Tag Archives: Animal

Music Video Of The Day: Animal by Def Leppard (1987, directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Animal is a song that took three years for Def Leppard to complete.  The band started work on the song in 1984 with producer Jim Steinman, who is best known for his collaborations with musicians like Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler.  Steinman’s orchestral style proved to be a poor fit with Def Leppard’s more straight forward sound.  After realizing that Steinman wasn’t going to work out, the band brought in Mutt Lange, who was able to get the sound that the band wanted.

Though the band had already found success in the United States, Animal was the first Def Leppard song to became a hit in the UK.  Not only did it reach No. 6 on the UK Single Chart but it also scored the band their first invitation to perform on Top of the Pops.  (For the benefit of our American readers, that was, back in the day, a big effing deal.)

The video finds the band working and performing in a traveling circus.  The video was directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin, both of whom have directed videos for several different artists.  Along with directing several other videos for Def Leppard, Freel and Pellerin have also worked with Metallica.  On his own, Freel has done videos for Roxette and Faith No More.  Pellerin, meanwhile, directed the films, Laserhawk, For Hire, Daybreak, and The Clown At Midnight.

Music Video Of The Day: Animal by Miike Snow (2009, dir by Sebastian Mlynarski)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is one of two music videos for Miike Snow’s Animal.  I prefer this one because it features some moody shots of the band standing in the rain and the whole thing has a sort of end of the world, apocalyptic feel to it.  The song itself has been interpreted to be about everything from addiction to ennui to the furry sub-culture.  The band has been said quoted as saying that maybe we shouldn’t try to read too much into the song.

(For the record, I have never gotten the whole “furry” thing, nor have I really had any desire to understand it.  I mean, to be honest, it just seems stupid.  Unfortunately, I once took a creative writing class where one of my classmates was absolutely obsessed with furries and he even wrote a play about some sort of sex-obsessed space bear.  And, of course, the presidential campaign of Beto O’Rourke has put furries back in the headlines.)

Miike Snow is made up of lead singer Andrew Wyatt and Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg.  Karlsson and Winberg previously produced Toxic for Britney Spears.  When Animal was first released as a single, there was a lot of online speculation that the band was named after director Takashi Miike but, sadly, that turned out to be false.  Apparently, the band actually is named after someone named Mike Snow.  The band added an extra i because …. well, just because they felt like doing it.

More power to them, say I!

Enjoy!

Music Video Of The Day: Animal by Def Leppard (1987, directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Animal is a song that took three years for Def Leppard to complete.  The band started work on the song in 1984 with producer Jim Steinman, who is best known for his collaborations with musicians like Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler.  Steinman’s orchestral style proved to be a poor fit with Def Leppard’s more straight forward sound.  After realizing that Steinman wasn’t going to work out, the band brought in Mutt Lange, who was able to get the sound that the band wanted.

Though the band had already found success in the United States, Animal was the first Def Leppard song to became a hit in the UK.  Not only did it reach No. 6 on the UK Single Chart but it also scored the band their first invitation to perform on Top of the Pops.  (For the benefit of our American readers, that was, back in the day, a big effing deal.)

The video finds the band working and performing in a traveling circus.  The video was directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin, both of whom have directed videos for several different artists.  Along with directing several other videos for Def Leppard, Freel and Pellerin have also worked with Metallica.  On his own, Freel has done videos for Roxette and Faith No More.  Pellerin, meanwhile, directed the films, Laserhawk, For Hire, Daybreak, and The Clown At Midnight.