411 Music Ten Deep 7.30.10: Top Ten Videos of the '80s

Posted by Andrew Moll on 07.30.2010

From Michael Jackson's "Thriller" to Madonna's "Like a Prayer" We count down the top videos of the 1980s, all in this week's edition of 411 Music Ten Deep!


(Disclaimer: All opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of 411 Music and its staff.)


Welcome everybody to another informative and entertaining addition of 411 Music Ten Deep. If you're anything like me, you've been dangerously obsessed with Inception and so, I know present you with this video, which needs to be watched if you've seen the movie. With that out of the way, we can move on the main course, which begins with a look back to the responses to last week's column on the Top Ten Frontmen:





The consensus amongst the commentors was that Freddie Mercury should have been number one, and it's tough to argue against that, although I still go with Morrison. I do wonder what would have become of Queen if he had lived. Would they be the ones embarassing themselves at the Super Bowl like The Who? It could've happened.

Certainly not a bad list but Springsteen needs to be on there somewhere.
Posted By: Zach (Guest) on July 23, 2010 at 12:38 AM

I think this is a fairly good list. But you forgot a man that built his career from his live shows. Bruce Springsteen was discovered due to his live performances. Legendary four hour shows. Plus you can't put Vedder and Bono on ahead of Bruce. They both idolize the man. Bruce was climbing speaker towers and stage diving when Eddie was in diapers. It is not a coincidence that Bruce plays Born To Run with the house lights on and PJ plays the last encore with them on too.
Posted By: Jbro2222 (Guest) on July 23, 2010 at 03:47 PM

As so often happens with this column, it ends up being an issue of semantics, but I don't consider Bruce as a frontman in the traditional sense. He, like Petty or Costello, are more band leaders than frontmen.

Henry Rollins laughs at your list.
Posted By: MBD (Guest) on July 23, 2010 at 06:43 PM

I'm fine with this. That's because Henry Rollins is better at everything than me or you. Singer, poet, talk show host, he's just pretty damn great.

Good list. I'd throw Mike Patton, (sober) Scott Weiland, Phil Anselmo, Maynard, Trent Reznor, Bob Dylan, Chino Moreno, Axl...I guess it would be really hard for me to narrow it down to just 10. They all f'ing rock.
Posted By: Steve (Guest) on July 23, 2010 at 11:26 AM

Sober Scott Weiland (at least I think he was sober) was pretty great in concert with STP about a decade ago when I saw him. Some people just know how to entertain onstage, and he's certainly one of them.

The omission of Steve Perry gives me a sad face.

Though I think he may be the most over-rated human/lyricist there ever was, on stage, Morrison was both Adonis and, as Lester Bangs so wonderfully put it, "Bozo Dionysus." Jim could have the audience in a trace or wanting to riot and murder him, often at the same time. Not sure that I'd put him above Mercury or Robert Plant, though.
Posted By: RudoWakening (Guest) on July 23, 2010 at 11:26 AM

And that is the reason, to me at least, Morrison is the greatest of all frontmen. He was The Doors, more than any other lead singer was their respective band. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather have the possibility of something terrible happening than just see a competent singer doing a respectable job of recreating their studio work.



Top Ten Videos of the '80s



Twenty-nine years ago, MTV launched and changed the music industry forever, for better or worse. Whether or not MTV has been good for music, or is even relevant anymore, it certainly has had quite an impact, and these ten videos are some of the reasons why. Next week I'll rank the Top Ten Videos of the '90s, but this week we focus on the previous decade, including the clips that missed the cut, the honorable mentions:

Some Honorable Mentions: Guns n Roses - "Welcome to the Jungle;" INXS - "Need You Tonight/Mediate;" Talking Heads - "Once in a Lifetime;" U2 - "Where the Streets Have No Name;" Neil Young - "This Note's for You"




10. Van Halen - "Hot for Teacher"


What young male amongst didn't hope that at some point one of our more attractive teachers would suddenly and immediately get up and start dancing and stripping for the whole class? Van Halen geniusly was able to tap into that adolescent desire with the video for "Hot for Teacher," turning in a clip that seemed like the visual equivalent for a thirteen year old boy's dream. The video is over-the-top, childish, slightly sexist and altogether, pretty fascinating; it's one of a number of clips that defined both metal in the 1980s and Van Halen as a whole.





Of course, that paragraph only accounts for part of the video, as the rest of it features quite possibly the worst dance routine ever featured in a music video, but that's exactly the reason why it works so well. Dressed in matching creamcicle suits, the some of the band go half-heartedly through the motions while David Lee Roth puts everything he has into the performance. The dance routine is so out of place and terrible that is' extremely fascinating and entertaining to watch. If nothing else, Van Halen with Roth at the helm were debauched showmen, and the "Hot for Teacher" shows that off perfectly.





9. The Replacements - "Bastards of Young"


The idea behind the Replacements' "Bastards of Young" video is actually detailed in an earlier song entitled "Seen Your Video," where Paul Westerberg wails, "Seen your video, the phony rock 'n' roll!" And so, born out of that frustration, came the Replacements anti-video for "Bastards of Young," an entirely black and white clip that featured nothing more than a booming speaker that blasted out one of the Replacements' signature songs. There couldn't have been a batter song to match the images of the video, since Westerberg finely explains the other side of the MTV generation.

Replacements - Bastards Of Young - More amazing videos are a click away

The opening lines go, "God, what a mess, on the ladder of success /Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung;" that doesn't exactly signify heaps of ambition, and neither does a simple music video such as this one. We see only the speaker, part of the person listening as they smoke, and finally their destruction of the speaker at the end of the video. It's all very rock and roll, in a very specific Mats way; similar clips would be made for "Hold My Life" and "Left of the Dial," but "Bastards of Young" is far and away their best video, and a standout for the entire decade.





8. Godley and Creme - "Cry"


The morphing effect was famously used in Michael Jackson's video for "Black and White," but an earlier technique was used to a much more emotional effect years earlier in Godley and Crème's video for their song "Cry." It doesn't hurt that the song itself is extremely gorgeous and a heartbreaking song about not just love life, but the obliviousness of one person to the pain that they are causing. It's a universal feeling, which makes the montage of faces we see in the video that much more effective.





We see men and women, young and old, all singing the song's affecting lyrics, and it altogether adds for a passionate moment as they all sing, "You make me wanna cry." This is another example of simplicity triumphing over complicated story or vain expressions of self-grandeur. "Cry" features little more than a variety of people singing an emotional song, aided by a simple yet effective means of technology that only serves the heighten the impact of the song and video, rather than distract from it.





7. Madonna - "Like a Prayer"


Madonna made a career in the 1980s by courting controversy, and she probably did her best such job with the video for 1989's "Like a Prayer," the mix of politics, sex and religion that Madonna has proven to be able to do as well as just about anybody, and in fact, probably better. Madonna takes on the role of a woman who witnesses the false arrest of a black man accused of killing a white girl, and she goes to the church as her one place of salvation. She prays to Saint Martin de Porres, kisses him, and brings him back to life. In other words, it's not exactly what you see in most music videos.





That part of the video would probably be enough to gain a good amount of controversy and attention for the video, but Madonna steps it up another level by performing some of the song while standing in front of a burning cross, which, again, is something that doesn't appear all that often on MTV. Oh yeah, and there's some stigmata thrown in there as well, just in case some people weren't offended enough. The "Like a Prayer" videos is the best example of Madonna's ability to get people talking through any means necessary, and the fact that a few people (and the Pepsi corporation) got pissed off along the way just makes thing all that much better.





6. A-Ha - "Take on Me"


A-Ha's "Take on Me" may be something of a punch line now, but one needs to remember just how revolutionary that it was at the time. The mix of live-action and animation was groundbreaking for music videos, and it didn't hurt the video's success that "Take on Me" was quite the infectious pop song. That was a pretty good formula for a 1985 MTV hit, but the video still manages to look pretty good today.





It was certainly an ambitious project at the time, and managed to fit quite a lot into just a few minutes. We see the young woman in a diner reading a comic before being transported into that world herself, and we see those great shots of the mix between animation and real life. Eventually, our hero is attacked by villains but he is able to escape into the real world. The whole thing is both absurdly simple and kind of confusing, but that's not really the point. "Take on Me" tapped into the imagination of the video medium, and did the best with that idea as anyone had or has since.





5. Herbie Hancock - "Rockit"


If you were to think about the artists that would have been successful in the early years of MTV, you would think Prince and Michael Jackson and others like them. Chances are, noted jazz musician Herbie Hancock wouldn't have made your list, but that was the great thing about those early years; all you needed was a great and creative video, and you could find yourself some airtime on the network. That was the case with Hancock's "Rockit" video, which was actually directed by Godley and Creme, and it's a clip that is substantively different from their own video for "Cry," but it is an entirely different song.





The song "Rockit" was one of the first to popular hits to feature scratching, and it's high impact approach was perfectly complemented by the music video, which featured robots of various shapes and sizes moving along with the music. Hancock himself is barely featured the video, except on a video screen playing keyboard, but the musician himself isn't the star of the video. It's the chaotic world of robots that move along and make the video into something that hadn't been seen before. Like a lot of videos of the time, it doesn't look great compared to what we see today, but it still manages to get quite a hold on you.





4. Dire Straits - "Money for Nothing"


When you talk about artists unlikely to become big time MTV stars, Dire Straits rank right up there with Herbie Hancock and any other musician not young and/or attractive. And just like with Hancock's "Rockit" video, Dire Straits clip for "Money for Nothing" looks technologically archaic in comparison to something anybody with a Mac can create today. But that completely misses the point in terms of that original video, which managed to be technologically great and also, along with the song itself, managed to get right at the heart of MTV's influence on the music industry and how people viewed it.





"Money for Nothing" was only the second computer generated video in history, and it certainly felt revolutionary and groundbreaking at the time. Mark Knopfler's guitar riff on the track had a mechanical sound to it, thanks to being channeled through a wah-wah pedal, and it definitely lent itself to a video like this one that relied so heavily on computer animation. That animation is primitive now, but at the time had quite an impact and helped give the band a massive hit, so much so that "money for nothing and chicks for free" could have probably defined both pop music and MTV.





3. Metallica - "One"


Metallica made a name for themselves throughout the 1980s as the best metal band in American by touring and putting out great records, while never making any music videos. Their hair metal counterparts were busy making flashy videos that focused on frivolity and put no emphasis on any musical skill, so it was only natural that Metallica would go in the completely opposite way. The video for "One" was shot entirely in black and white and made sure to allow the musicianship of each member, especially Kirk Hammett, shine through. The result was a video which blew all their counterparts out of the water.





That only tells half of the story of the video, though, as it famously took parts of the 1971 anti-war film Johnny Got His Gun and put them in the video, adding a haunting quality that helped the song's power. The tale of a soldier who has lost all of his limbs as well as his eyes, ears, mouth and nose highlights the movie and video. He is basically in a living death, and that perilous state fits the song perfectly, as it all adds to the feeling of being permanently trapped. In the end, Metallica's first video was their best as it showed off all of the band's best qualities.





2. Peter Gabriel - "Sledgehammer"


There doesn't seem to be much more to Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" video than a lot of random and unconnected images, but on the other hand, the video is so great that it doesn't need anything more than random and unconnected images. Poor Gabriel had to spend 16 hours, under a sheet of glass as the video was shot one frame at a time, but the result was certainly worth it, as the herky-jerky animation helped give the video a quality that regular animation wouldn't have been able to give it.





We see anything and everything in the video, from train tracks to clouds to fruit to dancing chickens to an impromptu dance party at the end of the video. It's a chaotic and fun video, one completely unlike anything we'd likely to see these days. At one point, it was named by MTV as the most played video in the history of the network, and it's not surprising when you think about it. After you watch the video, you immediately want to watch it again and see what you might have missed, and that replay value is certainly one important quality when determining a great video.





1. Michael Jackson - "Thriller"


As if it could have been anything else? In fact, I think out of all the Ten Deep columns that I have done, this one had the most obvious choice for number one. Whereas most videos before "Thriller" were just performances by the band or artist in question, "Thriller" was bigger and better and more ambitious, with a thirteen minute length and a story and look that set it apart from everything else. No video had ever attempted to be such a piece of art, like a mini-movie, albeit one with the effects and look of a real movie. John Landis expertly used his An American Werewolf in London tricks to great effect, and also had the biggest music star on the planet eager to create something extraordinary.





To call "Thriller" a music video is to almost do it a disservice, since it was clearly so much more; it was a short horror movie, a showcase for Jackson's incredible talents as a performer and a dancer, and maybe the ultimate description as to why Jackson and the Thriller album were so successful. The video was an event to say the least, which is certainly something that we're not likely to see again. Jackson was one of the few at the beginning to see the potential of the music video as something more than just a simple commercial, and all those ideas were thrown into "Thriller." The result was the standard that every other video has tried, and failed, to match in nearly thirty years. Music videos are divided into before "Thriller" and after "Thriller," a distinction that is more than earned.


That'll do it for this week folks, thanks for reading. If you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to let me know, and make sure to leave your own lists in the comments. I'll see you all next week. And if you're out on your bike tonight, do wear white.