In an interview with Songfacts, drummer Neal Smith had the following to say about I’m Eighteen:
“It was a song about growing up in the ’60s, with lines in it like you could go to war but you couldn’t vote. We had no idea it would become an anthem; we were just thinking it would be a cool song.”
I’m Eighteen was not only Alice Cooper’s first big hit but it also played an important role in music history when, in 1975, a nineteen year-old John Lydon auditioned for the Sex Pistols by miming along to the song. Lydon’s audition took place at a pub and Lydon later explained that the jukebox was filled with “that awful 60s mod music” and I’m Eighteen was the only song in it that he could tolerate.
In a 1984 interview, Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler had this to say about the song that would not only become the band’s biggest hit but also one of the best known videos from the early years of MTV:
The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real….
According to Knopfler, he was in a New York appliance store when he heard a man who worked there complaining about all of the TVs in the shop being tuned to MTV. (Urban legend has it that the man was watching a Motley Crue video.) Knopfler wrote down the man’s exact words, which included the famous line about “money for nothing and chicks for free,” and later set them to music. (Knopfler also included the man’s controversial description of a rock star as being “that little faggot with the earring and the makeup.” In 2011, 26 years after the song’s initial release, that line would lead to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council banning the song from being played on Canadian radio stations.) After hearing the band’s initial recording of the song, Sting suggested the “I want my MTV” line and was rewarded with a co-writer credit.
The ground-breaking music video was one of the first to feature computer animation. Under the direction of Steve Barron, Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair (who later founded Rainmaker Studios) created the animation using a Bosch FGS-4000 CGI system and a Quantel Paintbox system.
Money for Nothing spent 3 weeks as the number one single in the United States and the video was named Video of the Year at the 3rd Annual MTV Music Awards.
For today’s music video of the day, we have one final video for the greatest song of the ’10s, Dangerous by Big Data. In this video, Big Data performs the song on the ALT98.7 FM Penthouse rooftop at the Historic Hollywood Tower.
With each passing day, I became more and more convinced that Big Data’s Dangerous is the most important song of the 2010s. No other song quite captures our paranoid times like this one:
How could you know, how could you know That those were my eyes? Peepin’ through the floor, it’s like they know It’s like they know I’m looking from the outside And creepin’ to the door, it’s like they know And now they’re coming, yeah, now they’re coming Out from the shadows To take me to the court because they know Gotta shut this down ‘Cause they been watching all my windows They gathered up the warrant ’cause they
You understand, I got a plan for us I bet you didn’t know that I was dangerous It must be fate, I found a place for us I bet you didn’t know someone could love you this much
How could they know, how could they know What I’ve been thinking? Like they’re right inside my head because they know Because they know, what I’ve been hiding They’re right under my bed, they’re on patrol Here they come, yeah, here they come Out of the shadows To take me to the court because they know Gotta shut this down ‘Cause they’ve been watching all my windows They gathered up the warrant ’cause they
You understand, I got a plan for us I bet you didn’t know that I was dangerous It must be fate, I found a place for us I bet you didn’t know someone could love you this much
Nobody’s listening when we’re alone Nobody’s listening, there’s nobody listening No one can hear us when we’re alone No one can hear us, no, no one can hear us
I’ve gotta get out of here Sink down, into the dark Keep on runnin’ And I’ve gotta get out of here Keep on runnin’ Sink down, into the dark
You understand, I got a plan for us I bet you didn’t know that I was dangerous It must be fate, I found a place for us I bet you didn’t know someone could love you this much
Valerie already shared two other videosfor Dangerous. Here’s another one of Big Data performing at Los Angeles’s KROQ Red Bull Sound Space. While the studio version features Joywave’s Daniel Armbruster performing the vocals, this live version is performed by Alan Wilkis and Liz Ryan.
I have to admit that this is yet another video that I initially assumed was about vampires. Apparently, it’s not.
My second guess was that it was about the Russian mafia but then they started breaking those plates and I decided that it was more likely that the club was owned by the Greek mafia.
Actually, I think the video’s just about Kristen Stewart doing what she wants and generally kicking ass. That’s why I like this video. The meaning is less important than the style.
This song, of course, features a sample from David Bowie’s Heroes.
As for the video, I always assume that everyone here is having one last party before a gigantic meteor crashes into the planet and wipes out all human life. To be honest, I tend to assume that most music videos are about humanity’s attempt to ignore the fact that everyone’s life will eventually end in a combination of misery, death, and absolutely horror.
Today’s music video of the day is for John Mellencamp’s cover of Van Morrison’s Wild Night.
Back in the day, the opening of this video was the most popular 40 seconds on MTV. I have traveled in a lot of taxi cabs and I regularly use both Uber and Lyft. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some very good drivers but none of them appeared in the 1992 Sports IllustratedSwimsuit Issue. The driver, in this video, is played by Shana Zadrick, a model who was often compared to Cindy Crawford.
Back in 1994, if you enjoyed this video, you could go down to your friendly neighborhood Musicland (or Suncoast Motion Picture Company) and, for just $19.98, you could see even more of Shana in this commemorative video:
The other good thing about this video is that bassline, which was provided by Me’shell Ndegeocello. Wild Night was released at the same time that Ndegeocello had her biggest solo hit, If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night).
This video was directed by Jonathan Kaplan. A former film school classmate of Martin Scorsese’s, Kaplan got his start directing films like Night Call Nurses and The Student Teachers for Roger Corman. He eventually became a mainstream film and television director. His most highly regarded film is probably 1988’s The Accused, for which Jodie Foster won her first Oscar.
Love and Rockets was an English alternative band, made up of all of the members of Bauhaus who were not named Peter Murphy. From 1985 to 1998, before breaking up to pursue other projects, Love and Rockets released 7 studio albums. Though Love and Rockets always struggled to escape the shadow of Bauhaus, the band was still responsible for some of the best music of the late 80s and 90s.
Their best known song was So Alive, which was a number one hit in both the United States and Canada. The video is highly regarded by aficionados of long legs and backlighting everywhere.
The song was written by the song’s lead vocalist, Daniel Ash. As Ash explained in an interview with Xsnozie:
“I’d gone to a party on Saturday night, and I was married at the time, and I saw this woman over the other side of the room, and I was completely transfixed which is very odd because I was freshly married. It was very weird, but I was completely infatuated by her and so much so that I couldn’t go near her to even speak to her, it was just this overwhelming thing. I can’t explain it to this day. That’s why the first line is, ‘I don’t know what color your eyes are.’ Because I didn’t get that close, I just saw this person in the distance.”
The video was the first to be directed by Howard Greenhalgh, who would later direct the video for Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.
And yes, Love and Rockets did take their name from the comic book series by the Hernandez Brothers.
Lisa tells me that today is Tarzan Day so, in honor of the Lord of the Jungle, today’s music video of the day is Toy-Box’s Tarzan and Jane.
106 years ago, Tarzan made his debut in an issue of The All-Story. Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan was actually John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke. Born to British nobility, Tarzan was raised in the jungle by a tribe of apes. Tarzan’s great love was an American named Jane Porter. After marrying Jane, Tarzan would divide his time between England and Africa, always returning to the jungle whenever the hypocrisy of civilization became too much for him to deal with.
The character of Tarzan would go on to star in numerous films and television shows. He’s been played by everyone from Johnny Weissmuller to Buster Crabbe to Ron Ely. In the music video for Toy-Box’s Tarzan and Jane, he’s played by Amir El-Falaki. El-Falaki was one half of Toy-Box. The other half, Anila Mirza, plays Jane.
Toy-Box was a Danish pop group. They never achieved much fame in the United States but they were briefly big in Scandinavia. Tarzan and Jane was their biggest hit, especially after it was re-released in 1999 to coincide with the release of Disney’s animated Tarzan. Tarzan was not anything special but it will always be remembered for unleashing the Phil Collins ballad, You’ll Be In My Heart, on an unsuspecting world.
Four years after the release of Tarzan and Jane, Toy-Box broke up but they have recently reunited and performed for a series of 90s concerts.
Hearing this song transports me back to 2003, when life seemed so simple and the future seemed limitless… actually, that’s the way things still seem to me in 2018. I guess I’m a born optimist!
Anyway, I always think of this as being a song of liberation but that’s mostly just because of the title. The lyrics are actually about an independent woman finding the courage to let people into her life. But, ultimately, what matters is how a song — any song — makes you feel.
As for the video, I would say it features just about the safest house party that I’ve ever seen. Compare it to the video for Fiona Apple’s Criminal.
Through the Shattered Lens