If you’re suffering from anxiety, it is nothing to be ashamed of. As today’s music video of the day shows, even Pat Benatar can get nervous! Of course, when your dentist is named Dr. Pain, who can blame you for getting nervous?
This video was directed by Mark Robinson, who also did videos for The Pretenders, Tina Turner, and Eddie Money.
Enjoy!
The 29th music video played MTV on its first day of broadcast, August 1st, 1981, was the video for Gerry Rafferty’s saxophone classic, Baker Street.
Baker Street was followed by Pat Benatar’s I’m Gonna Follow You, the video of which featured Benatar singing while walking around a seemingly deserted city. Benatar is effortlessly soulful and sexy in this video, putting most of today’s so-called pop divas to shame.
Enjoy!
The First Videos Shown on MTV:
Yesterday’s music video was the first ever video to air on MTV.
The video for Pat Benatar’s You Better Run was the second. As opposed to the video for Video Killed The Radio Star, You Better Run is a performance clip. There’s no special effects but there’s a lot of Pat Benatar, which is just as good.
Enjoy!
Today’s music video of the day features Pet Benatar as a Rosie the Riveter-type of character, working in a factory during World War II and having fantasies about being a flying ace. Judge Reinhold appears as a pilot while the much missed Bill Paxton plays an enemy radio operators. Interestingly, this video was filmed before either one of the two men became well-known. Reinhold had just starred in Fast Times at Ridgemont High but he wouldn’t play his best-known role, as Detective Billy Rosewood in Beverly Hills Cops, until a year after this video came out. At the same time that Reinhold was trading quips with Eddie Murphy, Bill Paxton was playing an ill-fated street punk in The Terminator.
Pat Benatar was not actually the first artist to record this song. The song was originally written by D.L. Byron in 1980 for a film called Times Square but it was rejected by both the filmmakers and Byron’s record label. The song was subsequently recorded by both Helen Schneider and Rachel Sweet before Benatar did her version. Of course, Benatar’s recording is the best known, climbing up to the third sport on the charts and inspiring even more artists to cover the original song.
If you’ve ever stolen a car in Los Santos, there’s a good chance you’ve heard Shadows of the Night on the radio.
Enjoy!
This is one of those music videos like Take On Me by a-ha where I ask myself what the heck am I going to add. Regardless, I’ll try.
The three big things in this music video are narrative, spoken dialogue, and many sets.
This short film could have been released back in the 1910s and it would have fit structurally as an early example of short form narrative filmmaking. The film takes us from Pat being kicked out of her home, working at a seedy nightclub, and then heading back on the road after she leads a dancing revolt against a nasty boss. It’s noteworthy that she never goes home. Go ahead and put aside the girl power part of it that we will see again in a much better form later on, and focus on that this was sent into people’s homes many times a day. Instead of screams of “leave me alone” turning into something violent, the music video offers a non-violent solution to its’ audience.
The second thing is the spoken dialogue. We take that for granted now. I mean we looked at Weezer’s Buddy Holly a ways back, and it’s loaded with it. However, back then, it was brand spanking new with this music video. Before Love Is A Battlefield, that simply did not exist in music videos.
The third thing is very simple. Going along perfect with the 5+ minute length music video, it also used numerous sets, and cut back and forth between them. It’s not something to be overlooked when watching this music video.
I’m sure I will find plenty of innovation as I move into more recent music videos, but just like early cinema, it’s always fascinating to see early music videos as they tried all sorts of different things. Especially when the song that is playing is merely a recent incarnation of an ancient art form. An ancient art form simply mixed with an art form that by 1983 had been around for about 95 years. The first 30 or so of those devoted to making films like this. Sometimes they were even focused around a performance of a song such as several films that Alice Guy made.
At the end of the day, they didn’t call it music television for no special reason. I’ve seen TV stations that play nothing but music. MTV took what was largely used as a replacement for a live performance on a music show, and did what early cinema did when they moved from Queen Elizabeth in 1912 where you can literally see the dust coming off of Sarah Bernhardt’s costume cause it was seen as just canned theater to something that in 2016 isn’t even seen as separate from the songs. Ask any parents with kids, and they’ll tell you they don’t buy music. They simple AirPlay music from their computer or other device to the TV. I do this myself, and I was born the year this music video came out.
Through the Shattered Lens 