Tag Archives: music video

Music Video of the Day: Your Love by The Outfield (1986, dir. John Jopson)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I must admit that at times I do pick out music videos or films to write about simply because I know that they will get hits. Despite that, I do tend to gravitate to things that at least other people aren’t talking about, but watch en masse. Today isn’t one of those days. This happens to be one of my favorite songs, that once again, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s soundtrack introduced me to.

The first and most obvious thing is the lead singer is a little person. At a time when they were either Ewoks, Leprechauns, Trolls, and/or Sorcerers on the big screen, we had Tony Lewis belting out songs like Your Love on MTV being broadcast into people’s homes. That’s something a lot of people who are anti-music video forget. These short films brought so much culture to people that they would have been ignorant of were it not for their existence.

Now, to be fair, we also had Phil Fondacaro in Troll (1986) delivering a surprisingly good performance when he was not in costume. But we aren’t here to talk Harry Potter today.

Aside from the size of the lead singer, and them playing that up, I like that this video has four layers of capturing reality built into it. The first is the plan vanilla flavored “have the band stand on a stage and play”. It’s been done to death, and would be repeated in one form or another again and again for decades without any foreseeable end.

The second is when we step behind the scenes of that video and see the camera, crane, and crew shooting that plain vanilla flavored video. We saw that in something like I Ran (So Far Away) by A Flock Of Seagulls as well. It’s the self-reflexive version of what we are looking at.

The third is that throughout this video there is a painting motif to the whole thing. This appears in the backgrounds. Sometimes paint literally is put across the frame. Then there is the girl who is presumedly painting a portrait of Tony as he sings. This is when the video has now stepped from the fantasy of the performance to the reality of the shooting of the video to the fantasy of representing something as a painting.

Then the video goes for one more when it returns the video back to reality once again by pulling the camera out to the street threw the previous layers to show the girl leaving the studio with the painting. It’s a very drab and boring shot to end on with some blue paint that runs down the frame till it cuts to black.

I love that none of these four different places are cleanly segmented from each other. An example is when we see the guitarist leave the stage to go over and look in on the girl doing the painting.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I doubt it. One, it is an 1980s video when they really seemed to get creative. Also, this is one of those videos where we know more than just the director. According to IMVDb, Glenn Lazzaro edited the video. He’s worked on his fair share of music videos and other films. Karen Bellone produced the video and seems to have done that for several music videos. Likely both Lazzaro and Bellone have directed or worked on more music videos that are just not properly documented.

I haven’t really strongly mentioned it before, but IMDb really does want submissions of music videos. These are highly undocumented short films that could keep me going till the day I died, and I still would barely get out of the 1980s. Even with Internet Music Video Database and mvdbase, this stuff is still full of holes, and belongs in the central repository that is IMDb.

That said, Mvdbase turns up a bunch more videos for all three of the people I mentioned. I had completely forgotten about that database and will be going back to clean up some of my previous entries. So, submit!

Music Video of the Day: I Ran by A Flock Of Seagulls (1982, dir. Tony van den Ende)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I did a second video by prolific music video director Steve Barron yesterday. Today I thought I would do one by a different prolific director of music videos that we haven’t hit yet. The song I Ran of course is about as well known as You Spin Me Round (Like A Record). There’s no need to discuss that here. Especially not when there is a fascinating music video to focus on.

There are four parts to this video for me:

1. The video was intended as a homage to the album cover for Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s album (No Pussyfooting).

Frippenopussyfooting

2. The cameras are clearly visible in the mirrors. They aren’t in the original album cover, so I’m assuming they either were rushed, or they did it on purpose. I’m going with it being done on purpose. Just like a music video that deliberately doesn’t have the band members lip sync, this is an interesting way for the video to be self-reflexive. In this case, you are literally seeing the video you are watching being made right before your eyes. Or, to look at it in another way, you are seeing the band unable to escape the camera as a tie-in with the theme of the song.

3. Probably the best known experimental film that director Chantal Akerman made was La Chambre (1972). It was mostly comprised of a series of 360 degree pans showing us the interior of a room along with Akerman herself on a bed. One of the two parts of this video takes that idea of using those 360 degree pans, but instead attaches the group to the pan, so that once again, they can’t escape the camera. I have to wonder if he was thinking of her film.

4. While people remember the 360 sequences the best, there are the hallway portions as well. Those play into the theme of the song in that the band can’t escape the ladies, but also because of the way those ladies move. It’s almost as if they are high fashion zombies. Zombies being the monster that will inevitably catch up to you no matter how far, or how long you run.

It’s music videos like this that I love to look at because it’s obvious that a fair amount of thought went into crafting them.

Music Video of the Day: (Keep Feeling) Fascination by The Human League (1983, dir. Steve Barron)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Two years before he directed a-ha’s Take on Me, Steve Barron directed this very simple music video for The Human League. He has a huge filmography when it comes to music videos from the late 1970s through the 1980s. We’ll see him again. He also directed some features such as the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) and Coneheads (1993).

He did this video with it’s single color room, single color clothes, and single color outside that reminds one of conformity. It’s also a place that is located on a map, or a starting place or turning point for your life. I like how the lyrics of the song, and of course the gender non-conformity of Philip Oakey, contrast with the appearance of the room and the band. I don’t know about you, but I look at this video and can see this room transform into the pencil drawn one from Take on Me.

Oakey was known to even dress in matching outfits with female members of the band back then. He isn’t transgender or anything like that. He was just gender non-conforming.

The area you see as being orange was actually painted that way shortly before the house was demolished. The band’s scenes were filmed in a studio, which you can spot as the camera goes through the window. There is a tiny little bit that is easy to miss with the orange. Outside the house there are a couple of kids playing with a soccer ball. When one of the kids retrieves it from the orange outside of the house, his clothes suddenly change color to match.

This is another song that I discovered courtesy of the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack.

Music Video of the Day: Rusty Cage by Soundgarden (1992, dir. Eric Zimmerman)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

While I certainly enjoy spotlighting music videos that I really know, or enjoyed as a kid, part of doing these posts is personal discovery for me. I have owned a copy of Badmotorfinger since people actually bought CDs. It was the dark ages. I’m not one of those people to act high and mighty about something stupid like that. Although, it is neat to be holding the liner notes in my hands right now. This is the first time I’ve looked at them. That tells you how much I cared about that stuff. It actually has the lyrics for each of the songs written on it divided by a triangle like the one on the cover.

The music video is entirely new to me. I would never have thought to take a group like Soundgarden, and have them playing their song called Rusty Cage in a pristine white room. Although, it does contrast well with the outside where the action takes place. Frankly the outside of the room looks like an Alice in Chains video. In fact, you could say that inside that shack is an era of music about to be nuked out of existence by bands like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, so it’s appropriate that at the end, the shack is destroyed by a car.

Also, am I the only one who looks at the shack they are in and thinks of Doctor Who? Probably because of that running joke that Internet movie reviewer Phelous used to do with a shack in his yard as his Tardis.

The song itself is one of my favorite Soundgarden songs purely for the guitar. I am a sucker for a great solo, riff, etc. on the guitar. I love the speed at which the music video cuts to go along with the speed of the guitar. That’s another thing I am a sucker for: speed in music. That speed can be the lyrics too. I don’t think I have mentioned it elsewhere, but for 2nd grade show and tell, I sang the opening song to The Music Man (1962) from memory. Again, the dark ages because me and my dad had to transcribe the lyrics from the movie for me to memorize them. I loved the speed at which the lyrics were sang. Here it is hopefully.

That’s not to say that the rest of it isn’t quality. I mean it is Chris Cornell singing back before the musical apocalypse of the late 90s destroyed children’s ability to recognize a great voice. American Idol hasn’t helped over the years either.

Finally, Johnny Cash covered this song too. This was news to me. Here’s that song for comparisons sake.

Music Video of the Day: Revenge by Ministry (1983, dir. Tim Pope)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I must admit I don’t know a whole lot about Ministry other than a few things I have read about them and their music. I first found them the way most people probably did. That being through songs like Jesus Built My Hotrod and Just One Fix. These are industrial rock/metal songs although I have heard them referred to more like hardcore punk. You could argue that if you want. I think less Dead Kennedys, and more if Depeche Mode didn’t sing Just Can’t Get Enough and instead played their style of music with more politics in a metal fashion the way Ministry has done for the majority of their career.

I remember some MTV/VH1 thing bringing up that Ministry actually started as a Snythpop band. I remember them playing this up like it was some sort of magical metamorphosis the group had gone through. I remember at the time eating that up. Not anymore. I don’t care what the situation was with lead singer Alain Jourgensen at the time, the reason for the ultimately minor change that only looks huge, and stupid comments on their videos saying:

“Hopefully those synth pop loving post punk wannabes have been flushed out with this ministry, dragged on the street under cars and murdered with hate crimes.”

I didn’t make that up. That’s an actual comment left on one of their videos.

I listen to this, then The Land of Rape and Honey and hear the same kind of song. Synthpop and Industrial Rock/Metal are related genres. The fact that he chose to go with something more hardcore didn’t fundamentally change their sound like a metamorphosis would suggest. I like their Synthpop sound too before they expanded on it and made it harder. I welcome an edgier Depeche Mode. Just like I welcome them saying that’s not for them and evolving their sound. It’s just ridiculous when you hear talk about this like it’s a metamorphosis. If Neil Sedaka decided to start playing heavy metal, then sure, but not this. This is the creation/mass discovery of a new style of music built on previous ones. Ministry just happened to not just be at the forefront, but actually started on the edges of the main original genre and tweaked it till they found their true voice.

As for the music video itself, it makes me think of the shot on video Japanese 80s horror film Death Powder (1986).

Death Powder (1986, dir. Shigeru Izumiya)

Death Powder (1986, dir. Shigeru Izumiya)

I haven’t even watched that movie either other than to get a screenshot earlier this year, and it is still the first thing that comes to mind when I look at this video.

I mentioned before how related the two styles are to each other, but you can really tell when you watch the video. It’s like you can literally see something such as Jesus Built My Hotrod lying just under every surface in the video ready to burst out. Especially burst right out Jourgensen’s face and body.

I like connections, so it made sense to use this as the first Ministry music video to feature.

Music Video of the Day: Kind and Generous by Natalie Merchant (1998, dir. Mark Seliger & Fred Woodward)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

According to my calendar, it’s Ocean Day today in Japan. This was the first time I had ever heard of it. From what I can gather, it’s basically a thanks to the wealth of the ocean that makes their existence as an island nation possible. The first song that seemed to fit was Kind and Generous by Natalie Merchant. The music video is kind of weird. I don’t really have any good explanation beyond their being a song called Carnival on her solo debut album Tigerlily. Perhaps it’s meant to be a follow-up in the same way that Volcano Girls is to Seether for Veruca Salt. Otherwise, I don’t know what it has to do with the song other than that it too is as harmless as the song is itself. At least you’d think that. Would you believe there’s some controversy around this song?

If you go to her actual YouTube channel, then you’ll find the comments disabled on it, and most of her other videos that I clicked on whether they were solo, or with 10,000 Maniacs. I poked around a bit, and the best I could find was that people are upset by the use of nonsense words throughout the song. Sadly, I have seen similar stuff when people talk about Hotel Yorba by The White Stripes. I could go on here, but it’s not my style to get involved with this kind of thing. Instead, I’ll just include a classic song filled with nonsense words as well because I don’t care.

Music Video of the Day: Bastards of Young by The Replacements (1986, dir. ???)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I knew I would get to it eventually, but I honestly didn’t think I would do it this early. Regardless, here’s probably the best known anti-MTV music video at least to come out of their first ten years. First, it’s in all black and white. Second, the group isn’t in the video at all. Finally, almost nothing happens. Sure they would repeat this similar formula for a couple other songs they did, but this is the one people think of. Especially because the song itself defines Generation X very concisely with the line: “you got no war to name us.” A line that would resonant with the MTV audience of the time.

What I like about this video that makes it more than just an anti-MTV music video is that they actually did something interesting with it. They could have just had it start on the speaker and end on the speaker. Nothing else had to happen. They didn’t do that. Instead, they opted for the Michael Snow option. If you look at Michael Snow’s film Wavelength (1967), then you’ll see a lot of similarities. Wavelength is a slow 45 minute zoom across a room to a picture on the opposite wall. Some things do happen in the room during this zoom. However, the film asks you to begin to see the room itself as the character and to treat the other things going on the way you would treat a set. They are just passing around the character of the room. The music video asks you to do the same thing with a slow zoom out and the occasional action of a person in the room. The video asks you to meditate on the song itself along with the room in which someone would sit to listen to the song. The song and a typical environment that someone would listen to it are the characters in this music video. This is in contrast to other music videos that ask you to focus on the artist(s) themselves and a visualization and/or narration of their song.

I love that The Replacements decided to put some thought into this when they really could have just had it stay on that speaker the whole time. I would say it was an under appreciated MTV music video, but I distinctly remember MTV even using a section of the video as a bumper in between videos or commercial breaks.

Enjoy! Even if it’s just for one of the best songs of the 1980s in my opinion.

Music Video of the Day: Take On Me by a-ha (1985, dir. Steve Barron)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

This another one that speaks for itself. When I was a kid and MTV would do lists of the greatest music videos ever made, this always made the list. Of course it did. It’s a great video even if I’m not sure it has anything to do with the song. It’s very creative. Along with Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and a handful of other music videos from the 80s, you can pretty much count on everyone having seen this one all these years later. If not, then press play. It’s also the song that makes everyone try to hit a high note that very few people can hit.

Speaking of creative. It also happens to be the first music video used for the literal music video meme.

I would have posted the music video for the Ghostbusters song today, but the amazing literal version is missing from YouTube at the moment. It just isn’t worth posting without it right now.

Music Video of the Day: Nothing My Love Can’t Fix by Joey Lawrence (1993, dir. Scott Kalvert)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I reviewed Stalked at 17 with Joey Lawrence’s Melissa & Joey co-star Taylor Spreitler yesterday. So, I thought I would remind people that Joey Lawrence having a music career was once a thing. If I Think We’re Alone Now by Tiffany is so 80s that it hurts, then this is so early-90s that it hurts. Wasn’t alive during this period, or are too young to remember? Well, they certainly put every aspect of the time period in this music video.

I don’t have anything else to say considering what happened. I just hope this early-90s cheese fest at least takes your mind off of it for a couple of minutes.

Music Video of the Day: Foolish Beat by Debbie Gibson (1988, dir. Nick Willing)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I did a Tiffany music video yesterday, so of course today had to be Debbie.

I don’t think anyone needs the importance of Debbie Gibson explained to them at this point. At least I hope they don’t. I do love what the host said at MTV’s 20th Anniversary in 2001 after they played a message from Gibson. He said that in about 10 years or so it will be a message from Britney Spears.

Debbie Gibson must have really liked black and white cause this is at least the third one of her videos that used it. It is just one of several ways they capture the isolation the person in the song is going through. We have the disconnection of random stock footage shots of the city. A guy standing on a peer. Her performing at a small nightclub type place. The separation of Gibson in the present from her happy times via partial use of color. The mirror that only reflects your own face and what is behind your eyes. A blood tinted dinner break-up. It all ties the song together visually.

It is one of my favorite Gibson music videos and songs. It isn’t likely a solo female singer could get away with wearing that many clothes today in their music videos. That, and the turquoise hair bow. I’m a sucker for Debbie Gibson, so you’ll likely see every video she ever did on here eventually.

I am also aware that today is Bastille Day. That’s why I have included a bonus performance below of Bastille Day by Rush.