Category Archives: music video

Music Video Of The Day: I Can’t Dance by Genesis (1992, directed by Jim Yukich)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“It’s not about being unable to dance.  It’s about guys that look good but can’t string a sentence together. Each verse is a piss-take at the scenario of a jeans commercial. It was good fun, but the audience thought, ‘What does he mean that he can’t dance?’ They didn’t see the humor, and it killed the fun.”

— Phil Collins on I Can’t Dance

Ok, Phil.  Whatever you say.

Tony Banks, Genesis’s keyboardist, has said that the song actually came about because he and Mike Rutherford were fooling around with various sounds in the recording studio and Phil, hearing what they were doing, suddenly sang out, “I can’t dance!” The song started out as an improvised joke but then went on to become one of the band’s biggest hits.  It was also nominated for a Grammy.

The end of the video is meant to be a parody of the original ending of Michael Jackson’s video for Black or White.  Black or White originally ended with Michael Jackson’s dancing erratically and destroying a car.  I Can’t Dance ends with Tony and Mike dragging Phil away before can do too much damage.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Space Oddity by David Bowie (1969, directed by Malcolm Thomson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

 “In England, it was always presumed that it was written about the space landing, because it kind of came to prominence around the same time. But it actually wasn’t. It was written because of going to see the film 2001, which I found amazing. I was out of my gourd anyway, I was very stoned when I went to see it, several times, and it was really a revelation to me. It got the song flowing. It was picked up by the British television, and used as the background music for the landing itself. I’m sure they really weren’t listening to the lyric at all. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to juxtapose against a moon landing. Of course, I was overjoyed that they did. Obviously, some BBC official said, ‘Oh, right then, that space song, Major Tom, blah blah blah, that’ll be great.’ ‘Um, but he gets stranded in space, sir.’ Nobody had the heart to tell the producer that.”

— David Bowie on Space Oddity

Today would have been David Bowie’s 73rd birthday so it only seems appropriate that he should be honored with our latest selection for music video of the day.

Though it may be hard to believe today, David Bowie was not an overnight success.  Bowie spent five years drifting from band to band and experimenting with different types of music before he finally released his first solo album, which failed to chart.  Space Oddity, which was the first single to be released off of his second album, was fortunate enough to come out at a time when the entire world was watching the moon landing.  It captured the public’s imagination and so, of course, did Bowie.  Space Oddity launched Bowie’s career and also made a legend out of an enigmatic astronaut named Major Tom.

This music video was Bowie’s first.  It was actually filmed as part of a 30-minute promotional film called Love You Till Tuesday.  The film was originally meant to feature Bowie singing seven of his songs.  It was only at the last minute that Bowie decided to add a performance of Space Oddity as well.  Bowie was only 22 when this was shot and, not surprisingly, the influence of Kubrick’s 2001 can be felt throughout the Space Oddity video.

Despite Bowie’s success and growing fame, Love You Til Tuesday failed to attract much interest from potential buyers and it sat on the shelf until 1984, when it was finally given a VHS release.

Enjoy!

 

Music Video of the Day: Orange Crush by R.E.M. (1988, directed by Matt Mahurin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“The song is a composite and fictional narrative in the first person, drawn from different stories I heard growing up around Army bases. This song is about the Vietnam War and the impact on soldiers returning to a country that wrongly blamed them for the war.”

— Michael Stipe, on the meaning of Orange Crush

“I must have played this song onstage over three hundred times, and I still don’t know what the fuck it’s about. The funny thing is, every time I play it, it means something different to me, and I find myself moved emotionally.  Noel Coward made some remark about the potency of cheap music, and while I wouldn’t describe the song as cheap in any way, sometimes great songwriting isn’t the point. A couple of chords, a good melody and some words can mean more than a seven-hundred-page novel, mind you. Not a good seven-hundred-page novel mind you, but more say, a long Jacqueline Susann novel. Well alright, I really liked Valley of the Dolls.”

— Peter Buck, on the meaning of Orange Crush

“Mmm, great on a summer’s day. That’s Orange Crush.”

— Simon Parkin, after R.E.M. performed Orange Crush on Top of the Pops

Despite (or perhaps because of) all of the differing opinions as to what the song is actually about, Orange Crush is one of R.E.M.’s signature songs.  It was not only a hit in the U.S. but it was also their highest charting single in the UK.  It was the popularity of this song that led to R.E.M. being invited to make their first appearance on Top of the Pops, where host Simon Parkin assumed that the song was about the soft drink instead of the cancer-causing defoliant used in Vietnam.

This video, which won the inaugural Best Post-Modern Video award at the VMAs, was directed by photographer Matt Mahurin.  Mahurin has directed several music videos, including the video for Metallica’s Enter Sandman.  His most notorious work, though, might be a 1994 Time Magazine cover that featured a heavily darkened version of O.J. Simpson’s mugshot.

Enjoy!

Music Video Of The Day: White Lines by Melle Mel (1983, directed by Spike Lee)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This song, one of the first hit rap songs about drugs, is often mistakenly described as being a collaboration between Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel.  Grandmaster Flash actually had nothing to do with the song.  He had already left Sugar Hill Records before the song was even recorded.  When the single was first released, it was credited to “Grandmaster and Melle Mel,” in order to create the impression that Flash was involved.  In his autobiography, Flash wrote that he once heard the song was while he was on the way to buy crack and, at that moment, he felt that Melle Mel was specifically speaking to him.

This song was recorded at a time when much of America — specifically, white America — was either unaware of or unconcerned with the drug epidemic that was ravaging America’s poorest neighborhoods.  White Lines attacks both cocaine and a legal system that punishes poor black kids more harshly than rich, white businessmen.  “The businessman who is caught with 24 kilos” is a reference to car manufacturer John DeLorean, who was arrested after trying to buy 24 kilos from an undercover FBI agent.  DeLorean was later acquitted after he made the case that the FBI agent had entrapped him.

(DeLorean today is best remembered for designing the car made famous by Back to the Future.  Between 1981 and 1983, 9,000 Deloreans were manufactured and 6,500 of them are reported to still be in working condition.  I once came across a classified ad from someone who was looking to sell his DeLorean.  I called and offered him a thousand dollars.  He laughed and hung up.)

This video was shot by Spike Lee, who was a film student at NYU at the time and yes, that is Laurence Fishburne.  Fishburne appeared in this video shortly after playing Cutter in Death Wish II and he has the same look in the video as he did in the movie.

Enjoy!

 

 

Music Video Of The Day: Oh Yeah by Yello (1987, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“First I did the music and then I invited Dieter to sing along, and he came up with some lines which I thought, ‘no Dieter, it’s too complicated, we don’t need that many lyrics’. I had the idea of just this guy, a fat little monster sits there very relaxed and says, “Oh yeah, oh yeah”. So I told him, ‘Why don’t you try just to sing on and on ‘oh yeah’?… Dieter was very angry when I told him this and he said, ‘are you crazy, all the time “Oh yeah”? Are you crazy?! I can’t do this, no no, come on, come on.’ And then he said, ‘some lyrics, like “the moon… beautiful”, is this too much?!’ and I said, ‘no, it’s OK’, and then he did this ‘oh yeah’ and at the end he thought, ‘yeah it’s nice’, he loved it himself also. And also I wanted to install lots of human noises, all kind of phonetic rhythms with my mouth; you hear lots of noises in the background which are done with my mouth.”

— Yello’s Boris Blank on Oh Yeah

This is it.  This is the Ferris Bueller song.  Or maybe it’s the Secret of My Success song.  Or the She’s Out of Control song or the Opportunity Knocks song.  Or the Gran Turismo song.  Or perhaps you know it as the song that plays whenever Duffman makes an appearance on The Simpsons.

The point is, Oh Yeah has been featured in a lot of movies and TV shows.  For a while, whenever a hapless schmoe first spotted an sexy woman in a movie, you knew that the first thing you would hear would be “Oh yeah…”  Despite not being a huge hit when it was first released, it has since been used in so many films that Dieter Meier, the Yello vocalist who initially balked at doing the song, has reportedly made over $175,000,000 just by investing the royalties.  Think about that the next time you’re having to stay late at work for a conference call or you’re told to cut your hours so you don’t get overtime.

The video is just as strange as you would expect it to be.

Enjoy!

 

Music Video Of The Day: Carrie by Europe (1987, directed by Nick Morris)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Swedish band Europe will always be best known for The Final Countdown but they also found some success with Carrie, a power ballad that was written about a break-up.  Was it a break up with girl named Carrie?  Not according to lead singer Joey Tempest, who told Songfacts that there was no Carrie.  “It was a far more general thing, actually.”

Carrie was a big hit in the United States.  In fact, in the States, Carrie even charted higher than The Final Countdown and it remains the band Europe’s highest-charting song outside of the continent of Europe.  The music video was directed by Nick Morris, who also did The Final Countdown.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Lookin’ Out My Back Door by Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Despite what you may have heard, this is not a song about drugs.  The flying spoon was not for cocaine.  The animals were not the result of an acid trip.  The parade?  That was just a reference to a passage from a Dr. Seuss book.  Instead, John Fogerty wrote this song for his son, Josh, and he filled it with imagery that he thought would appeal to a 3 year-old.

The video, which was filmed long before the days of MTV, is a performance clip, featuring CCR performing the song and looking like they’re having the time of their lives doing so.  When you see everyone so happy here, it’s easy to forget that, in just another two years, John Fogerty would leave CCR and he and his former bandmates would spend the next few decades suing each other.

Just got home from Illinois, lock the front door, oh boy!
Got to sit down, take a rest on the porch
Imagination sets in, pretty soon I’m singin’
Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Giant doin’ cartwheels, statue wearin’ high heels
Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn
Dinosaur Victrola list’nin’ to Buck Owens
Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Tambourines and elephants are playin’ in the band
Won’t you take a ride on the flyin’ spoon? Doo, doo, doo
Wond’rous apparition provided by magician
Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Tambourines and elephants are playin’ in the band
Won’t you take a ride on the flyin’ spoon? Doo, doo, doo
Bother me tomorrow, today, I’ll buy no sorrow
Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Forward troubles Illinois, lock the front door, oh boy!
Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn
Bother me tomorrow, today, I’ll buy no sorrow
Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door

Music Video of the Day: Digging In The Dirt by Peter Gabriel (1992, directed by John Downer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You will probably not be surprised to learn that Peter Gabriel was dealing with some stuff when he wrote the lyrics for Digging In The Dirt.  He was in the midst of a breakup with Rosanna Arquette, he was deep into therapy, and he was studying the lives of men who were on Death Row awaiting execution.  Gabriel was also reading a book, called Why We Kill, that suggested that all murderers share certain things in common, one of those being an uncontrollable anger that, much like the wasps in song’s video, can not be swatted away.  All of this contributed to a song that was one of Gabriel’s darkest, with the “dirt” standing in as a metaphor for his own personal issues.

The video features Peter Gabriel in a number of disturbing situations.  When he’s not being buried alive, he’s either arguing with a woman in a car or he’s being attacked by wasps.  The woman in the video was played by Francesca Gonshaw, who is probably best known for playing waitress Maria Recamier on the popular BBC sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo!  

The video features a return to the claymation and the stop motion animation that was used in the video for Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.  What was used to lighthearted effect in Gabriel’s previous videos  is used to tell a much darker story in Digging in the Dirt.

Music Video of the Day: Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads (1985, directed by David Byrne and Stephen R. Johnson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“I wanted to write a song that presented a resigned, even joyful look at doom … At our deaths and at the apocalypse… (always looming, folks). I think it succeeded. The front bit, the white gospel choir, is kind of tacked on, ’cause I didn’t think the rest of the song was enough… I mean, it was only two chords. So, out of embarrassment, or shame, I wrote an intro section that had a couple more in it.”

— David Byrne on Road to Nowhere

Happy new year!

I want to start 2020 by sharing a video from one of my favorite groups, Talking Heads.  Road to Nowhere is the type of cryptic but joyful song that could only have been done by this group.  The music video features everything from David Byrne running in place to Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz aging before our eyes.

The video was co-directed by David Byne and Stephen R. Johnson.  Johnson would later direct three of Peter Gabriel’s best-known videos, Sledgehammer, Steam, and Big Time, all of which would make use the stop motion animations technique that are briefly displayed in this video.  At the time that Byne and Johnson were directing this video, Byrne was co-written the script for True Stories with actor Stephen Tobolowsky and all of the underwater scenes were filmed in Tobolowsky’s pool.  Tobolowsky has had a long career as a character actor.  He might be best known for playing Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day.

Recognize him now?

Road to Nowhere was nominated for Video of the Year at the 1986 MTV Music Video Awards but it lost to Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.  The award, that year, was presented by Don Henley, who is about as far away from Talking Heads as you can get.

Enjoy!