found in the pile of old stuff
Sep. 25th, 2007 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSome people have been watching new TV shows. I've been watching old music videos.
There was a brief period in the early 80s when I listened to pop radio frequently, because for some mysterious reason songs that I actually liked were getting airplay. It suddenly occurred to me yesterday that most of those songs probably had music videos, although I never saw any of them. (I did see MTV sporadically, usually in hotel rooms during SF conventions, but I rarely found a song I liked there.) Now that I have access to YouTube, I can catch up on what I missed.
And my guess for the reason for a few songs I actually liked making it to the charts is that they were assisted by having really good videos - weird stuff, back when weird stuff of this kind was a novelty. I'm especially taken with the surreal silliness in Men at Work's "Down Under" and Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun". I admit skepticism at the implied message in the latter, which is that if everyone would just stop being so uptight, the way they'd all like to have fun is by dancing at a crowded, noisy party in Cyndi's bedroom, but as with the equally dubious message of the film Shakespeare in Love (writers can't really make anything up, but can only write their own biographies), it's presented with such winning wit and joie de vivre that you can't really object.
This may all be 25-year-old news to you, but while I've known these songs all that time, the videos are genuinely new news to me. Anyway it makes a pleasant break from the grinding task of finding a new rental home, a job I'll write about after it's finished.
There was a brief period in the early 80s when I listened to pop radio frequently, because for some mysterious reason songs that I actually liked were getting airplay. It suddenly occurred to me yesterday that most of those songs probably had music videos, although I never saw any of them. (I did see MTV sporadically, usually in hotel rooms during SF conventions, but I rarely found a song I liked there.) Now that I have access to YouTube, I can catch up on what I missed.
And my guess for the reason for a few songs I actually liked making it to the charts is that they were assisted by having really good videos - weird stuff, back when weird stuff of this kind was a novelty. I'm especially taken with the surreal silliness in Men at Work's "Down Under" and Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun". I admit skepticism at the implied message in the latter, which is that if everyone would just stop being so uptight, the way they'd all like to have fun is by dancing at a crowded, noisy party in Cyndi's bedroom, but as with the equally dubious message of the film Shakespeare in Love (writers can't really make anything up, but can only write their own biographies), it's presented with such winning wit and joie de vivre that you can't really object.
This may all be 25-year-old news to you, but while I've known these songs all that time, the videos are genuinely new news to me. Anyway it makes a pleasant break from the grinding task of finding a new rental home, a job I'll write about after it's finished.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 05:35 am (UTC)Remember the Lego version of the "Knights of the Round Table" song from Holy Grail?
This is even funnier, I swear.