Category: Must-See-Video Page 1 of 4

Sometimes bands release a song that is just not like the others. And when that one happens to be the one that becomes hugely popular and people expect all their work to sound like that they might be in for a surprise. Think of Extreme’s More Than Words for example, or Frank Zappa’s Bobby Brown.

In the case of Beastie Boys and (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party) it was not so much the music that was different. It was already the fourth single of their first album Licensed To Ill and they had well transitioned from the original hardcore punk the band was playing in the early 80ies into Hip Hop with that disc. But the irony of the song, which was supposed to be a parody on drunken frat boys only interested in making party, when the band actually had always cared deeply about political issues, was simply lost on most fans. And so it took a while for both the party-goers to realise the joke was on them (my money is on most of them still not being there) and die-hard rap-purists who were horrified by the lyrics (to the point where they were accused of being outright racist) to see the group for what they really were: one of the most important hip-hop acts of all time. Fortunately their career would go on for a good thirty years – plenty of time to set things straight.

MTV was certain that this was going to go down well with their young male clientèle, so they held a spot in the heavy rotation open for the video while it was being made. The budget of a whopping $20k unfortunately did not allow them to buy fresh whipped cream, so they used expired cans appropriated from supermarket trash bins, and as a result the set smelled so badly of rotten eggs that some of the actors had a hard time trying not to vomit.

As we have already ventured all the way back to the 60ies this week let’s have a quick look at the cover of Jimmy Hendrix’ third and last studio album, Electric Ladyland, which was released in 1968. The British cover, that is. Hendrix had quite explicitly asked for a specific picture taken by Linda Eastman (later McCartney) depicting the Jimmy Hendrix Experience sitting on the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in New York’s Central Park, surrounded by children. However, his American label, Reprise, used a blurry concert-picture of his head in yellow and red instead – and British label Track Records used a picture of 19 naked women. Hendrix was not amused and several record dealers did not sell the album or only wrapped in brown paper, calling it pornographic by nature.

The cover would be referenced a couple of times over the years, for example by German Punk-Rockers Die Toten Hosen, who used a similar cover for their 1993 Best-Of album “Reich & Sexy”. Or, earlier the same year, by the British New Wave band The Beloved, whose video for “Sweet Harmony” made quite a stir. Contrary to Hendrix’ album cover they used high contrast, over-exposure, hair and extremities to cover all private parts and singer John Marsh called it “as asexual as you can get”, but at least Beavis & Butt-head are on tape as liking it for all the “nude chicks”…

While today’s on-line discussions about the countless micro-issues concerning the general theme of people’s gender, sexuality and “wokeness” might often be loud, aggressive and sometimes outright hideous at least in our western parts of the world (maybe excluding Trump’s America) for most people it’s not that big an issue anymore to come out as gay. But that is a relatively new achievement. While there were some gay couples in movies, for example, something always tended to go awry in these stories up until at least the noughties and if we go back even a little bit more coming out of the closet was often outright dangerous, especially outside of the big cities.

So while there was some representation in music, Jimmy Sommerville and his flatmates in London were quite unhappy with the inoffensive nature it tended to have as opposed to what they, being openly gay, experienced in everyday life and it was important for them that their band, Bronski Beat, addressed homosexual issues in a political context.

Their breakthrough song, Smalltown Boy, describes the struggles of a queer lad from the country, being attacked by a homophobic gang, outed to his parents by the police and consequently forced to leave the village where he grew up.

The commercial success was proof that the general public had long moved further than the loud bigoted minority.

In our ongoing journey, we are covering many exceptional songs. But from time to time we also have to give a nod to the terrible ones. Some atrocious anthems turned into massive master-strokes and in order to have a holistic education you obviously need to know about these as well.

So without further ado we present the Danish-Norwegian band Aqua. Mostly considered a one-hit wonder outside their native countries they landed a huge international hit with “Barbie Girl” that in the UK to this day remains one of the best-selling singles ever. It certainly did not hurt sales that they were sued by Mattel, the manufacturer of the eponymous doll (Mattel lost, being advised to “chill” by the judge).

Shortly after the lawsuit Mattel changed the proportions of the doll slightly – for only the third time since the first models were sold in 1959.

One night shortly after I first moved out back in 1996 my flat-mate brought a little gem to watch for our movie-night: a VHS tape containing a copy of a copy of a feature-length movie made with a budget of not even thirty thousand dollars, and filmed almost entirely in and around the store where director Kevin Smith actually worked. Clerks immediately became a favourite of ours, due to lines like “Chicks with dicks that put mine to shame”, the classic “I’m not even supposed to be here today”, and the films secret real stars: Jay and Silent Bob, a pair of drug dealers loitering all day long in front of the store. A whole bunch of films playing in that universe would follow, and of course Jay and Silent Bob featured in all of them. Particularly in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”, that has Because I Got High by Afroman as it’s theme song.

Joseph Edgar Foreman, as Afroman’s civil name is, had started writing songs in eight grade. When he was kicked out of school for sagging his pants, he made a song about the teacher inflicting the punishment and sold this to everyone at the school. While this worked quite well, he was still only ever able to sell a few hundred copies. But when file-sharing became a thing in the late nineties, what the big record companies considered the downfall of their industry turned out to be a boon for small artists like Afroman.

Because I Got High, written in all of a couple of minutes – about the span of attention the protagonist could muster – went what we would call viral these days on Napster, and soon enough the song was played on the Howard Stern show. It became a huge international hit and the most downloaded ringtone in 2002. As so many artists, despite releasing many albums and being active to this day Afroman never was able to make quite such a splash again.

The video of course features Jay and Silent Bob.

Yes, Director Kevin Smith is Silent Bob.

So far we’ve talked a fair bit about the history and the importance of music videos on MTV, as for almost all of the timespan we’re covering that was the place where you needed to be in order to make it, especially when it came to international popularity. However, in 2005 a new portal appeared in the world that would change the possibilities to become famous forever.

Originally intended to be a dating platform (hello, Facebook) where you could upload a short presentation of yourself, YouTube soon opened it’s field for all kinds of videos, and different to the first online video-sharing site (Vimeo) it grew rapidly right from the beginning. Suddenly it was possible to post your videos and become a) independent of the whims of MTV’s board and VJs and b) able to create content at much cheaper rates.

Early adapters of the new site were OK Go, who managed to score what might just be the first music video going viral with “Here It Goes Again”. It features a complicated choreography by Trish Sie, the sister of lead singer Damian Kulash, on treadmills that took seventeen takes to film, out of which in only three the band managed to stay on the routine. Its home-made, unprofessional look yet everything falling into place is mirrored in today’s viral TikToks, but at the time this was something never seen before (well, maybe apart from this video). It soon became the most watched video of all YouTube and would eventually win a Grammy.

I would guess not many people remember the actual music these days, but if you were on the interwebs back then I bet you do remember the video.

They originally wanted to call the song “The Treadmill Song” but decided against it, in order not to confuse people who hadn’t seen the video. In hindsight they need not have bothered…

It’s our 50th episode and to celebrate that we’re having a special treat: One of the most important, influential and decade-defining videos of the 1990’s.

One night in the winter of 1990 Kathleen Hanna, singer of Bikini Kill, and Kurt Cobain were out spraying graffiti in the streets of Seattle and got hideously plastered before hanging out at his room, where the intoxicated Hanna took out a sharpie and began to write on the walls. As Cobain had been recently dumped by her bandmate Tobi Vail she thought it important to let her readers now that he reeked of Vail’s deodorant, “Teen Spirit”. Alas, the meaning was lost on Cobain, who read “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit” as a compliment of his rebellious essence and asked Hanna for permission to use the phrase for the title of a song he had been working on. He intended it to be “the ultimate pop song – ripping off The Pixies”. The manufacturer of the deodorant certainly welcomed the free publicity…

The song became a huge hit and as a result Cobain was often considered a spokesman for Generation X – for whom “Here we are now, entertain us” became somewhat of a credo – , which he despised just as much as the term “Grunge” that was assigned to their music.

The audience in the video was recruited at a Nirvana concert a few days earlier, where director Samuel Bayer handed out flyers looking for kids between 18 and 25, attending as a typical high-school persona: punk, nerd, jock (Well, most of them were. The cheerleaders came from a local strip club). They had expected to be there for an hour or so, but were ordered to sit in the stands and look bored for more than 11 hours, while the band was acting out a prep rally. As a result there was quite some pent up aggression when they finally requested to destroy the set – and when permitted so they did. The mosh pit and destruction is quite real.

Up to this point it was the norm for people on MTV to be pretty and trendy and initially the network refused to play the video. However, they finally gave in and due to the video the practice actually changed, paving the way for artists with “radio faces” – and by the year 2000 it had become the most played video on MTV Europe.

Note from the editor: So we made it to 50 videos. Yay! Unfortunately the two visitors we get on a good day don’t really justify the time required to keep up the pace, which is why starting next week we’re cutting down to two episodes per week. Thank you for your understanding!

It was in the late 60ies, that Richard Anthony Hewson started his work arranging songs for other bands and he soon came up with quite a portfolio, working with such illustrious names as The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Herbie Hancock, Supertramp, Diana Ross, Chris De Burgh and many others. So we’ll forgive the sign of a slightly inflated ego that shines through when he named the band with which he was going to produce his own music after himself – RAH band – especially given that he was, in fact, the band’s only actual member.

Founded in 1977 the band’s first hit was “The Crunch”, an instrumental involving no synthesizers in which Hewson played all the instruments himself. Their biggest hit, “Clouds Across The Moon”, however, involved quite a few machine-generated melodies, as well as vocals provided by his wife, “Dizzy Lizzy”. Can’t stray too far, now, can we?

They obviously spared no expenses in the costume department, did they?