Today’s music video of the day is for the song I’m Free, which was covered by the Scottish group, The Soup Dragons, in 1990.
That’s right, this is a cover. I’m Free was originally recorded by The Rolling Stones in 1965 and was the last track on the Out Of Our Heads album. To quote Rolling Stone Magazine, the original song was a “folk rocker.” The version by the Soup Dragons was much more psychedelic and featured a verse from Jamaican reggae performer, Junior Reid. I’m Free became the band’s biggest hit, reaching the number 2 spot on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart. You may have also heard it in the film, The World’s End.
As for the Soup Dragons, after ten years and five albums, they disbanded in 1995, though all of the members continue to make music to this day.
I don’t know what amuses me more about this video, the fact that it suggests Donny Osmond can bring rain to the desert or that it was directed by the master of bombast, Michael Bay?
This song was the second single to be released off of Osmond’s 1989 album, Donny Osmond, and it was a part of an attempt to rebrand Osmond as a contemporary rocker. Despite the popularity of both this song and Soldier of Love, that attempt failed because once an Osmond, always an Osmond.
The video is pure Michael Bay. Donny, several hot women, and a group of construction workers drive out to the middle of the desert. While Donny looks over blue prints and gives orders, the models and the day laborers start carrying boards and hammering nails. Are they building a house or a temple? No, it turns out that they’re building a stage so that Donny can perform in front of an audience that spontaneously shows up. Donny does such a good job performing that it starts to rain and the video goes from being in black and white to being in color. Bay directs with the same style that he would later bring to Armageddon and the Transformers franchise, except that instead of meteors and robots, he’s showcasing Donny Osmond.
It would be easy to mistake this video for being the most wholesome beer commercial ever made.
No song epitomizes the 80s quite as much as Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night. Though the song popularized the idea of wearing your sunglasses at night, the video actually portrays sunglasses as being the tools of an authoritarian state. Hart is thrown in prison because he doesn’t wear his sunglasses at night. Fortunately, Hart is released by a sympathetic female police officer. The officer is played by future VJ Laurie Brown and the video was shot at the Don Jon Jail in Toronto, Canada.
This is a song that continues to live on because of its use in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. There’s nothing like stealing a car in the middle of the night and going on a high-speed police chase while listening to Sunglasses at Night.
A few years ago, you couldn’t turn on a television past midnight without coming across the Time-Life Classic Soft Rock infomercial.
It was hosted by the members of the Australian soft rock duo Air Supply, Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell. While sitting in a very wholesome-looking living room, the Russells talked about how much they loved soft rock and how happy they were that Time-Life was now giving a new generation a chance to get mellow with Elton John, Peter Frampton, REO Speedwagon, and Seals & Croft. Graham Russell played his guitar and a chirpy co-host said, “I can’t believe that I’m meeting Air Supply!”
The path to infomercial super stardom began in 1975 when Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock were both cast in the Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar. They formed Air Supply in 1976 and went on to become superstars in Australia. They also had eleven hits in the United States, five of which had the word “love” in the title. Their biggest hit was All Out Of Love.
What do you say, everyone?
Are you ready to soft rock?
The song’s best known lyric, “I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you,” was originally “I’m all out of love, I want to arrest you.” By arrest, Graham Russell meant that he wanted to capture someone’s attention. No one found the lyric to be strange in Australia but, when it came time to release the song in the United States, Arista Records’s Clive Davis feared that listeners would misinterpret the song’s meaning. It was Davis who came up with the new lyrics.
“It really isn’t. I think it was just me using a weird word. But, you know, now I think of it, it’s definitely very weird. There are certain words that you just don’t use when you’re writing songs. And ‘arrest’ is one of them. Words like ‘cabbage’ or ‘cauliflower,’ like that. There are certain words that just aren’t poetic. And ‘arrest’ is one of them. And I really don’t know why I used it. But Clive called me on it, and the rest became history.”
The year was 1985 and Eddie Murphy was one of the most successful entertainers on the planet.
He was the only star to emerge from the wreckage of Saturday Night Live‘s disastrous sixth season and, by his presence along, he kept the show alive through some tough years. He had starred in the hit films 48 Hours, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop. He had even won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for Eddie Murphy: Comedian. There was only one world left for Eddie Murphy to conquer, the world of music.
How Could It Be, Eddie Murphy’s first musical album, was released in 1985 and it spawned one hit single, the Rick James-produced Party All The Time, a song in which Murphy laments that his woman would rather party than take care of him. The critics may have hated it but Party All The Time was a hit, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Of course, there was a video:
The main thing that sticks out about this video is how seriously it wants us to take Eddie Murphy as a singer. Murphy may flash his trademark grin but the video mostly seems to be about convincing us that Murphy was not just another celebrity with a vanity album to sell. No, Murphy was a professional and, in case you had any doubts, just watch Rick James get down in the control booth!
Look at how much effort Eddie’s putting into the song!
Towards the end of the song, Rick leaves the control booth to perform with Eddie and to make sure we understand that Eddie Murphy is the real deal.
It’s too bad that Eddie’s being so professional because if any song seemed perfect for Murphy’s sarcastic and uninhibited comedic sensibility, it was Party All The Time.
Though Murphy is still best known as a comedian and actor, he has continued to record music. He even had another minor hit, a R&B song called Put Your Mouth On Me. (You read that right.) Though it’s been 25 years since he released his last album, Murphy did receive his first Oscar nomination in 2007 for playing R&B singer James “Thunder” Early in the musical Dreamgirls.
As for Party All The Time, it has more recently found new life as the unofficial anthem of Scotland’s St. Johnstone F.C.
I did some actual research and I discovered that two years ago, on this date, Valerie selected Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again for the music video of the day. That was a perfect choice because that video is the first thing that most people think of when they hear the name “Tawny Kitaen.” The song may have been called Here I Go Again and the band may have been Whitesnake but the video will always be known as “The Tawny Kitaen video.”
Today’s music video of the day is the other Tawny Kitaen video.
I like to think of this video as being a direct sequel to Here I Go Again. David Coverdale has asked Tawny to stop dancing on his car because he’s worried that she’ll dent the hood and Tawny’s finally walking out on him. Good for her! She packs up her suitcase and she leaves. Meanwhile, David Coverdale leans against a wall and thinks about Tawny dancing while wearing the same white dress she was wearing when she walked out on him.
He’s upset to have lost her and, when you see screenshots like this, you can’t blame him:
One of the reasons why the Tawny Kitaen videos were so popular was because they suggested you could come across as being a total douche and still end up with a girlfriend as hot as Tawny Kitaen. Seeing her walking out at the start of this video should have been a warning to every man watching. It takes more than just soulful looks at the camera to keep Tawny Kitaen happy.
At the end of the video, Coverdale and Tawny are reunited. It had been a while since I last watched this video so I had forgotten that Coverdale wins her back by jumping out from around a corner, grabbing her, and throwing her down on the hood of a car. That wouldn’t play today.
Speaking of coming across as being a total douche, Coverdale fired all of the other members of Whitensake after recording this song so, with the exception of Coverdale, no one that played on the original recording is actually present in the video. As for Tawny and Coverdale, they separated for real in 1991.
Today’s music video of the day is for a song that always makes me nostalgic and, for reasons I’ll explain further down, sad. When I was growing up, I used to regularly spend my summers visiting family in the UK. For most of the 90s, you couldn’t go anywhere in Europe without coming across Stakka Bo’s Here We Go playing somewhere and whenever I hear it, I’m reminded of those brilliant summers.
Stakka Bo’s real name is Bo Johan Renck. Music was largely a side project for him. He is best known as a highly respected director. Not only has he directed music videos for Madonna, Beyonce, New Order, Lana del Rey, and David Bowie but he’s also directed episodes of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. In 2008, Renck directed his first feature film, Downloading Nancy.
He also directed the video for Here We Go. Undoubtedly a part of the video’s popularity was due to the girl in the video, model Alma Jansson-Eklund. (Though Alma did a great job lip synching, the vocals were provided by Nana Hedin.) Tragically, Alma struggled with depression and committed suicide ten years after the release of Away We Go. While I was doing research for this post, I came across two blog posts written by people who knew Alma: this one and this one. (The second post is written in Swedish.) No one can know the exact events that led to her death but it’s impossible to watch this video and not mourn for a talent the left this world far too early.
Today’s music video of the day is for the song that convinced an entire generation of parents that heavy metal was Satan’s music. Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris wrote The Number of the Beast after watching the second Omen film and a careful listen to the lyrics will reveal that the song is not meant to be taken seriously. Of course, religious groups across America took it very seriously and spent 1982 protesting Iron Maiden.
It all seems a little silly now.
The video was also controversial, even though it was really just clips of old horror movies mixed with footage of Iron Maiden performing. With Lisa Marie’s help, I think I have correctly identified the source of almost every clip featured in the video:
0:10 — The video starts with a scene from 1944’s The Return of the Vampire. Contrary to popular belief, that is not Vincent Price providing the voice over. Originally, the band wanted Price but, when they discovered they couldn’t afford him, they hired an actor named Barry Clayton instead.
0:30 — The Goatman who first appears here and then reappears throughout the video is taken from 1968’s The Devil Rides Out.
0:36 — This clip is from 1922’s Nosferatu.
0:42 — This is the star of 1957’s I Was A Teenage Frankenstein.
0:50 — The fighting dinosaurs are from 1940’s One Million Years B.C.
1:12 — This is from 1958’s The Screaming Skull.
1:19 — The Godzilla footage is taken from 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla.
2:15 — I’m not totally sure but I think this is from 1946’s The Crimson Ghost.
2:19 — The exploding Goatman is, again, from The Devil Rides Out.
2:30 — This is from 1958’s How To Make A Monster, which was a sequel to I Was A Teenage Frankenstein.
2:38 — This is either another clip from How To Make A Monster or a clip from 1957’s I Was A Teenage Werewolf.
2:41 — This scene is from The Crimson Ghost.
3:21 — The scarred giant is from 1958’s War of the Colossal Beast.
3:24 — I like this way this part of the video was edited to make it appear as if Godzilla was reacting to the Colossal Beast.
3:51 — The big spider is from 1959’s The Angry Red Planet.
4:00 — This is another clip from The Crimson Ghost.
37 years ago today, MTV first started to broadcast. Over the course of the day, the station aired 116 music videos.
Everyone knows that the first video to ever be shown on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles. But did you know that the 36th video aired was Blotto’s I Wanna Be A Lifeguard?.
Who were Blotto? A new wave band from Albany, New York, they had a strong cult following among college students in the late 70s and early 80s. Much like the Ramones, all the band members used pseudonyms and took Blotto as their last name. Among the members were: Bowtie Blotto, Broadway Blotto, Cheese Blotto, Lee Harvey Blotto, Sergeant Blotto, Blanche Blotto, and Chevrolet Blotto.
I Wanna Be A Lifeguard was probably their best known song, as it was adopted as an anthem by the Jones Beach lifeguards. Before they made their MTV debut, Blotto and I Wanna Be A Lifeguard were championed by Dr. Demento and, like all good, quirky New York bands, they appeared on both The Joe Franklin Show and the Uncle Floyd Show. Today, it’s clear to see that Blotto were ahead of their time. The band’s mix of humor and music are tailor-made for the age of YouTube and social media.
As for the video, it was filmed by video production students at SUNY Albany and it feels like a cross between two quintessentially 90s shows. Starting in a shoe store and ending on the beach, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard is Married With Children meets Baywatch. Since the video came out ten years before either one of those shows premiered, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard was as ahead of its time as the band that performed it.
Today’s music video of the day is Bad Boys, by the Jamaican reggae band, Inner Circle.
Yes, that would be the Cops theme song.
When Inner Circle first recorded and released Bad Boys in 1987, the song didn’t receive much attention. That all changed in 1989 when a new docuseries premiered on Fox. Cops followed the police as they patrolled the streets, dealt with a hostile citizenry, and broke up domestic disputes. Every episode opened with a disclaimer (“All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”) and the opening verses of Bad Boys.
In 1993, the show’s worldwide success led to Inner Circle rereleasing Bad Boys as a single and filming the music video below:
Thirty-one seasons later, Cops is still in production and even those who may not be aware of who performed the song still know the famous “whatcha gonna do?” chorus.
Through the Shattered Lens