It’s been awhile since a song made me tear-up. You might not know the story behind the song since I didn’t. Drummer and vocalist Kelly Keagy was visiting his younger teenage sister and was amazed how fast she was growing up. He wrote the song about her. You can tell he was anxious and worried about her fast approaching adulthood. Of course people latched onto the word “motoring” as if the song and music video don’t make it clear that the term is synonymous with “cruising”. I think I need to break out Jeff from Rock: It’s Your Decision (1982) every time I do a music video that has a song with misunderstood lyrics in it such as Losing My Religion.

Rock: It’s Your Decision (1982, dir. Jon Taylor)

I guess it’s appropriate then that the song became Sister Christian because one of the other band members kept mishearing Sister Christy as Sister Christian.

The music video starts off with a clock literally ticking off the seconds of her life before we cut to her graduation. What follows are scenes of her coming of age while the band appears to be practicing in an auditorium. She is ambivalent throughout about her sexuality, how it relates to her studies, and how she is going to live her life after high school no longer has a hold on her. In the end, she decides to hop in the car and drive off into her future.

In a way, you could consider Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young a companion piece to this song. It too has a misunderstood meaning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKSpzi9lKyQ

The high school in reality is San Rafael High School in California.

I couldn’t find much on director Dan Halperin except that he worked on a few other music videos.

On the other hand, I found that production manager Peter Lippman has worked on a ton of music videos performing numerous jobs.

Enjoy!