This video was shot in downtown Los Angeles, near Pershing Square and its popularity on MTV helped to push the song to the top of the US charts. The song was inspired by Waite’s feelings while he was working and away from his wife. Myself, I’ll always think about it as being the song playing on the radio while I was driving a white Cadillac across the beach in Vice City. Unfortunately, I got so into the song that I drove the car straight into the ocean. That was when I discovered that Tommy Vercetti couldn’t swim.
“I think I finally figured out my new song, ‘Los Angeles’, this morning. They got one in South Patagonia, they got another Los Angeles in Mexico, they got so many Los Angeleses. Bangkok has a Los Angeles, I read recently. I imagine there’s a lot of places in the world named City Of Angels. I wrote about a futuristic one too: ‘They got one in 2525, where it’s just like a beehive.’ I mean that kind of Los Angeles you might see in a film like Blade Runner.”
— Frank Black in VOX, Issue 30, March 1993
In 1993, after the Pixies broke up for the first time, lead singer Black Francis renamed himself Frank Black and embarked on a solo career. Los Angeles was the first single to be released off of Black’s first solo album, Frank Black. According to Black, the song was meant to take place in a futuristic version of Los Angeles, much like the one seen in Blade Runner. The first time I ever heard the song, I misheard nearly every lyric and I thought it was about a man who Black met, a good man who worked as an insurance agent. (For some reason, my mind always heard “sailing and shoring” as “selling insurance.”)
The video makes it clear that Los Angeles is meant to take place in some sort of future, with Black riding a hovercraft through the desert and looking like an extra from a Mad Max movie. I’m not sure who directed this video. Some sources hint that the video was directed by Black himself but I haven’t been able to find any definite confirmation.
After releasing two solo albums, Black went on to front Frank Black and The Catholics before reuniting with the Pixies and eventually changing his name back to Black Francis.
The music video for King Nothing was shot in Park City, Utah in December of 1996. It was directed by photographer Matt Mahurin. Mahurin directed his first music video in 1986 and he’s been churning them out ever since. Among the artists that Mahurin has worked with: Disturbed, Goo Goo Dolls, Marilyn Manson, Tom Waits, Alice in Chains, Queensryche, R.E.M., Tracy Chapman, and U2.
Here’s a music video for anyone who is working hard on Labor Day.
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.
Eddie was born in Brooklyn. His father was a cop. His grandfather was a cop. His brother was a cop. It was expected that Eddie would become a cop too. Even while he was pursuing a career in music, Eddie joined the NYPD. However, while he was still in training, Eddie was told that he would not be allowed to wear his hair long if he was a member of the NYPD. That was the last straw for Eddie, who later said that he could not imagine spending the next 20 years of his life with short hair. He left the force and returned to music. Unfortunately, the band he was in suspected that he was an undercover narc and kicked him out. Meanwhile, his father tore down and destroyed every Jimi Hendrix poster that Eddie had hanging in his room. Perhaps realizing that New York was no longer going to be a friendly place to live, Eddie headed for California and the rest, as they say, is history.
In this video, though, Eddie is back in New York and working out the of the 18th precinct. While he investigates crimes on the streets, a runaway is sucked into a dangerous lifestyle. Eddie has longish hair in the video so he finally got to be a cop without having to cut his hair.
This video was directed by Martin Kahan, who also did videos for KISS, Scandal, Michael Bolton, and a lot of other people who probably would never have made it as a member of the NYPD.
Rob Halford has said that this song is about “freedom.” Once you are on the highway, you can go anywhere you want. With it being Labor Day weekend, a lot of people are going to be taking advantage of that freedom today.
This video was one of the man to be directed by Julien Temple. Temple will probably always be best known for his work with the Sex Pistols.
I used to think that this song was called Borderline. I thought the chorus was “Borderline! Love isn’t always unkind!” Of course, the song actually goes, “Hold the line! Love isn’t always on time!,” which makes more sense.
When this song was recorded, “Hold the line” meant to stay in place. In this case, the lyrics were directed at a girl who was waiting for the lead singer to commit. Back in the days of landline phones, it was also something that you said to someone before putting them on hold so you could take another call. This song became Toto’s first hits and remains one of the band’s signature songs. When guitarist Steve Lukather finally disbanded Toto in 2009, he said it was because he no longer felt that he could continue to sing Hold the Line with a straight face.
Even before MTV actually became a thing, Toto was doing music videos. Their video for Hold the Line is a simple performance piece. It may not have cost much money but it still helped to bring the song to an audience that might have otherwise missed it.
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. 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.
With this song, Europe showed that even the threat of atomic warfare could inspire a top 10 hit. This not only remains their signature tune but also a requirement for the soundtrack of almost any television show that takes place in the 1980s.
Director Nick Morris was one of those directors who worked with just about everyone who was anybody.
The music video for Sussudio was filmed at The Princess Victoria, a London pub that, at the time, was owned by Richard Branson.
This video was directed by Jim Yukich, a frequent Collins collaborator who has basically directed videos for everyone who was anybody in the music business.
