a primer to music pop culture from the eighties to the noughties

Category: Must-See-Video Page 2 of 4

Songs that are accompanied by a video that is just as important as the song itself – or in certain cases even more so

Back From The Void

When the Backstreet Boys, who had released their first album on an international market in 1996 and were already hugely successful in Europe told Jive Records president that they wanted to include a song called “Backstreet’s Back” – written by Swedish hitmakers Max Martin and Denniz Pop – on what was to be their debut album in the US, and even release it as a first single, he was having none of it. It was kind of hard to argue back from where exactly (the band argued back in the states, but didn’t get their way). And so the first million copies of the US album was produced without the track. Only when Radio stations close to Canada – where the song quickly caught on – started picking up the track and playing it, too, he relented and the track finally made it into the rest of the albums produced.

The song became a huge success in the states as well, but when it was time to produce the video (with director Joseph Kahn who so far had done mostly Hip-Hop and Grunge videos and wanted to diversify into pop) and it was decided to lean on Michel Jackson’s famous “Thriller” with a side-serving of the Rocky Horror Show, with their bus supposedly breaking down and them having to look for shelter in a haunted mansion, the label went through the same spiel again, arguing that MTV would not go for the concept. So the band funded the video themselves and had to fight hard to get reimbursed once the video – again – was quite successful after all.

It won “Best Group Video” in 1998’s Music Video Awards.

Staggering Stuttering

The art of Scat singing – vocal improvisation with nonsensical syllables, vocables and other sounds produced by means of the human vocal apparatus – has been part of Jazz vocalists’ repertoire since at least 1911 and was popularised in the Roaring Twenties by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Which is how a young John Paul Larking, a Californian child born in 1942, who had been suffering from a massive stutter ever since he began to speak, realised that there were means to communicate without having to go through what for him was constant humiliation: Music! He began to play the piano and became a proficient jazz pianist.

In 1990 Larkin moved to Berlin, where he found a thriving Jazz scene that welcomed him warmly and he became able to add singing to his acts as well despite the deep insecurities, receiving standing ovations. But when his agent Manfred Zähringer suggested to go one further and produce a song combining the modern jazz derivatives of dance and Hip Hop with scat singing he still was very apprehensive, fearing being laughed at and criticized again, as he was used to as a child. Luckily for us, his wife Judy was able to convince him to tackle the problem full frontal and speak about his struggle in his own way – through music.

He adopted a new persona along with it and Scatman John soon became a worldwide star at the age of fifty-three.

Sadly, he would contract lung cancer only four years later and died a month before the great party when we rolled over into 2000. Fsck Cancer!

Apocalyptic Celestial

We briefly touched the importance of Detroit for Techno. Seattle provided a similar role for Grunge (a slang term meaning “repugnant” or “dirt”), an alternative rock subgenre that blends Punk and Heavy Metal and was hugely popular in the early to mid Nineties. While some of the bands considered to be typical representatives of the genre embraced the term, others – like Soundgarden, one of a number of big names to initially sign with “Sub Pop”, the Seattle label that popularised the musical variety – did not at all.

Formed in 1984 it took the band ten years to get to their zenith, the album “Superunknown” which contained a number of Grammy award winning hits, among which “Black Hole Sun” is probably the best-known.

The song was allegedly written in about 15 minutes, with lead singer Chris Cornell mishearing something on the news as the titular quote, then fantasizing about what might happen should a black hole collide with our sun. It’s a rather bleak end-time scenario, but the singer disclosed that writing such lyrics “usually make me feel better”.

When it came to producing the video the band at the time was quite disillusioned, as they had been working with a number of directors that did not understand their point of view. So they told Howard Greenhalgh that they just wanted to stand there, doing nothing and distinctively not be excited about it, while he was given a free pass to do whatever he liked around them – an idea he ostensibly loved.

Crown Jewels Required

There are not many artists who may boast of being the suspect of academic disciplines, but as the official “Queen of Pop” (or at least the artist most commonly referred to by that moniker), Madonna can. She certainly is a polymath: Originally planning to pursue a career in modern dance she instead became a drummer before starting her solo career. Later she would also work as an actress, business woman, writer and director.

She was not always known as “Queen of Pop” though. When “Material Girl” was released as a single from her second studio album “Like A Virgin” it became a huge hit and as many misinterpreted the video (which is a retelling of Marilyn Monroe’s 1953 film “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and is supposed to explicitly show the “Material Girl” side to only be an act, while the actress really doesn’t care about worldly riches) the name stuck. It would take her many years to rewrite that image.

I only found out after scheduling this post that she turns 64 today. Happy Birthday!

I found out even later that it’s the 45th anniversary of Elvis’ death as well.

Newtonian vs. Quantum Physics

It’s been slightly over a month since NIST announced their winners of a six-year competition to find encryption algorithms that would withstand a quantum attack (and a few days since another one still in consideration got cracked with pre-quantum hardware). None of that work would have been possible without Jewish physicist Max Born, who fled to Great Britain with his family from the Nazi Regime in 1939. There his daughter Irene met an MI5 officer working on the Enigma project to decipher German top-secret messages (if you’re interested in the subject and would prefer an easy-to-read approach, Neal Stephenson’s book “Cryptonomicon” can not be recommended highly enough, but I digress). The couple emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1954 with their three children, the youngest of which was Olivia Newton-John, who started a musical career at the tender age of fourteen and soon became a regular on local TV. In 1974, she represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest, but lost to – you guessed it – Sweden.

Her career finally soared off four years later when she scored the lead role of Sandy in “Grease” alongside John Travolta. The movie became the biggest box-office hit of 1978 and yielded no less than three Top-5-Singles and to this day one of the best selling movie soundtracks. Personally I like her next movie, “Xanadu”, featuring a musical co-production with the Electric Light Orchestra even better, but then again I’m into all kinds of weird, so take that with a grain of salt.

By this time, just like Sandy, Newton-John had undergone a transformation from the least offensive woman in music to leather-clad vixen. Her biggest hit, “Physical” helped with the new image: the thinly veiled sexual references at the time were thought to be too provocative by Tina Turner, who had been offered the song before and turned it down (only to release the even more obvious “Private Dancer” three years later). The song would stay at number one of the Charts for an amazing 10 weeks, which by that time only Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” had achieved, and the video featuring fat men failing comically at what in 1981 was the newest gym fad – Aerobics – only to turn into fit gay couples the moment Newton-John left the room for a shower is simply hilarious.

Sadly, Newton-John has lost her fight with breast cancer two days ago. RIP.

Almost Lifelike CGI

Fifty-Three years, two weeks and five days ago Neil Armstrong uttered his famous words as he first set foot onto Earth’s big satellite. Some people to this day are certain that it was all staged, using studio photos and computer generated graphics.

Thirty-five years and one week ago MTV Europe went on air, with Dire Strait’s “Money For Nothing” being the first video that flickered into European music lovers’ homesteads. It featured lines Mark Knopfler – who had work-experience as a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post – had picked up from a guy standing next to him in an electronics store in New York City in front of a wall of TV’s (all playing MTV) and a guest performance by Sting (“I want my Em-Tee-Veeee….”). Most notably though it displayed breathtaking state-of-the-art CGI, depicting not one but two working-class men watching and commenting on music videos.

Knopfler was rather unimpressed, as he considered videos to be beneath his dignity, destroying the purity of the music. Luckily for us his girlfriend chimed in, finding the concept quite brilliant, and while Knopfler was supposedly not at all convinced he at least did not interfere with proceedings.

The video was supposed to have more details, like buttons on the shirts, which couldn’t be implemented as they ran out of budget. It still won the Video of the Year awards though.

But just think about what might have been possible, if only they had asked NASA, instead of having it directed by Steve Barron (whom we already know from A-Ha).

Stop! Hammertime!

There are few videos with such distinguished dances that a whole World of Warcraft race will forever be following suit (well, half a race, as the dances are gender-specific). Los Del Río’s “Macarena” was one such, or Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”. The single most recognisable dance-move, however, clearly goes the male orc. Or, well, to “M.C. Hammer” and his unforgettable “U Can’t Touch This”.

Released in 1990 the song features a sample of “Super Freak” by Rick Jones. And it looks as if history is repeating itself somewhat with me trying to educate the younger generation of VSHNeers here, as many of Hammer’s young listeners at the time were too young to know Jones’ song even though it was only 9 years old. The sample is used so prominently that a law suit ensued, ending with Jones being cited as a co-author and earning millions of dollars in royalties.

Even though Hammer lost some credibility in the rap community for incorporating too many pop and dance music elements he would have been set for life with the success of the song – had he not burned through seventy million dollars over the span of five years…

Rehab, California Style

Michael “Flea” Balzary and Anthony Kiedis formed their band “Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem” in 1983 when they were classmates at Fairfax High School. It would undergo a fair number of changes before becoming the group that is known these days as the “Red Hot Chilli Peppers”: to the name and personnel, but also to their musical style (with Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley playing on their second album) and quite noteably their lifestyles.

After their early modest success they had all been using heroin, but while most of the members somehow held together, the addiction took quite a toll on Kiedis. The band was already auditioning for a new singer when he managed to overcome the problem in rehab and rejoined them with new enthusiasm. As is often the case, he came down with bouts of depression, and when he drove home from a rehearsal session a few years later a poem came unto him, reminiscing about how he had been under the bridge he was just driving over a few years back, looking for drugs, and how he never wanted to get back to that low point in his life.

When producer Rick Rubin found the poem in Kiedis’ notebook he immediately saw potential, but the singer was reluctant. However, once he was persuaded to at least show it to his bandmates they immediately went to their respective instruments and started working on the song.

It kicked their career into high gear, out of the somewhat obscure Alternative Rock scene into mainstream. And when the video, directed by none other than Gus Van Sant entered heavy rotation on MTV they definitely had arrived in the olymp of pop music.

Hit Me, Britney

I remember a day in what must have been about 2000 or 2001 in a gloomy Bonnie Prince Pub, when my fellow drinking mates and I – all students at ETH proud of their good taste in music – finally admitted (after sampling copious amounts of the liquid on tap) that despite their catering to the masses, secretly we did like the Spice Girls. We did not change the station when Christina Aguilera came on. We adored Britney Spears.

When she’s making headlines these days, it sadly tends to be because of her long and difficult struggle with conservatorship, and not for being “The Princess of Pop”. Having started her career in early childhood – winning gymnastic competitions and talent shows alike – her first breakthrough happened in 1992 when she was cast as a member of the rekindled “Mickey Mouse Club” alongside Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, and Ryan Gosling. After the show was canceled it took a few years before she returned to the big stage, but boy, did she have an impact, when she finally did so with “…Baby One More Time” in 1998, still at the tender age of sixteen.

The song was named by Rolling Stone Magazine as “the greatest debut single of all time” as recently as 2020. The video has been voted the best of the entire 1990s and one of the most influential in the history of pop music. And a whole generation of young men had their hormones thoroughly shaken up. But unlike other videos where young women cater to the sexist ideals of men the video was Britney’s own product from A to Z. The dancing? Her idea. The wardrobe? Her choice. The knotted T-Shirt? Her final touch. The music… well, that’s another topic (the song had been offered to both “The Backstreet Boys” and “TLC” before, but they were not interested).

And the “love interest”? Was her cousin Chad.

Her career had only just started. She would produce a row of other really big hits over the years, but they would become less and less successful in time. It’s hard to have an even bigger hit when you start at that level.

This Is Not A Rick-Roll

If you paid close attention to this week’s selection of artists you might have noticed that they all shared a common detail: a leading letter “r”. And so we’ll round out the week with rrrrrolling royalty:

You might only know the song from the practice of “Rickrolling” – likely the first worldwide Internet prank – where an unsuspecting victim is baited into clicking onto a link behind which something completely different is suspected, only to be doted on by a merry Rick Astley, dancing happily around the London Borough of Harrow. However, by the time the song thus gained a second life it had already been Ashley’s signature song and a huge success for two decades.

The singer initially was not too sure what to think of himself becoming a meme just when he was coming back to perform after a ten-year hiatus, but he soon embraced the jolly prank and has not only made his peace with it, but played into the phenomenon himself on a couple of occasions.

We’re, however, not presenting this as a prank, but as what it really is: A video of the 80ies you ought to know, even had it not become a meme. And would encourage you to watch it through to the end for once in your life. It’s a flashback into a care-free time not likely to occur again anytime soon, and just watching the happy faces of the protagonists does seem like a good reason to prank someone into observing it.

The common detail of this weeks selection of videos really was of course that they all had some sort of direction in the title. Or was it?

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