The Ten Most Batshit Music Videos of 1984
1984 was the year pop music peaked, so it’s probably no coincidence that it’s also the year music videos went completely off the fucking rails. With way too much money and WAY too much cocaine for anyone to tell them “no,” directors and cinematographers had no choice but to indulge in the most insane whims of whatever happened to be floating around in pop stars’ sordid subconscious (spoilers: mostly weird sex).
Mind you, wild-ass music videos are not singular to 1984; I’ve been rocking Peter Gabriel’s “Shock The Monkey” since 1982, and to this day I have no idea what that song OR that video are about (post-colonialism commentary? animal rights activism? don’t get in a fight with a bunch of little persons? who the fuck knows). What makes 1984 stand out is the sheer volume of these bananas-ass videos, and trust me, it was VERY hard to whittle the list down to merely ten. That I was forced by technicality to leave out Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is both a wonder and a horror.
Make no mistake: these videos are AWESOME. They are also the craziest goddamn things ever committed to film, which means I need to get my David Lynch jokes over with now so we can all move on. Blah blah Eraserhead yada yada Dumbland. Right, that’s sorted. On to the list.
10. The Cars, “Magic”
Hard to accept that purveyors of boring-ass microwave music The Cars — yes, I said it! They’re fucking boring and I’m not sorry! — had some of the most flat-out bonkers videos in a year saturated with bonkers videos. Outside of some blank Hollywood estate, a combination of Street Fighter characters, rejects from unused Northern Exposure scripts, and the evening gown portion of a beauty pageant have converged to fawn over anemic game show host Ric Ocasek, who has apparently gained the Jesus powers of walking on water and having lots of people want to touch him for some reason. The whole thing plays like a Tim Burton film, with the exception that there are actual black people in this.
9. Ratt, “Round and Round”
INSIDE of some blank Hollywood estate — perhaps the very same one! Who’s up for a 1984 music video cinematic universe, eh? eh? — Milton Berle’s upscale family is having their usual dinner of greyed peas, half-and-half containers in a piquant tartar sauce, and a whole can of cat food while Ratt practices in their attic. What the hell are they doing in the attic? Are they renters? What kind of California millionaire has to rent out their attic to a rock band? Are they Milton Berle’s estranged sons, banished to the secret rooms of the mansion like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre? None of this makes any sense, but who cares, Lisa Dean strips down to a Cirque du Soleil outfit and hops around like a nervous wallaby.
8. Scandal feat. Patty Smyth, “The Warrior”
Gritty, industrial post-apocalypse videos were unusually popular in the mid-80s; everyone from Tom Petty to Duran Duran was putting out faux-Mad Max musical fantasy worlds. This video is not that, but it thinks it is. Patty Smyth’s nylons and geisha makeup remain pristine through a whole-ass fight in a steam-filled alleyway, while her hair spontaneously changes styles at least three times. It’s kind of like those episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they’re supposed to be on some destitute, lawless planet, except everyone just looks like a bunch of Starlight Express cosplayers on a Cop Rock set.
7. Billy Ocean, “Loverboy”
“Okay, here’s the pitch. Billy Ocean’s music is SO HOT, they actually play it in OTHER GALAXIES. So he’s gonna be in the video, right, but not ACTUALLY in the video. There’s gonna be a video WITHIN the video, which plays on a futuristic sort of cubist holographic jukebox. A META-video.”
“So where’s this jukebox?”
“In a bar filled with aliens at the bottom of a cave on the edge of an ocean that a lizard bounty hunter is frequenting.”
“Ah.”
“Also there are Jawas. Don’t tell George Lucas.”
6. Cyndi Lauper, “She Bop”
In case you didn’t know (I DEFINITELY DIDN’T at age ten), this song is about masturbation. Which, you know, fine actually, and frankly the least disturbing thing about this video. This is the point in the list where the videos cross the line from merely odd to outright fucking deranged. From the very first shot, we are thrust into a world where people who frequent burger chains are transformed into sterile rhythmic clones by Muppet-like mad scientist cooks. Lauper is clearly getting off in her car as she awaits 50s-style car service, and at this point I’m only 30 seconds into the video, which gets FAR WEIRDER from there. There’s an animated segment. Sigmund Freud runs a bingo game. Captain Lou Albano shows up (again). Cyndi Lauper was a NUT.
5. Van Halen, “Hot For Teacher”
Look, it’s Van Halen. You’re gonna have some tits and ass. I realize some of these videos haven’t aged well, but we’re not here to talk about the runaway female objectification of hair metal bands. We’re here to talk about the runaway Dutch angles, black-and-white footage, and wide-angle lenses in this video that would make Alfred Hitchcock say: “dial it back, fellas.” That said, the presence of child actors makes this video EXCEEDINGLY CREEPY at best, which I suppose is hardly surprising given the musical source material. I get the distinct feeling something traumatic happened to David Lee Roth around age twelve, and he’s been dealing with it in the public eye every since.
4. Laura Branigan, “Self Control”
Now THIS is a goddamn sexy video. Don’t get me wrong, it’s also still a CRAZY video, but Laura Branigan has no time for that doublespeak innuendo bullshit from “She Bop.” She is here to bring you a GROWN ASS short film directed by The French Connection’s William Friedkin, packed with lesbian ballerinas, mannequin orgies, and a hot fuck with the Phantom of the Opera. It’s like a cross between Eyes Wide Shut and Darkman, and it’s essentially the video “The Warrior” wishes it was. I imagine this is an accurate representation of what’s happening at all those graduate student parties I don’t get invited to. It’s MAGNIFICENTLY horny.
3. The Cars, “You Might Think”
Un-fucking-believably, The Cars managed to make this list TWICE. I’ll refrain from dragging the PlayStation 1 quality CGI, which would have admittedly been quite impressive a full decade before PlayStation even existed. What’s important is that this video approaches fever-dream levels of weirdness. Instead of everyone obsessing over Ocasek, here we get Ocasek obsessing over one woman, whom I might note looks SUSPICIOUSLY like Paulina Porizkova. Which would be bad enough, but here Ocasek’s magic powers have been upgraded to that kid from the “It’s a Good Life” episode of The Twilight Zone, and he employs his terrifying Lovecraftian abilities to reduce her existence to a living hell. The video ends with no resolution, because how the fuck could it?
2. Yes, “Owner of a Lonely Heart”
You need one seriously ratfuck video to usher in the Trevor Horn era of Yes, the bug-eyed lunatic responsible for both The Buggles and The Art of Noise, and this sonofabitch does not fail to deliver. Starting off with some generic “band practicing in a church” bullshit, the video actually gets through the entire first verse and chorus, and then SIKE! You thought this was a normal music video, but now the members of Yes have suddenly started turning into snakes and eagles over a music bed of NO MUSIC BED WHATSOEVER. This bullshit goes on for a FULL MINUTE, and then the song STARTS AGAIN FROM THE BEGINNING. And now the ACTUAL video begins, where a Christian Bale lookalike business geek finds himself thrust into a Terry Gilliam world of bureaucratic oppression and, I guess, scorpions? And then there’s a fight in a foundry? And then business guy turns into a hawk? It’s like some fucked-up BBC documentary about Animorphs.
1. Thomas Dolby, “Hyperactive!”
There’s exactly one man in the 80s who can out-bonkers Trevor Horn. Thomas Dolby is truly in a weirdness class of his own. Not content to merely explore his subconscious through the medium of the music video, he flat-out psychoanalyzes himself IN the video. Alternating through black and white voids, because shooting locations are for cowards, Dolby turns the symbolism dial up to eleven, operating multiple puppets of himself and eviscerating his own body in a truly impressive variety of ways. Don’t bother trying to understand any of this; it’s dream logic in the truest sense, a conceptual chiaroscuro of sensation for sensorium’s sake. Just like David Lynch! HA HA FOOLED YOU MOTHERFUCKERS, THE WHOLE VIDEO HAPPENS IN THE BLACK LODGE, COME AT ME HATERS.
