Spellbound was the lead single off of Siouxsie and the Banshee’s fourth studio album, Juju. In later interviews, Siouxsie would describe Juju as being an accidental concept album as all of the songs dealt with dark themes and subject manner. Juju was a horror-themed album but the horror was psychological and not supernatural. As a sign of that theme, Spellbound was named after an Alfred Hitchcock film about a man who is troubled by disturbing dreams.
Clive Richardson directed several videos from Siouxsie and the Banshees. He also worked with Depeche Mode, Steve Winwood, Big Country, and Tears for Fears.
In this music video for Playground Twist, Siouxsie and the Banshees show that, despite it’s fearsome reputation, punk rock could be just as fun as any school playground song. The children who appeared in this video probably had no idea that they were dancing with the woman who Bill Grundy was attempting to hit upon when Steve Jones of the Sex Pistol called him a “dirty sod” on live British television. The British tabloids labeled this exchange and the entire interview between Grundy and the Sex Pistols as being “the filth and the fury.”
This was one of several videos that Clive Richardson did for Siouxsie and the Banshees. He also directed videos for several other groups that were a prominent part of the New Wave scene, including Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, and Adam and the Ants.
The video for this fan favorite was shot around what was then West Berlin. (This was before the wall came down.) Clive Richardson had also directed the video for Just Can’t Get Enough and the band turned to him, after previously working with Julian Temple, because they felt that Richardson could visually toughen up their image and help the band move away from the more self-consciously artsy style that Julian Temple had attempted to go with. The end result was a video that quickly went into regular rotation on MTV and a song that proved to be one of Depeche Mode’s most enduring hits.
It’s not really about much. It’s just one of those cheap pop lyrics.
— Roland Orzabal
Today’s song of the day is especially appropriate for me because my WordPress account has been updated and, after five years of using classic editor, I’m just now figuring out how to use block editor. I can tell already that it’s going to take me a while to get the hang of this but I think I’m going to like it eventually. Change can be difficult but it can still be a good thing.
Change was Tears For Fears’s fourth released single and it was their second big hit, after Mad World. It was also their first song to chart in the United States. This video was directed by Clive Richardson, who was also responsible for several early Depeche Mode videos.
Just Can’t Get Enough is about as upbeat of a song as you are ever going to get from Depeche Mode. That has a lot to do with the fact that it was written by Vince Clarke, who was a founding member of the band and who was considered to be the band’s leader until he left in November of 1981. While Clarke went on to become best known as a member of Erasure, Depeche Mode went in a harder, less pop-orientated direction, with Martin Gore eventually taking over Clarke’s role as the band’s main songwriter.
Just Can’t Get Enough was the third single from Depeche Mood’s debut album, Speak & Spell. The song was written as the punk scene was winding down and London club kids were looking for new music that wasn’t quite as aggressive and self-destructive. Just Can’t Get Enough was the first Depeche Mode song to become a top ten hit in the UK.
The video, which was directed by Clive Richardson, was the band’s first and it remains the only Depeche Mode video to feature Vince Clarke. The outdoor scenes were filmed at the Southbank Centre in London. Though the video did occasionally air on MTV, it wasn’t placed in the station’s regular rotation. In fact, MTV didn’t really embrace Depeche Mode’s videos until the release of Personal Jesus in 1989.
Synthpop, industrial metal, and industrial rock are all the same music to me. The songs are made up of repetitious elements which are sung over. What makes them sound so different is the same reason one type of food tastes so different than that same food that is made a little differently. Take this song for instance compared to Rio by Duran Duran. That song uses the synthesizer as its’ ingredient. It gives it a very smooth and stylish sound that slips down the throat like cough syrup. In this music video, within the first second we see that Depeche Mode used other things like industrial sounds such as a cannon shooting off, hitting metal, and of course the synthesizer still. The repetition is as present as it was in Rio, but since the sources of that repetition have changed, the song comes across as something different when all that’s changed are the ingredients that satisfies the needs of the recipe. The lyrics of the song also take it from something that is pure fun to something that has meaning, but without much punch. It still goes down easy, but it’s a serious pill you are easily swallowing this time.
The video is a rather simple combination of war imagery with the group. The video alternates between fractured and un-fractured images in color and solid black and white. I’m not sure why they didn’t go for the obvious here. I would have had an arc in the video that moved from fractured images of the band in color to them in solid black and white that is paired with the stock footage. It would have helped to drive home that as the song is sung, the message goes from confusion to the issue being very simple, solid, and black and white. Still, it has that kind of effect anyways. In fact, you could argue that by never having such an arc, it makes sure that there isn’t a resolution to the problem despite lyrics like “people are people so why should it be, you and I should get along so awfully.”
The song itself is one I pull out anytime something tragic has happened because of hate. It’s simple too: “I’m relying on your common decency. So far it hasn’t surfaced, but I’m sure it exists. It just takes awhile to travel from your head to your fist.” Sad but true.
Through the Shattered Lens 