Music Video of the Day: So Alive by Love and Rockets (1989, directed by Howard Greenhalgh)

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

The music video for So Alive is appreciated by aficionados of long legs everywhere.

The video was the first to be directed by Howard Greenhalgh, who would later direct the video for Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.

Music Video of the Day: Not A Dry Eye In The House by Meat Loaf (1995, directed by Howard Geenhlagh)

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Today would have been the 76th birthday of Meat Loaf.

The video for Not A Dry Eye In The House features Meat Loaf looking over an empty stage and singing about his long lost love, who was also a starlet. The video was directed by Howard Greenhalgh, who has also done videos for Culture Club, Eels, Iron Maiden, Pet Shop Boys, Placebo, Elton John, Sting, Suzanne Vega, and others. Probably his most acclaimed video is the one that he directed for Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.

(He also directed the video for Come With Me, Puff Daddy’s take on Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. Don’t hold it against him.)

Enjoy!

Music Video Of The Day: In Liverpool by Suzanne Vega (1992, directed by Howard Greenhaigh)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

In this song from her 1992 album, 99.9F°, Suzanne Vega sings about a lost relationship. Apparently, this song was inspired by a relationship that Vega actually had with someone who from Liverpool. He and Vega met in America when she was 18 and they fell in love, just for their relationship to end when he had to return to his home.

Today, this song makes me think of my friends and family in the UK and how I look forward to someday getting to see them again.

This video was directed by Howard Greenhaigh. Greenhaigh has several videos to his name but the one he’s probably best known for is Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: So Alive by Love and Rockets (1989, directed by Howard Greenhalgh)

Posted on August 28, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Love and Rockets was an English alternative band, made up of all of the members of Bauhaus who were not named Peter Murphy. From 1985 to 1998, before breaking up to pursue other projects, Love and Rockets released 7 studio albums. Though Love and Rockets always struggled to escape the shadow of Bauhaus, the band was still responsible for some of the best music of the late 80s and 90s.

Their best known song was So Alive, which was a number one hit in both the United States and Canada. The video is highly regarded by aficionados of long legs and backlighting everywhere.

The song was written by the song’s lead vocalist, Daniel Ash. As Ash explained in an interview with Xsnozie:

“I’d gone to a party on Saturday night, and I was married at the time, and I saw this woman over the other side of the room, and I was completely transfixed which is very odd because I was freshly married. It was very weird, but I was completely infatuated by her and so much so that I couldn’t go near her to even speak to her, it was just this overwhelming thing. I can’t explain it to this day. That’s why the first line is, ‘I don’t know what color your eyes are.’ Because I didn’t get that close, I just saw this person in the distance.”

The video was the first to be directed by Howard Greenhalgh, who would later direct the video for Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun.

And yes, Love and Rockets did take their name from the comic book series by the Hernandez Brothers.

Music Video of the Day: Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden (1994, dir. Howard Greenhalgh)

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

No, I won’t do three separate posts for the three different versions of this video. The differences are too small for that to make any sense. They’re all here–at least when this post goes up they should be. We’re gonna back into the original version.

First things first, the release date that I found is sometime in June of 1994. According to Wikipedia, a couple of weeks later, the blackhole most of us probably remember was added in to give us the version posted above.

The second thing is that you’ll notice Cornell is wearing something around his neck.

Apparently, that was a fork necklace given to him by Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon. Hoon would die one year after the release of this video. There’s a reason I bring that up. It leads to the previous version of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31wDXDvqVNU

In this video you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of the two versions. The black hole isn’t shown as much. Whether that’s good thing or not, is up to you. I prefer it being there. The other effects are different or missing.

The thing I found interesting is the following:

While the bees were in the original, the more explicit reference to the bee-girl from the music video for No Rain by Blind Melon wasn’t. I have no idea if that is Heather DeLoach or not. I didn’t come across anything that said one way or another.

Regardless of whether it is or isn’t, I wonder why she wasn’t there to begin with. Maybe they weren’t sure they had the rights. Seeing as Shannon Hoon didn’t pass away till over a year later, my guess is that someone looked at that shot and thought the reference would go over people’s heads, so if they were going to give the video a facelift anyways, then put her in there.

Thank you, YouTube comments. I wouldn’t even know the following version exists without them. I hate those sections, and usually wish they would go away, but this time they lead me to this alternate, or uncensored version.

The only thing I noticed here is that the guy on the TV in this one has the phone number 1-800-TRUTH displayed below him.

I didn’t see any other differences when I watched it. There could be since someone mentioned that the black hole is missing. I didn’t notice it missing any less than the second version. I could be wrong though.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me that the band says this video “was entirely the director’s idea.” They also went on to say that “our take on it was that at that point in making videos, we just wanted to pretend to play and not look that excited about it.”

They succeeded at that. I always wondered why they looked so disinterested. However, Thayil said that it was one of the few Soundgarden videos they liked. Them looking the way they did makes them look like they are the heart of darkness at the center of this black hole pulling this Blue Velvet-like idyllic landscape and characters towards their destruction.

If you want an analysis of the song, then look at the video below. It’s kind of funny watching that knowing Cornell said he wrote it in about 15 minutes.

When I was kid in middle school to high school, I knew about this video, but it was past its rotation time. It would pop up every once in awhile. Today I’ve seen it plenty of times. Then, it was like a 5-6 minute event to get to see it again.

There are numerous credits attached to this video.

The first is director Howard Greenhalgh. He’s done over a 100 music videos.

Megan Hollister produced it, Ivan Bartos shot it, Stan Kellam edited it, and both Ian Bird and John Wake did the specials effects.

They all seem to have stuck to music videos.

Enjoy!

30 Days Of Surrealism: