If I’m going to talk about other Bucks Fizz videos in the future, then I should do the one where it all started.
I’m not going to explain their story again. I’ll simply bring up that their career was kicked off by wining Eurovision in 1981 with this song.
Every performance I’ve seen of this song from Eurovision itself to Top Of The Pops, is what you see in this video. The only thing I saw changed was for Top Of The Pops. The most distinct thing about this performance is when they rip the long skirts off in time with the lyrics. Oddly, that’s not in the performance they gave at Top Of The Pops. Cheryl and Jay came with the shorter skirts. Maybe they got sick of doing the exact same thing over and over again.
There’s nothing else to this other than getting a chance to see why they won, why a very similar performance would show up in another one of their videos, and if I wanted to go deeper into the performance at Eurovision, which I don’t. Wikipedia has that information.
I mainly did the video for The Romantics’ version of Talking In Your Sleep so that I could get to the Bucks Fizz version.
Bucks Fizz was put together by Nichola Martin and Andy Hill. They wanted a group that could be entered in Eurovision with their song Making Your Mind Up. The line-up ended up being Mike Nolan, Cheryl Baker, Jay Aston, and Bobby G. Martin decided to name the group after her favorite drink, Buck’s Fizz, the group won Eurovision in 1981, and it went from there.
In 1984 they retreated from the public-eye to focus on their fourth album. They emerged in August of that year with a cover version of Talking In Your Sleep. This video was released to promote the single, which did well. Trying to make sense of this video does not go well for the viewer.
Then space folds and separates to reveal two identical, but flipped buildings with a little person dressed as a baby jumping up and down in the middle of the screen.
I could stop right there. That’s already weirder than the The Romantics’ version.
Now we pan over one of those two buildings and begin to play the game of right-side up or upside-down bicycle. This time it’s upside-down.
There’s Bobby G drinking milk while half-naked at a window–as you do.
Up on the roof, we see that the baby is jumping.
We get to see the rest of the group at their windows. My favorite is Mike Nolan, who looks like he just spotted the jumping baby up in the sky.
Now Bobby is on the roof with the baby. You can see that this is the roof with the upside-down bicycle.
We get a brief glimpse of something white over where Bobby rolled the ball. Does that mean that this baby has a corporeal form as well?
The rest of the group go up to the roof. I’m guessing Cheryl was dreaming about being someplace where it made sense to be wearing heels.
Finally, the whole group is together to forget the kind of drink they are named after.
Now the baby is jumping in Bobby’s hand.
Cut from that to Jay Aston jumping up and down on the roof.
That must be the turning point because in the next shot, we can see that the bicycle is right-side up. Mike and Jay are also frozen in place. Note that Mike is now holding the ball. Are they on the other building we saw at the beginning?
We see that Cheryl is also frozen, but is reanimated by the baby pointing at her. The same is true for Mike and Jay.
In the following shots, the video seems to confirm that Bobby is indeed on a separate roof from the rest of the group as his bicycle is up-side down…
while theirs is right-side up.
The baby walks up one of the buildings.
Mike gets a great look on his face from his apartment. Is he watching the baby? Is he really there?
Cheryl appears to enter onto the Bobby G roof.
Mike appears to enter onto the bicycle-right-side-up roof.
Now the bike looks like it’s pointing in the opposite direction. Have they switched buildings? I can’t tell.
After Cheryl gives us a, help me I’m stuck in a confusing music video face,…
we see the roof upside-down to add more confusion.
Then the band is reunited on the upside-down-bicycle roof where they appear to both push and pull on the door.
Cut back to the baby jumping up and down before the buildings disappear and space returns to normal.
I’m sure other Bucks Fizz music videos make more sense than this. They would never do a music video where Cheryl runs through Christmas trees and Captain Kidd jumps into a pool of water.
Sadly, a few months after this video was released, the group ended up in an accident while in their tour bus. They were all injured pretty badly, including Mike Nolan ending up in a coma. He woke up, but the effects are still with him to this day. You can read more over on their Wikipedia page.
The group has had a rocky history since then, but Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan, and Jay Aston still perform with somebody else to make a foursome that goes by the name The Fizz.
The video was directed by Dieter Trattmann. He appears to have directed around 80 music videos.
Through the Shattered Lens 