From the moment MTV first aired on 1 August 1981 with the Buggles‘ “Video Killed the Radio Star”, the 1980s have come to be defined by iconic music videos. Mention music television and one conjures up a motley cast of characters indelibly stamped in one’s noggin: slackster buskers-in-overalls (“Come on Eileen”), renaissance fair revelers (“Safety Dance”), creepy android stowaway chicks (“I Ran”), or an even creepier boy singing for his supper to a jury in blackface, making jazz hands gestures (“Do You Really Want to Hurt Me”). The new video medium was an inflection point for modern pop music, launching the careers of the camera-savvy (Duran Duran, Madonna, Billy Idol), providing veteran musicians with an opportunity to shine (Robert Palmer, Dire Straits), and allowing even the most accomplished artists to ascend to new heights (Michael Jackson, Tina Turner).
Thanks to the ubiquity of social media, music videos have vaulted from curiosity to shiny new toys to killer apps, an artist-controlled platform for launching talent into mass consciousness, judging by the overnight success of growing numbers of YouTube sensations. In the future, we will take a look at the seminal decade when music videos first emerged, the 1980s, including a look at iconic videos, the most over-the-top and lo-fi productions, and those creations that, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, have either stood the test of time or have aged not so well.
This list will take a look at unsung videos from that decade. The videos spotlighted here find their way on the list either because they might have missed your attention the first time around or they merit further attention. They include lost hits, videos that made a critical contribution but never received their proper due, and overlooked deeper cuts from popular artists.
The Clash – “This Is Radio Clash” (1981, Columbia)
The Clash released one of the most iconic videos of its time, the straight-ahead performance clip for London Calling. Released in 1979, the clip depicts the band playing through a storm on the river, seemingly engrossed in pitch combat in an apocalyptic setting. In contrast, “This Is Radio Clash” captured the Clash’s evolution from its garage-punk roots to a multi-dimensional mélange of funk, dub reggae, and old-school rap, which the band had begun to explore in singles and dove into with relish with its sprawling three-LP album, Sandinista.
The video for “Radio Clash” depicts a time when the group was in the process of conquering the United States and also demonstrates the profound impact its encounter with the graffiti artist aesthetic of urban America had on the band. The video contains great images of the band members strutting along with their boomboxs atop a wall with the Twin Towers in the background.
The Jam – “Going Underground” (1980, Polydor)
Released in March 1980, this video (like much of the Jam‘s catalog of promos) never rightly saw the light of day in the US. The Jam were part of that first wave of bands from the holy trinity of punk-mod-ska that a kid growing up in the States was fortunate to hear about through an older brother or sister or cool aunt since most of these bands made brief Stateside visits in the early 1980s before imploding. Frontman Paul Weller‘s antipathy for the lukewarm response of the US market ultimately foreclosed opportunities for further colonization until it was too late.
By the time videos for “Town Called Malice” and “Beat Surrender” received heavy airplay, showcasing the Jam’s evolution away from their Mod origins towards the Northern soul hybrid sound that later came into focus with Weller’s next group, the Style Council, it was too late. The Jam were already into their victory lap of gigs, mainly in England. “Going Underground” is a favorite because it captures the Jam at their essence, a short, powerful burst in a simple performance video that weaved in British-centric themes to the delight of Anglophiles. The flip side of seeing a punk band go mod was seeing a modster go punk.
The Cure – “Primary” (1981, Fiction)
Like his frequent collaborator and erstwhile bandmate Siouxsie Sioux, the Cure‘s Robert Smith was a ubiquitous video star, releasing a full library of music videos. Smith emerged as a music television star during the 1980s with “The Love Cats” and a wide range of other conceptual videos, culminating in Smith and his bandmates achieving their lifetime goal: selling out stadium shows by the 1990s and becoming leaders of a whole fashionista look, particularly during the autumn holidays. We kid, Robert. But the video for “Primary”, the first single of the Cure’s third album, Faith, offers a chance for an early look at the band before they adopted the full Goth pancake regalia.
Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (1980, Factory)
Another favorite of despondents, Joy Division‘s stark, atmospheric sound, is captured in this pulsating track. This posthumous video from the band’s final single captured the promise and torment of enigmatic Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, who took his own life on the eve of the band’s first tour to the US. The remaining members would reform as New Order, ushering in a wave of acts from Manchester that would transform underground music, inspiring a whole movement of post-punk and electronic artists in their wake.
The minimalist outlook of Joy Division reflected in the video for “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, offers a window into the demons that hounded Curtis, and can be seen in clips for “She’s Lost Control” and “Transmission”. New Order continued this minimalist approach in the straight-ahead studio performance clip for “The Perfect Kiss”, before embracing high concept videos for “Blue Monday” (dominated by William Wegman canine model Faye) “Bizarre Love Triangle”, “True Faith”, and “Round and Round”.
Fine Young Cannibals – “Johnny Come Home” (1984, IRS)
Of all of the ska bands, the English Beat represented the tightest collective, the instruments working in strict tandem, seemingly set to a stopwatch (the video to “Mirror in the Bathroom”, the band’s debut and iconic single, captures the band’s essence, as a straight-ahead, cleanly shot performance clip that showcases the band’s young, brash and all business in an iconic mirror). The mid-1980s saw the English Beat breakup into two successful bands, the New Wave/ska/mod General Public and the retro-soul/ska of the Fine Young Cannibals. “Johnny Come Home” was the first single by the latter group, a band formed by Beat guitarists Andy Cox and David Steele with the gifted one, actor-vocalist Roland Gift.
This video features a spare, classic look that is more stunning when one considers that it was instrumental in getting the band signed. When the three lads get down on their knees, they are literally on their knees, singing for their supper. The track would lead to a series of black and white videos that showcased the Fine Young Cannibals’ classic Northern Soul sound, from videos to “Suspicious Minds” and “Good Thing”, to the group’s feature as the house band in director Barry Levinson’s 1960s period piece, Tin Men.
Fun Boy Three feat. Bananarama – “It Ain’t What You Do It’s The Way That You Do It” (1982, London)
In contrast to the Beat, 2-Tone ska rivals the Specials featured a looser, more improvisational feel to their sound, a somewhat chaotic cacophony that somewhere all held together. Seeing the Specials play one of their first shows in the States in many years in New York cemented the image of the brooding vocalist, Terry Hall, and the 2-Tone collective of musicians in my mind as they shuffled around like wizened jazzmen. Ska groups are rather notorious for their various lineups. The Specials splintered and reemerged variously as Special AKA, Fun Boy Three, Bananarama, the Colour Field, a reformed Specials, and Special Beat. This video captures the collaborative chemistry between the boys and girls in the band, with the Fun Boy Three faction backed by the girls in Bananarama. See “Really Saying Something” (1982, London) to witness Fun Boy Three returning the favor, backing Bananarama.
Haysi Fantayzee – “Shiny Shiny” (1983, Bontemps)
Exuberant, campy, party/celebratory, whimsical, quirky, playful. Those are but some of the moods under which Haysi Fantaysee are filed, for posterity’s sake, in the AllMusic guide. The duo of fashion photographer Kate Garner and London DJ Jeremy Healy were joined by producer and instrumentalist Paul Caplin, a Cambridge-trained mathematician formerly with the new romantic band Animal Magnet. Collectively, they hatched a signature look and sound that audiences didn’t quite know what to do with. Their homespun threads anticipated Lady Gaga. Garner and Healy, with their dreadlocked, “Dickensian Rasta” style, have a score to settle with Boy George over who came up with the look first.
Haysi Fantayzee’s sound, a unique mix of fiddles, dub reggae, and electro, is spiritually connected to Edward Sharpe. A brief sensation in England, reflecting the beauty of the UK pop charts — a smaller market with much more volatility, thereby tolerating a lot more weirdness, they had brief exposure on new wave video programs such as LA-based MV3. The group’s first single, “John Wayne Is Big Leggy” (a distant relation to Primus’ “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver), achieved cult status for its video.
Its subversive juxtaposition of the two gender-bending freakish characters in a Wild West graphic novel creates an unsettling image that advances the song’s message, years before Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”: society dealing with those who are different by locking them up. “Shiny Shiny” (a bouncy, playful tune about the apocalypse), on the other hand, sounds like a nursery rhyme gone seriously awry, as if one dozed off during Saturday morning cartoons and during a sugar-induced coma, entered the freakish world of homemade thrift store fashions.
The track’s video showcased the his-and-her look of Garner and Healy juxtaposed against random pop culture images, with their manic energy set to a Muppet show theme. Battle Hymns of Children Singing would be their one and only album. However, the principals maintain active lives. Garner is now a rock photographer for the likes of Björk and David Bowie. Healy has been one of London’s leading house DJs while remaining active in fashion, with ties to Gwen Stefani and a host of designers. Caplin runs his own financial software firm.
Altered Images – “I Could Be Happy” (1982, Epic)
Altered Images, a Scottish post-punk band that were initially inspired by the Siouxsie and the Banshees, achieved fleeting success as a mainstream pop band with their single “Happy Birthday” (known to legions of morning drive commuters as the backing track of celebrity birthday roundups). After sending Siouxsie a demo tape, they were invited to tour with their heroes, offering perhaps one of the starkest counterpoints imaginable. Viewers of early 1980s video programs such as MV3 will fondly recall the passel of the band’s videos: “See Those Eyes”, “Don’t Talk to Me About Love”, and “Dead Pop Stars”. But “Happy Birthday” neatly captures the free spirit pop ethos of the era.
The band go into the studio, mugs for the camera, and the director layers in some thrifty video effects. This video captures the charisma of lead singer Clare Grogan, who achieved success as an actress in Gregory’s Girl and continued acting after the band’s demise in 1983. In this snippet, we get to see the whole bag of tricks deployed in early 1980s New Wave videos: overexposed lighting, the collective photo booth shoot, and costumed mascots, with the added twist of the band playing cardboard instruments cut out of the artist’s canvas. Kudos to the band for spelling out its name in the first 15 seconds.
Lene Lovich – “It’s You Mein Schmertz” (1982, Stiff)
This epic tele-novella of a video features the enigmatic Lene Lovich, whose live performances had a performance art feel to them, as a sort of Spanish Flamenco dancer engaged in a Mata Hari-like espionage entanglement with the Col. Klink Gestapo officer. Appropriate because as an American ex-pat who spent her formative years in art schools, writing, acting, and performing in cabarets across Europe, she was actually performing Mata Hari on the London stage. Video clips by Lovich for “New Toy” and “Lucky Number” also showcase the diverse range of the multi-talented musician.
Adam and the Ants – “Stand and Deliver” (1981, Columbia)
Before lead singer Adam Ant achieved breakout success in the US as a solo artist with the hit “Goody Two Shoes”, the frontman and his backing band, the Ants, represented the latest in a wave of artists that specifically cultivated music videos. Once managed by former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren (who also represented the teenager Annabella Lwin and her group Bow Wow Wow, which had been a previous Ants lineup), the Ants cultivated a solid underground appeal due to their rhythmic, tribal sound that incorporated indigenous rhythms, as well as a series of extravagant music videos that showcased the band’s appeal.
The video for “Antmusic” served as a primer for the unconverted, with its call to “Unplug the jukebox, and do us all a favor / That music’s lost its taste, so try another flavor / Antmusic”. “Prince Charming” was a high camp, with Adam Ant depicting leading men throughout history, such as Rudolph Valentino and Clint Eastwood. “Stand and Deliver”, offered here, represents Adam as the Dandy highwayman, with the Ants’ leap to freedom near the end of the video representing an iconic moment.