Category: Must-See-Video Page 2 of 4

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.

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!

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…

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.

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?