My favorite 80s song. Brilliant production all-around.
Please. Those were nothing. Nothing, I say!
Give me one video with more RAD video editing effects, catchier synthesizer tune and a crazier “Stalker behaviour before people knew that being a stalker wasn’t a good thing” vibe than You might think, by The Cars. I dare you.
Ahhhhhh! the eighties, there were only two real choices for videos in those days. Literal or lunatic. Duran Duran went for the latter and very few of their videos made any sense but christ they looked good. Plus they had the attraction that you knew that *they *knew it wasn’t to be taken seriously so that means they get cut a lot of slack.
My wife and I are teenagers of the early eighties so our kids (7 and 9) get bombarded with such tracks and seeing as kids have no real filter one gets a good sense of what moves a person on a visceral level. If the little ones are bopping around in the back of the car or dancing round the kitchen with no prompting then that is a fairly decent yardstick for funkiness.
So far, notable songs that pass that test are “The real me” by The Who, “Word up” by Cameo, “is there something I should know?” by Duran Duran. “Blue Monday” by New Order, “That’s not my name” by the Ting Tings, “Tour de France” by Kraftwerk, “money” by Pink Floyd…so something of a mixed bag.
As a side issue, seeing as the kids do like Duran Duran there is going to be a point at which they search for their favourite videos on YouTube. It follows therefore that they are going to find the uncut version of “Girls on Film”. I’m not linking as it is NSFW but I can see I need to prepare a Spinal Tap-style justification of sexist vs sexy.
In fact…I may need to revisit that video for…er…research purposes.
While I was going down the rabbit hole that happens when you start watching a bunch of the same kind of videos on YouTube, it suggested this one, and it’s perfect 80’s nonsense complete with state of the art CG graphics and synthesizing to the hilt! I Can’t Wait by Nu Shooz.
Oh Darn! When will I ever learn to write my posts in an editor and not in the TSD board’s editor?
It’s just too easy to lose posts that way. Doggone it!
Anyway … here is what I got when I searched for “Biggest Hits of the 80’s”.
I thought it would have been Michael’s “Thriller” or any one of Madonna’s hits. But I was
wrong once more.
I sure do love Linda Ronstadt. She is just so adorable.
Huh. I always think of this, video wise.
Maybe I’m just sentimental. Or maybe it’s the checkerboard pattern. Everything’s more 80s with a grid pattern.
48 posts and no out of place breakdancing? Like, in a Robert Plant video?
Remember it? I still know the dance moves.
I’ll get me coat…
What about this?:
Now, I strenuously disagree! This is like a little mini-movie set in the quaint English countryside, in some nebulous past. Could be the middle ages, could be the 1800’s. It is not at all typical of 80’s videos. It has a kind of goofy charm that makes you smile.
The kind of video being discussed here require tons of 80’s hair, lots of eyeliner and face paint makeup, sullen skinny guys pretending to play instruments, everyone too cool and too glum. Dour young women in leather pants standing around. Duran Duran is the obvious choice.
Our daughter loves 60s/early 70s rock music. Last night we were perusing youtube and played some Stones, Who, Zeppelin, etc. Great stuff.
For laughs I played the worst 80s video I could recall: David Bowie & Mick Jagger - Dancing In The Street.
The video was so embarrassing to watch that I kept looking away. When I did catch a glimpse of it, I burst out laughing.
You win.
To be fair, that video (and the song) was knocked together pretty much overnight for the “Band Aid” gig at Wembley, so it had a somewhat cobbled together look.
I miss the cheesy videos of the 1980s.
I can’t hear Falco without thinking of Taco or Peter Schilling.
A couple of my favs:
She’s a Beauty.
Only the Lonely.
For sheer 80’sishness it’s really hard to top Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love. Really hard to top.
But Peter Gabriel does put in a valiant attempt with Sledgehammer.
For the more sophisticated set, there’s always Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams. Not exactly sure what’s up with the cows.
Or course the king of 80’s music videos was Michael Jackson, but most of them transcend the 80’s.