Personally, I absolutely adore the Taylor Swift version of this song but sadly, Taylor’s never done an official music video for it.
As for this version, it features everyone’s favorite Swedish CGI creation saving Santa Claus from …. something. I guess Santa somehow managed to lock himself up in his workshop or something. I don’t know. I’m also not sure what exactly the Crazy Frog is supposed to be. Apparently, he was originally known as “The Annoying Thing” and his creator is adamant that he is neither a frog nor is he crazy.
For today’s music video of the day, we continue with the holiday theme that’s run through most of the recent music video posts. We also continue with the Lindsey Stirling theme. I wasn’t initially planning on making this Lindsey Stirling week on the Shattered Lens but, now that I think about it, why not?
This video finds Lindsey performing in the snow. There’s a chance that it might snow in my home state of Texas this weekend. I certainly hope so. Of course, when we say “it might snow” in Texas, what we actually mean is that it might sleet. And, if it does snow, we’ll probably get like an inch at most. But still …. snow is snow!
I was planning on just picking Christmas videos up until the 25th of December but then I came across this video of Lindsey Stirling and Pete Hollens performing the main theme from Skyrim Elder Scrolls and I simply knew that I had to pick it.
I am a totally unapologetic fan of Lindsey Stirling. I imagine some of that is because I wish I could play the violin. It’s an instrument that has always fascinated me and I’ve always regretted that I never learned how to play it. I also regret that I never learned how to play the piano or really any musical instrument. Back when I was in the third grade, I had a music teacher who told me that I had the worst singing voice she had ever heard and that I needed to pay more attention in class. Oh well!
Anyway, this is a really nice and heartfelt performance of Silent Night. Silent Night is actually one of my favorite Christmas songs. I certainly prefer it to that one where everyone’s singing about the bells.
This video was filmed at Temple Square in Salt Lake City.
If Sucker Punch had taken place during the Christmas season, one could very easily imagine this video as being a scene in the film. It just needs a giant ninja and Scott Glenn offering up words of pithy wisdom.
That said, what this song and this video do so well and what I love about them is that it provides a whole new spin to a very familiar song. Does the Grinch now own a casino or an Old West saloon? Is the Grinch now a gangster? And what exactly is the Grinch’s relationship with Sabrina Carpenter? This video leaves us with much to ponder during the holiday season.
This video was directed by Joshua Schultz, who has also directed videos for Juliet Simms and Haley Reinhart. According to the imdb, he’s currently in pre-production for a film called The Fog.
Happy Holidays! Trust Linsdey Stirling to elevate one of the worst Christmas songs ever written with an energetic performance and an entertaining music video.
(I should admit that I have a personal bias against Santa Baby, one that goes back to my dancing days. Let’s just say that falling flat on your ass in front of a huge crowd of people while dressed like one of Santa’s helpers and while Santa Baby plays in the background is not necessarily one of my happiest holiday memories.)
In 1986, David Byrne of Talking Heads directed his very first feature film. True Stories took place in the fictional town in Virgil, Texas and, as Byrne himself put it, it was “a project with songs based on true stories from tabloid newspapers. It’s like 60 Minutes on acid.”
Some people love True Stories. I am not one of them. However, not surprisingly, the film did have a killer soundtrack. The best known song to come off of the True Stories soundtrack was Wild Wild Life. The video for Wild WildLife takes place at what appears to be a karaoke bar, where different performers lip sync to the song while dressed up as their favorite performers. One person is dressed up like Billy Idol. Another does Madonna. Jerry Harrison imitates Prince. Be sure to keep an eye out for a young John Goodman, who co-starred in True Stories and who damn near steals this video with his energetic performance.
Wild Wild Life subsequently won the award for Best Group Video at the MTV Music Video Awards.
Yesterday, when I wrote about the video for Shout by Tears For Fears, I apparently made up a song that doesn’t actually exist. I wrote that Shout was the band’s signature song, along with Everyone Wants To Rule The World. I also wrote about the joint vocalist of Tears for Fears, Richard Orzabal. Not only did I make up a song that didn’t exist but I also created an extra member of Tears For Fears. As everyone knows, the song is called Everybody Wants To Rule The World and the singer is named Roland Orzabal. I don’t know how I screwed up those two simple facts last night. Maybe I was writing from Earth-2.
For many people, Everybody Wants To Rule The World will always be the song from Real Genius. The song actually first appeared on the 1985 album, Songs From The Big Chair, for which it was a last-minute addition. Roland Orzabal has said that he originally felt that the song was too lightweight and that it wouldn’t be a good fit with the rest of the album but producer Chris Hughes convinced Orzabal to include the song. Hughes felt that the song would chart well in America and he turned out to be correct. Would the song have been as popular if it had been called by its original title, Everybody Wants To Go To War? That’s like asking if War and Peace would have been as much of a success if Tolstoy had called it War! What Is It Good For?
As for the video, it features Curt Smith driving through the desert, people racing dune buggies, men dancing in front of gas pumps, and the Cabazon Dinosaurs. The scenes of Curt in the desert were filmed in California and Nevada while the scenes of Tears For Fears performing were shot in London. Curt Smith has said that the shooting of the video was a “disaster” and that there was a serious accident involving the dune buggies that led to a child being thrown from one of the vehicles and hitting his head on a rock, leaving him temporarily unconscious. Despite all of the difficulty involved in shooting the video, it was still placed in heavy rotation on MTV and played no small role in making the song a hit.
Everybody Wants To Rule The World spent two weeks as the number one song in the U.S. In the UK, it peaked at number two, the only thing keeping it from reach the top being the charity single, We Are The World.
Tears For Fears frontman Roland Orzabal and keyboardist Ian Stanley were both practitioners of primal scream therapy, in which people confronted their fears and insecurities by shouting. This song was inspired by both the treatment and political protest.
The video, which was put in heavy rotation on MTV and become one of the defining videos and songs of the 1980s, features Orazbal and Curt Smith letting it all out on the cliffside at Durdle Door in Dorset. The video was one of the 300-something videos to have been directed by Nigel Dick, who has done videos for almost everyone.
Shout spend three weeks as the number one single in the US and has since become Tears for Fears signature song, along with Everybody Wants To Rule The World.
In an interview with the now-defunct Kicking It Old School Blog, T’Pau’s Carol Decker explained the genesis of the song that would become Heart and Soul. It all began when her bandmate and then-boyfriend Ron Rogers purchased a new keyboard with a built-in synthesizer:
“He was just trying to get used to the gizmos in it and while messing around with the sequencer he started the ‘bum bum buh buh bum bum bum’ of the bass riff. T’PauI started to sing a melody over it, the wafty vocal and came up with ‘more than an ocean keeps us apart.’ … The lyrics were about when I went on holiday with my parents and Ronnie couldn’t come. I missed him so much, but then I morphed the story into a fictitious one of not being loved back (which I was) … The rap was the idea of Andy Piercy, our then producer. He said the gaps needed filling, so I started these syncopated sort of nonsense noises. I then turned those noises into words which took about a week to get right.”
The song reached #4 in both the U.S. and the UK Charts. In the UK, it became a hit after it was used in a clothing advertisement while, in America, its success was largely credited to the above music video, which was put into heavy rotation on MTV.
The song is best known for its vocal layering, with Decker’s melody lines coming in over the rap. Stylistically, the video’s is similarly layered, resulting in a perfect synthesis of audio and visual.
Heart and Soul is song that epitomizes an era. Personally, I have fond memories of fleeing from the Liberty City police while listening to it.
Everything’s better with a little heart and soul.
And yes, T’Pau was named after a Vulcan who appeared on an episode of Star Trek. Before Decker saw that episode of Star Trek, the band was called Talking America.
Through the Shattered Lens 