The Swedish band Europe will always be best known for The Final Countdown but they also found some success with Carrie, a power ballad that was written about a break-up. Was it a break up with girl named Carrie? Not according to lead singer Joey Tempest, who told Songfacts that there was no Carrie. “It was a far more general thing, actually.”
Carrie was a big hit in the United States. In fact, in the States, Carrie even charted higher than The Final Countdown and it remains the band Europe’s highest-charting song outside of the continent of Europe. The music video was directed by Nick Morris, who also did The Final Countdown.
Despite what you may have heard, this is not a song about drugs. The flying spoon was not for cocaine. The animals were not the result of an acid trip. The parade? That was just a reference to a passage from a Dr. Seuss book. Instead, John Fogerty wrote this song for his son, Josh, and he filled it with imagery that he thought would appeal to a 3 year-old.
The video, which was filmed long before the days of MTV, is a performance clip, featuring CCR performing the song and looking like they’re having the time of their lives doing so. When you see everyone so happy here, it’s easy to forget that, in just another two years, John Fogerty would leave CCR and he and his former bandmates would spend the next few decades suing each other.
Just got home from Illinois, lock the front door, oh boy! Got to sit down, take a rest on the porch Imagination sets in, pretty soon I’m singin’ Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Giant doin’ cartwheels, statue wearin’ high heels Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn Dinosaur Victrola list’nin’ to Buck Owens Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Tambourines and elephants are playin’ in the band Won’t you take a ride on the flyin’ spoon? Doo, doo, doo Wond’rous apparition provided by magician Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Tambourines and elephants are playin’ in the band Won’t you take a ride on the flyin’ spoon? Doo, doo, doo Bother me tomorrow, today, I’ll buy no sorrow Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Forward troubles Illinois, lock the front door, oh boy! Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn Bother me tomorrow, today, I’ll buy no sorrow Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
You will probably not be surprised to learn that Peter Gabriel was dealing with some stuff when he wrote the lyrics for Digging In The Dirt. He was in the midst of a breakup with Rosanna Arquette, he was deep into therapy, and he was studying the lives of men who were on Death Row awaiting execution. Gabriel was also reading a book, called Why We Kill, that suggested that all murderers share certain things in common, one of those being an uncontrollable anger that, much like the wasps in song’s video, can not be swatted away. All of this contributed to a song that was one of Gabriel’s darkest, with the “dirt” standing in as a metaphor for his own personal issues.
The video features Peter Gabriel in a number of disturbing situations. When he’s not being buried alive, he’s either arguing with a woman in a car or he’s being attacked by wasps. The woman in the video was played by Francesca Gonshaw, who is probably best known for playing waitress Maria Recamier on the popular BBC sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo!
The video features a return to the claymation and the stop motion animation that was used in the video for Gabriel’s Sledgehammer. What was used to lighthearted effect in Gabriel’s previous videos is used to tell a much darker story in Digging in the Dirt.
“The sad part is, I can’t really play the song live anymore because too many people misunderstand the connotations of Ground Zero. It’s not a reference to 9/11, obviously. It was written in 1986 when ‘ground zero’ just meant the epicenter of a nuclear attack.”
— Weird Al Yankovic
Try to force Weird Al to do a Christmas album and this is what you’re going to get.
In 1986, Weird Al’s record label insisted that he record something for the holiday season. In response, Yankovic came up with Christmas At Ground Zero, a Phil Spector-style production about Christmas in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. It wasn’t really what the record company had expected and, at first, they refused to release it. Yankovic responded by creating his own music video for the song. This video was not only his first stab at directing but it also proved to be popular enough to convince the record company to change their position on the song.
Though the majority of this video is made up of stock footage, the live action scenes of Weird Al and the carolers performing surrounded by rubble were filmed in The Bronx. No nuclear explosions were needed to get the bombed-out feel. Instead, they just filmed in New York in the 80s.
