This is a music video from the band Yes. Made in 1984, even back then it caused me to exclaim WTF?
This song kicks ass, but I dare anyone to explain what this video is supposed to be about.
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Better Than A Broken Heart?This is a music video from the band Yes. Made in 1984, even back then it caused me to exclaim WTF? This song kicks ass, but I dare anyone to explain what this video is supposed to be about. 22 comments to Better Than A Broken Heart? |
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It’s simple, Outlaw. Like when we were listening to TMBG’s “Birdhouse In Your Soul” in the car, and I remarked that I have no idea what this song is about, and my daughter, who was then seven, said, “Dad.” You know that declarative style women have when they are about to set a man straight on some very obvious point? Even 7-year-old girls have that style down. “Dad.” She says. “It’s about girlfriends and boyfriends.”
Oh.
Come on Jack you dolt. What did you think it was about?
The girlfriend is on the perch and she totally craps on the boyfriend… I mean newspaper at her whim. The newspaper just lays there and takes it.
Little Orwellian paranoia mixed with freaky/creepy animals. That or wacked-out, bad limey acid trip?
Like every other video from the ’80s: bad hair, bad clothes, imagery not related to actual lyrics. Take “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for example. Which is why I much prefer the literal version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA
“Arthur Fonzarelli has an army of clones” Ha!
I was just wondering if they had a literal version of it. Those are hilarious. Well, at least *some* of them are.
Oh, Sisu, why so serious? Two outta three ain’t bad, ain’t bad at all…
+JMJ+
Two out of three? Since we have imagery that is sort of related to the original lyrics–the “Girls on film” hook–then are we talking bad clothes or bad hair here?
(Ah, Duran!)
That video alwats bugged me. We’d hang out on Saturday night and watch MTV and wonder what the heck it was about. Wierd.
Not Girlfriends and Boyfriends?
This is totally The Matrix version 1.0
It’s a mix of Kafka’s The Trial and Josef K then becomes Bela Lugosi and can morph into a bird. It’s completely obvious. That or it’s about boyfriends and girlfriends.
@ Justjack: Your daughter is wrong, sorry. “Birdhouse in your Soul” is about a nightlight. The band have been very emphatic about that, it’s a song told from the point of view of a nightlight one of them had when growing up. Case in point, the lyric “There’s a picture opposite me/of my primitive ancestry/that stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free [obviously a lighthouse]/Though I respect that a lot/ I’d be fired if that were my job/for killing Jason off/and countless screaming argonauts” [IE: the nightlight isn't powerfull enough to be a lighthouse]
The audacity of a seven year old to get the meaning of the song wrong…wow.
“Owner of a Lonely Heart” actually *is* related to the lyrics, though granted it’s rather oblique. The song is all about all about self confidence and taking charge of your life: Move yourself
“You always live your life/Never thinking of the future/Prove yourself/You are the move you make/Take your chances win or loser/See yourself/You are the steps you take/You and you – and thats the only way”
The video starts off with a POV shot of flying, and feathers, presumably a bird. Then we see a guy in the crowd who’s just going along, presumably, dreampt of flying. The thought police grab him, and pull him out, and put him on trial, presumably for daring to dream and aspire – thoughtcrime, if you will. This is all intercut with “Room 101″ stuff of him being tortured with various animals – his worst fears. This is done in an apartment rather than an actual torture chamber, and it might mean that the room with his worst fears in it happens to be the life he’s living already.
Anyway, the judge passes judgement, and they take him to hell/the bowels of the building to be beaten to death, but he fights back, and gets away. Atop the building, he’s confronted by the personification various animals that frightened him, and realizing he’s got no options left to him, he makes the virtuous teutonic choice of dying on his own terms. Throwing off the last of his fear, he resigns himself to his fate and jumps off the building, and he’s rewarded for this by turning in to the very eagle that he dreamed of, and gets away.
All of which is a conflict that takes place entirely within the protagonist’s own mind, as we see the ‘crowd walking to work’ scene again, but this time he stops, and goes the opposite way, taking responsibility for living his own life in his own way, rather than simply going along with the herd.
Really, it makes perfect sense.
The lyrics specifically mention the Eagle as a kind of metaphor for self-actualization:
“Watch it now/The eagle in the sky/How he’s dancing one and only/You – lose yourself
/No not for pitys sake/Theres no real reason to be lonely/Be yourself/Give your free will a chance/Youve got to work to succeed”
The only real poser of a question here, the only bit that doesn’t really fit is the chorus, but I think that’s meant to be ironic – “Better not to ask her out than to be shot down,” but I guess it could mean “Better to be alone and in charge of yourself than to be society’s plaything.”
I always took “Girls on Film” to be about how the fashion/modeling industry pretty much revolves around getting girls to do increasingly demeaning and/or slutty things that they probably wouldn’t ordinaryly go: “Lipstick cherry all over the lens as she’s falling/In miles of sharp blue water coming in where she lies/The diving man’s coming up for air cause the crowd all love pulling dolly by the hair, by the hair/And she wonders how she ever got here as she goes under again” First it’s a job, then it’s a lifestyle, then come the drugs, then, who knows, a descent in to porn or what have you. Whatever.
You know, the standard rags-to-riches-but-what-happened-to-your-soul angle. Of course the critical aspect of this is more than a little bit offset by having an amazingly (For the times) lurid video (This is the cleaned-up version). That’s what I always took from it.
BTW, the brunette chick at about 1:10 is giga-hot. I’ve always wondered who she was.
+JMJ+
Republibot: You’re more generous toward Simon LeBon and his lyrics than I am!
Girls on Film was always a great track, but I doubt there’s anything meaningful to analyse there. It was written by five different people, one of whom had left the band before the other two even got on board. One of the other two was LeBon, who joined up with a notebook full of poems he had written before he knew anything about Duran.
As for the video, Andy Taylor had this to say in his autobiography Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran:
The video was storyboarded around the idea of going behind the scenes at a fashion shoot, with Duran Duran playing at the side of the catwalk . . . I suspect a lot of the sexual content was actually the idea of Paul Berrow [Duran Duran's first manager], who was a hilarious character when it came to that sort of thing.
I can hear him now: “Let’s get a bloody pole, grease it up, and have a couple of dirty birds on it.”
Yes, yes, I’ll shut up now . . . =P
+JMJ+
Oh, dear! =P I was trying to reply Republibot, but it looks as if my comment had words which didn’t make it past the filter. That’s a real first for me!
Happens to me all the time, and I barely even cuss. It’s weird. Can someone dig out Enbrethiliel’s comments, please?
I guess not, huh? Geez. Usually I complain about one of my comments ending up in purgatory, and it’s back up post haste…
I didn’t know Stephen Duffy co-wrote that one. I’ve got a lot of pre-Simon D^2 tracks. They’re…they’re a mixed bag, let’s put it that way.
Regardless of whether it means anything or not (I’m going to charitably say it does, but certainly D^2 have been known to record a lot of more-or-less-random lyrics), the video was clearly intended just to titilate and that’s it. No argument there!
+JMJ+
Actually, it was their first singer, Andy Wickett. =) And the song itself wasn’t so much co-written as cobbled together . . . but as I’ve said, it’s a great track, anyway!
Huh. Learn something new every day.