I simply can’t get enough of these.
I can watch “Total Eclipe” and especially “Anything for Love” all day.
When I read ‘literal’, this is what I thought the videos would be.
Oh holeymajoley–I really needed to laugh tonight and this has been a great thread!
One of the other literal videos had Video Killed the Radio Star in the “Related” box, so I figured it would be like the others. (If I’ve ever seen the original for that, I’ve long since forgotten it.) I was watching it, waiting for them to change the lyrics. Then at some point I realized what they were doing and just started laughing.
One of the funniest things I ever saw on Letterman: Dave was quizzing a guest on actual Ted Nugent song titles (no idea why). The choices?
A. Wango Tango
B. Wang Dang Sweet Poontang
C. Total Eclipse of the Poon
I’m laughing my ass off even typing it. Some days, “total eclipse of the poon” will just pop into my head for no reason and I’ll giggle like an idiot. Amuses the hell out of the rest of the guys on the ward.
It was just some sexually-ambiguous freaks with scary '80s hair singing in front of microphones in some sort of techno setting with too much pyrotechnics, IIRC. Nothing really remarkable about it.
The Total Eclipse of the Heart literal video works because the original video was a disjointed collection of bizarre images.
We need to find more of those.
You guys have to watch this one for SMells Like Teen Spirit. It’s so bad it had me practically rolling on the ground. I think it might actually be a piss-take on literal videos themselves, which puts it at DOUBLE IRONY!
I have an alternate theory: It just sucks.
I saw Total Eclipse a couple of days ago, and was howling with laughter. None of the others have come close, IMO, to that as a thing of beauty. Another video candidate for this treatment, IIRC: Genesis’s Land of Confusion.
Nothing remarkable? Video Killed the Radio Star holds a unique place in our common, cultural history.
I looked up the original after seeing the literal version.
OK, I looked it up, too, and it’s not at all what I was remembering. I don’t know whether I was remembering some other video, or if it was just a result of over 20 years of mental filters.
As if Creed were not already laughable.
Maybe you were thinking of Pop Muzik by M.
No, it was actually cool. For context, look at the other first 50 videos played on MTV. For even more context, look at this featureon ABC’s 20/20 from back in the day. In the context of the time, it was innovative. It’s like old videotape. Look at a something like this video of Gerald Ford from 1975. It’s not because it’s on YouTube…this was what network TV looked like back then, and we all thought it looked fine. Or look at any videos of the first few seasons of SNL on an HDTV. It looks so astonishingly cheesy and cheap.
So yes, at the time “Video Killed The Radio Star” was a very cool and neat video. Decades later? Not so much.
Okay, I have spent way too much time the last couple of days watching these. I still think that the Eclipse one is by far the best, but there’s good bits in most of the ones I’ve seen.
Why had I not heard of this before this thread? This is a brilliant concept, if done right.
C’mon, somebody’s got to do Ashes to Ashes. Bowie’s begging for it, swanning about in a clown suit…
Penny Lane is my favorite so far.
“We walk away. Where’d we go? There we are. We’re all with him. Now he’s alone.” I don’t know why that cracks me up, but it does.
Now I dance like Axl Rose
In my fruity Sixties’ clothes
Heh.
Random Cop!
So, after reviewing this thread, I forwarded a link to the Take on Me video to my drummer-the-record-producer - he is producing a few tracks on A-Ha’s latest CD (for U.S. Dopers, A-Ha continue to do quite well outside the U.S., regularly selling out large venues - at least that is what I was told by my friend; does this sound right Euro-Dopers?)
His reply to me?
They hadn’t seen it.
Well done, Dopers - fighting a band’s ignorance.
You should contact the guys at Dust Films and tell them that story, they would get a huge kick out of it.