You run and you run and you run and where do you end up? You just end up still running. This video appeals to my existential side, which is probably why I like it so much. The whole grainy retro feel, combined with the run through the universe makes this entire video feel like sort of existential daydream. Keep running because who knows where you’ll eventually end up.
When I first saw this, I have to admit that I misread the title as being “You got in my way” and, since I suck at understanding lyrics, I assumed that this song was about a hit-and-run accident or something like that. Like maybe Ali was explaining that it was unfortunate that she ran you over but she was driving home at four in the morning and she was a little distracted and then you just happened to step off the curb. Seriously — what were you thinking!?
Actually, though, this is song is abut Ali singing about a boy who seems to be perfect but who still kind of cramps her style. She’s got the stability of a relationship but sometimes, that stability gets in the way of her just doing what she wants to do. Is she sacrificing her freedom? It’s a legitimate question and one to which I think any former or current wild child can relate.
Hi, everyone! I’m in charge of “music video of the day” for this week so let’s get things started with this trippy little video from Laurence-Anne.
Basically, you remember those big bulky computers that everyone used to have? Well, judging from this video, it’s a pretty good thing that we got rid of the because they’ll cause you to sucked into a maze and then melt away. Seriously, everyone …. melting is just not worth it. While I personally don’t know anyone who has melted, I imagine that it would be a pretty difficult thing to come back from. You melt and you can pretty much say goodbye to whatever future plans you may have had.
“Lou decided to get Godley and Creme to do the video for ‘Video Violence’ with these robots. Then the label decided to change single, but Lou didn’t want to waste the robots, so you had this great clever pop song with a video of this robot tearing its own face off… MTV debuted it, and then we got a call saying people were complaining that their video was making kids cry.”
— Lou Reed’s bassist Fernando Saunders on the music video for No Money Down
That pretty much says it all. How many young viewers were traumatized by the discovery that Lou Reed was a terminator? I can’t imagine that the man between Metal Machine Music minded too much.
Winner Takes It All was written for the classic Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling film, Over The Top. It was originally recorded by the lead singer of Asia but the film’s producers felt that his version wasn’t tough enough for a Stallone film so they instead offered it to Hagar. Hagar’s version is the one that appeared on the soundtrack. Eddie Van Halen plays bass on the track.
Hagar has said that he didn’t care much for the song but he did enjoy getting to arm wrestle Sylvester Stallone while filming the music video. At the end of the shooting, Stallone and Hagar both signed the black cap that Stallone was wearing and the cap was later auctioned off for $10,000. All of the money went to charity.
What is Dumb Waiters about? The song mentions nothing about waiters, dumb or otherwise. Nor does it appear to be about the elevator that some restaurants and hotels use to transport food from one room to another. Check out the lyrics for yourself:
Give me all your paper ma Gimme all your jazz Give me something that I need Something I can have Mrs. London’s coming round She’s coming with her son Gimme all your paper ah So I can get a gun She has got it in for me Yeah I mean it honestly She’s so mean Give me all your paper ma So I can buy a train They just want to suck you in To being one of them Tell her that I’m not in here Tell her I’m a freak Tell her that I fall about Every time I speak She has got in for me Yeah I mean it honestly I just scream Give me all your paper ma So I can buy a train I don’t know how I got in here It’s making me insane Have another cigarette And have another cigarette In a room where lovers go Talking on the telephone They have go it in for me Yeah I mean it honestly They all dream
According to guitarist John Ashton, the lyrics were meant to be surreal. As he told Songfacts, “I think they tend to make people use their imaginations really. The way we never play a song the same. It never means quite the same. I guess people relate to it any way, make something out of it themselves.”
The song reached #59 on the UK chart while doing slightly better in the U.S., peaking at #25.
“We were in London at the time and there were all those problems with the old Marquee Club because it was in a built-up area and there was this whole thing about noise pollution in the news, the environmental health thing that you couldn’t have your stereo up loud after 11 at night, it all came from that.”
— Malcolm Young
Angus and Malcolm Young reportedly wrote this song in just 15 minutes, after they were asked to come up with one more track for the Back in Black album. Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution became the 10th and final track on Back in Black. It was also the fourth and final single to be released from the album. The song reached number 15 on the UK charts, the highest of any of the singles that were released off of Back in Black.
As was always the case with AC/DC, the music video for Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution is simple and to the point. AC/DC was never a band that needed gimmicks to make itself heard.
The cover of a song by Tommy James & The Shondells would be Billy Idol’s only number one hit in the United States. As hard as it may be to believe, other Idol songs like White Wedding, Rebel Yell, and Dancing With Myself failed to even crack the top 30. Interestingly enough, when Mony Mony hit number one, the song that it replaced was another song that was originally recorded by Tommy James, Tiffany’s cover of I Think We’re Alone Now.
A good deal of the success of Billy Idol’s Mony Mony can probably be linked back to this music video, which features Billy Idol at his most energetic. During performances of Mony Mony, audience members would regularly shout, “Hey Motherfucker … Get Laid! Get fucked!” in between the lines. How this became a tradition is not known but it did lead to this otherwise innocuous song getting banned from several high school dances.
This video was directed by Larry Jordan, who has also done videos for Shania Twain and Mariah Carey.
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.