Today’s music video of the day is for Robert Palmer’s cover of I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On, a song that was originally recorded by Cherelle in 1984. Palmer, whose songs epitomized the 80s, would have been 71 years old today.
If this video looks familiar, that may be because it shares the same concept behind Palmer’s videos for Addicted To Loveand Simply Irresistible, both of which were also directed by photographer Terence Donavon. Once again, Palmer, looking like he should be trading commodities on Wall Street, performed while a group of statuesque models “played” his band behind him. The video, however, added another group of models, dressed in white, who danced to the music and who had better rhythm than the models who made up Palmer’s band.
It’s obligatory to do legendary music videos like this one. The problem is finding something to write about when it comes to them.
We like things that look alike moving in unison. It’s as old as entertainment in general. You can swap them out for guys, or even toothbrushes, and it works just as well.
What seems to have some people slightly miffed is that they were stripped down to form rather than shown as a living breathing human being. According to Wikipedia, this is similar to what artist Patrick Nagel would do in his artwork. He happened to design the cover for Duran Duran’s album Rio.
What I can do is a where-are-they-now on this music video because we actually know who all these girls are in the video.
The women go like this: Julie Pankhurst (keyboard), Patty Kelly (guitar), Mak Gilchrist (bass guitar), Julia Bolino (guitar), Kathy Davies (drums).
You can find some of them on Twitter. You can also find numerous articles on them since they appear to have been tracked down fairly recently.
Mak Gilchrist posted a reunion of four of the five girls.
There’s also an interesting video where some of the girls are interviewed. I wish I could embed said video, but it’s on Yahoo!, and WordPress.com does not allow that for security reasons, so you’ll have to follow the link. It’s worth it because it provides background information on what has happened to them since the music video.
“I was 21 and got the part on the strength of my modeling book. We were meant to look and ‘act’ like showroom mannequins. Director Terence Donovan got us tipsy on a bottle of wine but as we were having our make-up retouched, I lost balance on my heels and knocked the top of my guitar into the back of Robert’s head, and his face then hit the microphone.”
The girls were miming five musicians that were off-camera. I agree with Mak Gilchrist in the video that they should be tracked down too because they probably have interesting stories to add about the shoot.
We like people who are made up to look the same while they do the same thing next to each other. There really isn’t anything else to say here except that it took an age old formula a la Busby Berkeley, and fed it to us once again.
Robert Palmer didn’t like making music videos, so when Addicted To Love turned out to be amazing, he just said let’s do that again. Hence we got the same thing only with more girls. That’s not quite as good seeing as five girls that are easy to look up, find out their names, and discover they have reunions. However, I have looked through the comment section and there are several people who write that one of the girls is either their sister, girlfriend, wife, or somebody they know in general. Doesn’t surprise me.
As for the song, it’s Robert Palmer. He does good work. I have yet to come across a song of his that I don’t like, but I’m sure it will happen eventually. The music video is actually perfect for him specifically because while the girls behind him do their thing, it let’s Palmer stay simple. He’s there with his good looks, nice suit, and sings to us like he is onstage in a 30s-40s musical.
Director/Producer Terence Donovan also did Addicted To Love and a handful of other music videos while being a well-known fashion photographer.
I can’t find any other music video work done by choreographer Jeff Thacker, but he certainly continued to work afterwards. His main thing is being one of the producers on the TV Show So You Think You Can Dance.
Through the Shattered Lens 