This video was directed by Anton Corbijn, the Dutch photographer who directed videos from Depeche Mode, U2, and Nirvana. (He was the director behind the video for Heart–Shaped Box). Corbijn has since gone on to direct feature films as well, Control, The American, and Most Wanted Man.
Long before Hugh Jackman got the role, Glenn Danzig was considered for the role of Wolverine in a potential X-Men feature film. I think he would have rocked that roll.
Enjoy!
An instant hit when it was first released in 1976, More Than A Feeling was a song that spent several years in the making. The founder of Boston, MIT graduate Tom Scholz, spent five years working on the song, recording and re-recording it in his basement while working his day job at Polaroid.
When Boston finally signed with CBS Records, More Than A Feeling was the first single released off of their debut album and it has since remained a classic rock mainstay, with the chorus riff becoming one of the most familiar sounds in the history of rock. Scholz has said that he was inspired to write More Than A Feeling by the Left Bank’s song, Walk Away Renée. “I see my Marianne walk away” was a reference to an older cousin whom Tom Scholz had a crush on when he was nine years old.
For me, though, More Than A Feeling will always be the song that I used to listen to whenever I was driving a stolen car around San Andreas, looking for hot coffee and trying to avoid the police.
I don’t know if there’s any abuse that can really compare to being forced to listen to Silverchair but some may disagree, The group’s lead singer, Daniel Johns, for instance, said that this song was an answer to all of their critics. Go ahead and abuse me, the song says, I’m still going to play my music. Johns also once said, in answer to the band’s many critics, that, “every song I’ve heard sounds like another song I’ve heard.” That’s certainly true if you’re listening to Silverchair.
This song was the band’s second biggest hit in the U.S. Much of that popularity may have had something to do with this video, which is a pretty good video regardless of what you think about the band’s sound. It was directed by Nick Egan, who also did videos for Duran Duran, Oasis, Alanis Morissette, and many others.
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!
Ship of Fools was the second single to be released from Robert Plant’s fourth solo album, Now and Zen. Now and Zen was the most financially and critically successful of all of Planet’s solo albums, though Plant himself has said that he feels that the album’s music “got lost in the technology of the time.” I would be disappointed if Robert Plant didn’t decry “the technology of the time” but, in this case, he’s being too hard on himself. Now and Zen is a very good album.
This song is mood piece, a love song. In the video, Plant appears to be singing in the rain and it works. The song was later used in “Freefall,” the final episode of Miami Vice, the show that epitomized the 80s and the technology of the time like no other.
Enjoy!
This is one of Billy Joel’s best-known songs. For people who grew up at the right time, it will always be remembered as the theme song from Bosom Buddies. (Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, the song does not appear on the show’s DVD release and it has recently been removed by syndicated airings. All ten of Bosom Buddies‘s fans were very disappointed.) In the background of this song, you can hear Chicago’s Peter Cetera and Donnie Dacus contributing backing vocals.
This video was directed by Steve Cohen, who directed several videos for Billy Joel in the late 70s and the early 80s.
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.
Enjoy!
The lyrics to this Thomas Dolby song seem to be self-explanatory. When they were teenagers, the narrator met a girl named Europa, they fell in love while spending their days walking along the beach, and then Europa moved away. (Dolby sings that “the war” took her away, which sounds ominous but which makes sense when you consider that Dolby’s 1982 album, The Golden Age of Wireless, was based on the idea of him being a part of the first generation since World War II. “The war took her away” is probably meant to be a comment on how relationships that were once ended by a world war were now just being ended by a parent getting a new job in a new country or town.) Years later, Europa’s a star and Dolby tries to see her, just to be ushered away by one of her bodyguards. But, in Dolby’s heart, they’ll always be pirate twins on the beach.
The video has come to be considered a classic example of early 80s music videos, mixing the future and the past and allowing Dolby to capitalize on his nerdy but cool persona. The machines link the song to the future but the black-and-white images bring us to the past, capturing the feel of Dolby’s song.
Enjoy!
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!
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!
Through the Shattered Lens 