Top Music Videos of the Eighties

Looking back at the 1980s is a serious nostalgia trip for me. Being eleven years old or so at the nexus of MTV and the music video revolution (in an era before the world had been brought into the wild west of our looming, dystopian, cyberpunk future--though it was on the cusp) was a real mind trip. YouTube has thankfully provided the avenue in which an aging member of Generation X can look back on the pre-Grunge days when POP (in both the literal and figurative sense; i.e. Pepsi and Coke fueled the career status of so many fading into oblivion singers and artists of the era) ruled the video airwaves.

At any rate, here's a sampling of what I can squeeze into a Vocal post of videos that DEFINE that era for me, as iconic. In the order I roughly discovered the weird, surreal wonder of them. Let's, as Arsenio Hall used to say, fist-pumping the air, "Get BUSY!"

1. Wall of Voodoo - "Mexican Radio"

I remember coming home from elementary school, my cousin stretched out in my late Granpa's chair, and watching this bizarro world mind-bender of a video from New Wavey One Hit Wonders "Wall of Voodoo," whose members (such as the late drummer Joe Nanini) had spent the previous decade doing time in L.A. punk bands such as The Bags and The Plugz. This song is so damned good, and the video, featuring a pot of beans with a face emerging from it, a barbecue spit with a lizard to be eaten, pictures of the deformed, and a noir-esque office that looks like Philip Marlowe moved south of the border, left an indelible 1980s impression on my little brainpan.

2. Eurythmics - "Sweet Dreams"

My earliest erotic fixations were on the wild, pink-haired, buzzcut dom image projected by ANNIE LENNOX in this surrealistic little music film of a hopelessly antique-looking computer terminal, a cow chewing cud, a boardroom somewhere in the subconscious mind, her and fellow bandmate Dave Stewart meditating while her Third Eye glows, etc. The video has a vibe of a corporate predator contemplating, like Alexander the Great contemplating a world he wants to conquer. Behind Lennox are back-projected images of the Moon Landing. The lyrics allude to being "used and abused." By Annie? With her riding crop? Mein Gott, let's hope so! Probably influenced my later bent toward surrealism more than anything else.

3. Peter Gabriel - "Shock the Monkey"

This video is so strange, reading a subtext into it is almost impossible. And that's keeping in mind all of this stuff is open to interpretation. The story seems to suggest the singer or protagonist of the video has discovered, in the confines of his prison-like mind (which is a dark place with slats of board for the walls, papers scattered all over the floor, a projector playing images of a caged monkey (what else?), and weird light (illuminating his sins? failures?) shining through) a power or presence greater than himself, chasing him through the woods, and transforming him into the spooky, white suit-wearing witch doctor that sits in a ring of fire wearing white pancake makeup with inscrutable, voodooistic face markings and beating two sticks together. (In a room that is now all-white, with a lamp that goes poltergeisting around.) A bust of an incomplete or badly-scarred or burned human face sits on a desk. But that description isn't the half of it. It could be a film/song about the cruelties of animal experimentation (the suggestion of a smartly dressed witch doctor), or it could be something else. Open to interpretation, but the music is minimal, new wave synth electronica, high and tight as a monkey's arsehole. But what of the dwarfs that jump on his back? That's a mildly uncomfortable visual allegory in a video with monkey (i.e. "monkey on his back") in the title. Probably wouldn't pass muster today.

4. Midnight Oil - "Beds Are Burning"

This song is so infectiously good, you can start listening to it and end up with repeat listens, finding you want to hear tall, jerky, bald-headed singer Pete Garrett's weird vocalizations over and over. But, almost everyone on planet Earth has heard this song at least once. The video is so classic it's virtually iconic. The Midnight Oil play the song rolling across the Australian Outback in an old, rickety-ass truck; they party down with aboriginal children and young girls looking as if they are vaguely trying to imitate Maddona; even someone's old momma gets into the act. Meanwhile, we have the tall, aforementioned jerky (Physically. I don't mean personality-wise) Garrett jerking jerkily as fast-motion desert road footage is zoomed in against a stark Australian backdrop. There is some weird illuminated tape guy or gal dancing ritualistically against a black background. The video is so iconic I think it's now a part of the collective unconscious. Midnight Oil were the one-hit wonders of the politically-infused pop scene, compared to U2 and The Clash. Pete Garett later became a politician.

5. New Order - "True Faith"

A very serious song about a serious subject (drug addiction, but could also be interpreted as a song awakening from denial of sexual abuse), the lyrics allude to a day the singer "use to think would never come"; i.e. he was waiting in vain with something buried deep within, a secret. But the morning sun was "the drug that brings me near, to the childhood I lost..." So deeply moving on so many levels.

The video has dancers and choreographed fights by people wearing foam-rubber "balloon suits" so they can't hurt each other. It could be the fantasy bridge of a galactic starcruiser for weird space cadets practicing their jiu-jitsu. A woman in green face makeup does sign language expertly. People jump in unison, the band jams the song from some forgotten stage of thirty-five years ago. Incredible excellence abounds.

Now that's all we want to post in this part, otherwise, the damn page will go all funny as if it had been bad-touched by too many embeds and will take forever to scroll. Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Crowded House, Simple Minds, The Bangles, U2, Michael Jackson, Men Without Hats, Men At Work, Devo, and Genesis will just have to wait. But, to prove that we're on the up and up about this sort of thing, we post ONE MORE video that exemplifies 1980s style and panache. From "Night Flight", the USA cable network's ancient late night (wee hours of the morning) video variety program that lasted ALL NIGHT, until it was replaced with..."USA Up All Night." Which was hosted by the late Gilbert Gottfried. "Up All Night" mostly played bad sex comedies and Troma Films. "Night Flight," however, had a variety, a huge one: music videos, short films, experimental stuff, comedies, punk rock documentaries, and on and on. Cartoons. That sort of hodge-podge of weirdness.

See you in Part 2, dudes and dudettes. Have a tubular day!

Night Flight - Rockit!

Cult Films and Midnight Movies: "From High Art to Low Trash Vol 1 by Tom Baker