Month: June 2022

While it’s a simple enough concept, the video to Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” back in 1986 provided us with a proper “WTF” moment. It certainly was one of the most noted ones of the era.

The concept of five models of the time as a – quite obviously fake – band was so iconic, that it would be recycled by Robert Palmer in two further videos – but much more noteably in 2003’s epic rom-com “Love Actually”, where the video is parodied by models going one step further when it comes to blank expressions, to the point of being obviously bored to death.

November 11th, 1991 marked the 15th birthday of a close friend of mine. But that’s not what I remember the day for. What stood out that day was the news on the telly, specifically 10vor10, which back then was a fairly new addition to the Swiss news scene, outfitted with an extraordinary permission to experiment a bit. And so they did:

As one of a select few television channels in the world DRS (as the channel was called back then) was allowed to broadcast Michael Jackson’s newest video: “Black or White”. It would be featuring mind-numbing “morphing” technology on faces – something a room full of computers had been working on for months, as the presenter, Walter “index finger of the nation” Eggenberger, was proud to inform us. Sure, it wasn’t the moon-landing, but it was presented in a similar way and including the introduction it took up more than half of the 30 minutes the programme was allotted.

So we sat. And we watched. And we saw Macaulay – you might never have heard that name, but he is the sole reason for any of your friends – well, these days probably: your uncles – being called Kevin. Branding a pristine Gibson’s guitar. And then there were Tess Harper, John Goodman, Tyra Banks!

We were properly impressed at the time.

Yes, you do have to watch it to the end. And no, we did not understand those last four minutes either.

No, it was not the first video by far to accompany a song. MTV had existed for a good five years by the time Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” came out in 1986. Nevertheless, this was a game-changer. Combining a number of techniques that had been tried out tentatively before, this video would become the definition of what the term “Music-Video” would mean in the future. It featured heavily in MTV’s then-famous self-referential clips. It required Peter, at the time still mostly of Genesis-fame, to spend 16 hours lying under a glass sheet and it won 9 MTV awards in 1987, to this day the most any video ever won.