Today’s Michael Jackson memorial got me to reflecting on his music and, more accurately, his music videos.
Michael elevated the art of the music video – there’s no denying that. What, until Billie Jean and Beat It came along, was usually the band lip-synching on a stage, or actual concert footage, it was now something that told a visual story that mirrored the song in some way. Other acts saw the success this garnered Michael and they started getting into the act. Soon, the music video was way more than just the performers, uh, performing. Animation, elaborate sets and mini movies were the standard. And there’s no doubt this helped sell boat-loads of LPs and cassettes. I know it worked on me.
I LOVED music videos. We didn’t have MTV at the time (our cable company didn’t offer it) so we were left with Friday Night Videos and an old, awesome show on WTBS called "Night Tracks" which was like four hours of videos every Friday and Saturday night. I had a lot of videos I looked forward to seeing and, in fact, I’ve probably forgotten way more than I remember. I preferred the ones that told stories. Videos of the band or singer just doing their thing were boring. I wanted mini-movies. And there were plenty of them.
Here’s just a handful of the ones I remember the most. Maybe not "favorite", but certainly cool enough to rate a spot on a list (which, as usual, is not in any order):
The aforementioned "Billie Jean" and "Beat It". Both opened a lot of doors and helped propel Michael to the superstardom he deserved.
"Take on Me" by A-Ha. The chick was cute (and so was the guy, I suppose) and the animation was pretty basic. But when that camera panned around the real girl and cartoon guy and they switched from real to cartoon and vice versa?!? Instant hit.
"Money For Nothing" – Dire Straits. Not so much a "story" video, but the animation was new at the time and it looked really cool..
"Shadows of the Night" and "Love is a Battlefield" – Pat Benatar. In one she’s a spy flying a plane in WWII and in the other she plays a runaway who gets roped into being a hooker who fights back.
"Thriller" – Michael Jackson. Not having MTV worked in my favor because this made it’s debut on Friday Night Videos. Probably the coolest video ever, if only because it has dancing zombies.
Like I said, I knows there’s tons more. And one of these days I’d like to actually get around to finding copies of them and making a "mix-DVD".
So, thanks Mike. Thanks for helping to make the music video more than just a 4 minute concert clip.
