouTube, one of the comments under this video simply states, “Huey Lewis was the 80s.” It’s a simple statement but it’s also a true statement. For better or worse, Huey Lewis and the News epitomize an era. Personally, I think they may be one of the most underrated bands of the decade. They turned being a bar band into an art form, with songs that were both unpretentious and instantly catchy.
A lot of people make fun of them as a result of how Bret Easton Ellis used them in American Psycho but what they miss is that Ellis didn’t make fun of the band as much as he made fun of the depths that Patrick Bateman went to find some sort of hidden meaning in their straight-forward and always transparently sincere music.
Speaking of being straight forward, that’s a good description of both this song and this video. This is Huey Lewis showing that they didn’t need a bunch of gimmicks to rock. They just needed a stage.
Enjoy!
I’m a Texas girl so I loved this. Admittedly, I’ve never ridden on a mechanical bull but I have seen a few and I’ve seen more than a few people get thrown off of them. They’re a bit scary looking and I’m already accident-prone enough without tempting fate. Still, I admire anyone who tries.
(And, as scary as mechanical bulls are, they are nowhere near as scary as real bulls.)
Enjoy!
As I write this, we’ve got a nice thunderstorm going down here in Dallas. Thunder. Lightning. Pounding rain. Lights flashing on and off. It’s very atmospheric and so is this music video! So, it only makes sense to pick it for today’s music video of the day!
This is a cover of an Isley Brothers song. It’s good night music.
Enjoy!
This wonderfully atmospheric video is basically a mini-movie. I’m sure some would argue that you could say the same thing about all music videos but this video especially has the feel of being a wonderful feature length-film that happens to just have a 3-minute run time.
Enjoy!
With this song, The Whispers paid tribute to the legendary soul singer Donny Hathaway, who was best-known for songs like “The Ghetto”, “This Christmas”, “Someday We’ll All Be Free”, and “Little Ghetto Boy” and for his collaborations with Roberta Flack. Tragically, Hathaway, who struggled with depression and who was diagnosed as being paranoid schizophrenic in 1971, committed suicide in 1979 but his music and influence lives on. The Whispers were one of the many groups to pay tribute to Hathaway after his death.
This video is a simple performance clip, as the majority of music videos were in the days before MTV.
Enjoy!
Since I’ve already shared the videos that were made for Annie Lennox’s and David Byrne’s contributions to the Red, Hot + Blue compilation album, it seems appropriate to share the best known cover and video to come out of that project. With Night and Day, U2 not only provide their own spin on Cole Porter’s best-known song but they also introduced the sound that would define them throughout the 90s. This was the first song of U2’s post-Joshua Tree era.
The video was directed by the German director, Wim Wenders. U2 would subsequently provide songs for Wenders’s Until The End Of The World and Far Away So Close. Bono would also produce and provide the story for The Million Dollar Hotel, one of Wenders’s less regarded films.
Enjoy!
This cover of Cole Porter’s Don’t Fence Me In appeared on Red Hot + Blue, the same compilation album that featured Annie Lennox’s cover of Ev’Ry Time We Say Goodbye. Along with singing the song in his own unforgettable style, Byrne also directed the music video that was used to promote it. Byrne’s cover and the video both turn Porter’s song into an anthem of tolerance and liberation.
Of course, before Byrne covered the song, Don’t Fence Me In was made famous by one of the original singing cowboys, Roy Rogers. Rogers appears in archival footage throughout this video. The song itself was originally written ten years before Rogers first sang it in the 1944 film, Hollywood Canteen. Porter originally wrote the song from a never-produced western that was going to be called Adios Argentina. Porter based the lyrics on a poem that was written by Montana engineer Robert Fletcher. Fletcher was originally only paid $250 for his contribution to Don’t Fence Me In. A decade later, after Rogers made the song a hit, Fletcher was able to negotiate with Porter’s estate to get a co-writer credit and to also collect royalties on the song.
Enjoy!
Annie Lennox sings Cole Porter!
Actually, Annie Lennox wasn’t the only rock star singing Cole Porter in 1990. She was one of 20 artists to appear on the compilation album, Red Hot + Blue. The album was the first to be put together by the Red Hot Organization and the money made from it was donated to the battle against AIDS.
Cole Porter originally wrote the song in 1944. The song, which quickly became a jazz standard, is sung from the point of view of someone who is happy when they are with their lover but who, at the same time, is heartbroken when they’re separated. Lennox used her cover of the song to pay tribute to the filmmaker Derek Jarman, who would die of AIDS-related illness in 1994. In fact, Jarman was originally meant to direct the video but, when he became too ill, he was replaced by Ed Lachman. The home movies that appear in the video are of Jarman as a child.
I was surprised to discover this when I went searching for David Bowie music videos. This is a video that Bowie did for his version of Kurt Weill’s The Drowned Girl. This was included as a part of the Baal EP, which was released to coincide with Bowie appearing in a BBC production of the Bertolt Brecht’s play of the same name. The play is about an irresponsible womanizer whose actions lead to all sorts of tragedy. In The Drowned Girl, the play’s main character (played, of course, by Bowie) sings about a former lover who committed suicide after her left her.
This video was directed by David Mallet and was filmed at the same time as the video for Bowie’s version of Wild Is The Wind. This video was apparently shot in Berlin and the black backdrop and stark lighting was meant to reflect the style of Bowie’s Isolar-1976 Tour.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens