Pulling out Sheena Easton's first big American hit makes me think about all those other artists who were right there on the edge of the video revolution, making their pop music in 1979 and 1980 (MTV premiered in the summer of 1981; Friday Night Videos didn't come along until 1983). Here's one of my favorites from that era. A lot slicker than Easton's effort, but with a nice bit of hammy simplicity, nonetheless. Chrissie Hynde makes a good flirt.
In some ways I think that having fewer tools forced people to make better videos. (I think that's clear with movies, too- Michael Bay being perhaps the clearest case of someone who can only play with tools, but there are lots of cases.) Maybe this is just showing that I'm old, but I still think some of the best videos are fairly early ones. Bowie's _Let's Dance_, for example.
ReplyDeleteI remember it being a particularly hard time in my life when I both wanted to stay up to watch Friday Night Videos (we didn't have cable and I think my mother would have refused to let us have MTV anyway) and get up early to watch the Cartoons that came on at 6pm- Transformers, maybe. Thankfully that overlap didn't last long.