And what better way to start things off than with the Head Over Heels scene from 2001’s Donnie Darko. Directed by Richard Kelly, this scene not only makes brilliant use of the Tears For Fears song, Head Over Heels, but it also manages to introduce every character and set up almost every important relationship in the film.
It’s brilliant but I always find myself wondering what Drew Barrymore had against Sparkle Motion.
I am going to have to take a few days off from doing these posts because the Internet is still dead at my house. It won’t be back up till, at best, the 16th (Thursday)–if not later. I don’t want to waste any videos over this right now. I’ll be back as soon as possible. It’s a frustrating mess here right now. You could say that “Anger” is my middle name. Right, Thor?
March Madness starts today, so here is Basketball by Kurtis Blow.
That’s all I have for you. The floors are being torn up at my house and I am typing this on my phone because my Internet connection decided to go down at the same time. The next couple of days might be like this. Sorry.
There’s no way I can exclude this song from a retrospective of ABBA music videos. Sadly, it’s not because one really exists. It’s just that not spotlighting this would be like excluding Waterloo even though that’s what won them Eurovision, and kicked off their career.
The video above is what is on ABBAs official YouTube channel. The video below is an excerpt from ABBA: The Movie (1977).
I might as well throw them all together here. Here is the Spanish version called Gracias Por La Música. I have no idea when or where it was recorded. It is on ABBAs official channel.
I hope you understand me cheating here. I will also have to fudge Spanish versions of their other songs since some of them include videos like this, others include totally different videos like the one for Fernando, and then there’s Happy New Year and Felicidad that are proper videos, but have minor differences–those videos get a little weird. You’re also going to get a third version of Knowing Me, Knowing You since I have found a Spanish version available through ABBA’s official channel. However, that one doesn’t seem to have been released till 1979. Gracias Por La Música has a copyright date of 2012, but there’s no way the video above was done in 2012. I have nowhere else to stick it, so it goes here.
If you live in a place that celebrates Daylight Savings Time, then remember to set your clocks forward an hour.
This is one of those videos where the people involved can tell the story behind the video.
Pete Angelus was the director of the video. He had a relationship with the band that went back to the 1970s.
Robert Lombard was the producer.
Ann Carli was the senior vice president of artist development at Jive Records.
Here’s the backstory from the book I Want My MTV:
Robert Lombard: “Jump” is where the drama really started. Dave wanted the performance video intercut with him doing crazy shit, like driving his chopped Merc hot rod and hanging out with midgets and girls in maids’ outfits. So we shot hours of footage.
Pete Angelus: Rather than doing something bigger than life, which is how Van Halen was perceived, we wanted something very personal. Let’s see if we can get Edward to smile. Of course, we also had to appease Dave, who wanted to throw his karate tricks into the equation.
Michael Anthony: There was getting to be a little bit of tension between us three and Dave.
Robert Lombard: I told the band, “I’m gonna shoot in sections.” Alex would show up, we’d do some drum segments, then bass with Michael Anthony, then guitar, then David. I didn’t shoot them together until the end of the day. I was trying to keep peace, because I felt tension amongst them. David thought he was bigger than the rest of them.
I was in post-production with a rough cut of the video. I knew that if they kept it as a straight-on performance video, they would have a number one single. So I took the rough cut to Eddie’s house up in Coldwater Canyon and played it for him and his brother Alex. I said, “Guys, I’m taking a stand here. If you put in this crazy footage”–which later surfaced in “Panama,” after I was gone–“the video isn’t gonna have the impact it should have.” Eddie and Alex said, “We agree with you, one hundred percent. We’re not gonna release this video unless it’s done this way.”
Two days later, I got fired. Noel Monk, their manager, said, “You don’t do that–you don’t go behind Dave’s back. Here’s your check, never want to see you again.” That video won the award for best performance video at the first VMAs. And I still don’t have my award.
Pete Angelus: I think we spent less money making “Jump” than we did on having pizzas delivered to the set of “Hot for Teacher.”
Ann Carli: The legend was that “Jump” was a $5,000 video. David Lee Roth’s swinging on a rope, but he’s also playing right to camera. Nobody did that. That was a groundbreaking video, and it had an impact on how everybody looked at making videos.
The first question I had was probably the first one that came to your mind. The answer is that the game they are playing is called “Fia-spel”. It’s a Scandinavian version of the German board game “Mensch ärgere dich nicht”, which is a variation of Parcheesi/Ludo.
The thing that always fascinates me with music videos is how they choose to use lip-syncing. This time around the song is entirely Frida and Agnetha singing, but they also have Benny and Björn lip-sync some of the lines, so it appears that Frida and Agnetha’s voices are coming out of them.
You’ll notice that at times the lyrics become things they are saying to each other over a game of Fia-spel rather than coming across as being sung. They also do it in such a way that to the viewer it’s as if the person who lip-syncs lyrics is being given an answer in normal speech. It also dips in and out of those parts.
There seems to be two levels to this game between the members of ABBA. The first is just playing the game. The other is the higher level that intersects the first level at certain parts where lip-syncing happens. I’m sure there’s a connection to the game itself. However, I have never played any of the board games mentioned at the beginning of this post.
I’m not really sure what the purpose of the silent film look and obstructions in front of the camera are in the video. The silent film thing doesn’t even bookend the video. The obstructions add some style that doesn’t really work for me. I do like the spinning part. It fits with where the song is at that point. I think the rare cutaways to the guitar and piano are nice too. I can’t put it into words, but I think it was the right call to not show who’s playing. In any other ABBA music video, you’d see Benny and Björn during those parts.
Finally, the little pig-nose thing Agnetha does is nice. It’s moments like that which make me wonder how much of the music videos Hallström did with ABBA were scripted, and how much were improvised. I can’t imagine Hallström telling Agnetha to do that.
It took 33 music videos, but I think I’ve reached what is my current favorite ABBA music video. This is the Snow Version of Knowing Me, Knowing You. We already did the Sailboat Version.
If there’s one thing that should be clear by now about ABBA music videos, it’s the importance of blocking in them. I think this video is one of the finest examples of that. I love the parts of the video where the person singing switches, but the camera doesn’t cut as you would normally expect it to. Instead, it either moves on its own to another member of the group, or follows one of them into another position onscreen.
The other reason I particularly like this music video is because it features more of Benny and Björn. It feels like a full group song and video rather than Agnetha and Frida with those two guys in the background of some shots. This allows them to do interesting things by having four people to work with in a greater capacity than previous videos.
My favorite example of this is when it starts with Agnetha and Frida walking…
past Benny and Björn…
where the camera stops for a bit to let them get out their backing vocals.
Then it quickly goes over to Agnetha and Frida who are in their typical headshot and profile-shot blocking.
They finish their part, and Agnetha walks over to stand between Benny and Björn.
The camera moves in to crop out Björn.
Finally, Angetha walks back over to Frida to be in the same headshot and profile-shot thing, but with her on the opposite side of Frida.
It also leads them symbolically out of the relationship of the song that ends with hugs, freeze-frames as they look back, and them walking off into the distance.
One last thing to take note of is that the video appears to begin with Agnetha and Frida having already left, as evidenced by their footprints in the snow–footprints we see them make at the end of the video.
At the time of writing this, I had to be up at 5:45 AM to go have CT Scans done on my chest, neck, and sinuses. I’m okay. The point is that I am running on empty. I honestly thought that today’s video was the one where they sing next to a giant snowman, which would basically make the post this sentence before the comma. Instead, it turns out that the video is for the song That’s Me. As a result, I don’t have a whole lot to say. Not that it really matters with this video. I wouldn’t have a whole lot to say anyways.
According to Wikipedia, this was filmed during the making of ABBA-DABBA-DOO! Okay, if you say so. The Flapper Dress version of Money, Money, Money was filmed on that show and it looks nothing like this. However, it does also say that it was combined with some original footage and stock footage from their other music videos. That I buy since it’s what you are getting here. The majority of this video is the Snow Version of Knowing Me, Knowing You and the well-known version of Money, Money, Money with a little bit of Agnetha and Frida singing spliced into it. At one point, Frida looks bored as her eyes just drift off into space.
Apparently, it wasn’t even released back in 1977 or, as Wikipedia says, 1976. Things get dicey with their album Arrival since it came out in October of 1976, so it could be either year. I’m going with 1977. It’s not important anyways since it appears to have gotten the She’s Gone by Hall & Oates treatment. By that, I mean that it was filmed back then, but wasn’t actually released until 1993. She’s Gone being that bizarre video made in 1973–never aired–that John Oates himself leaked onto the Internet.
I don’t particularly like this one, but Agnetha must have since her 1998 compilation album of her solo work is called That’s Me.
Seeing as today is International Women’s Day, I thought I would take that as an opportunity to spotlight the Neneh Cherry music video she did with Michel Gondry. I already did Heart, which she did with David Fincher. Since Cherry happens to be from Sweden, it works into the “International” part of the day and the ABBA retrospective I’ve been doing.
It’s exactly what you would expect from Gondry–distortion of time and space. Also, notice how Gondry not only uses the color of her jacket as an indicator of where she is in far shots, but shows up as the color of cars and other things as well. Take a look at the text on the “TV FOR DOGS” box. It says “No Crap Programs”, “Look Reel [possibly Real]”, and “For A Dog Vision”.
François Nemeta was the assistant director. He worked on around 13 music videos with Gondry and has done 20+ music videos himself. The most recent one I can find is from 2014, so I assume he is still in the business. You can visit his website here.
Err…according to mvdbase, there are four versions of this music video. FOUR! Why? Oh, well. On the plus side, I can’t find the others.
I can find them performing at the Swedish Royal Opera for the marriage of the then new Queen of Sweden the night before her wedding.
I can also find them on Top Of The Pops.
You can also find them performing this song on a TV special for Olivia Newton-John that also featured Andy Gibb. There’s even one where they all do some songs by The Beach Boys.
I can’t find anything particularly interesting about this video to talk about. They captured the fun of the song well. What else is there to say? One of the kids looks at the camera at one point. I guess that’s something to mention.
Through the Shattered Lens