Exploding with color and style, the visual component of "Sledgehammer" completely rewrote the public perception of Gabriel, who was often viewed as the art-rock weirdo in Genesis who took that weirdness with him when he went solo. Johnson, this truly nutty stop-animation adventure was achieved by having Gabriel lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours as teams of designers worked on getting every frame right. Featuring a who's-who of generation-defining animators (the Brothers Quay, Nick Park of Aardman Animations) and directed by Stephen R. Often rivaling "Thriller" in the conversation of what truly is the greatest music video of all time, Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" is nothing short of a visual tour de force. The band couldn't escape the legacy of "Take On Me", so they wisely went on to embrace it instead and are still recording new music up to this day. The song became so popular that their follow-up single "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." was again lensed by Barron and even has a cameo of Harket's "animated" alter-ego. Eye-popping when it premiered, the video for "Take On Me" has taken on a life all its own, parodied and ripped-off too many times to count. Directed by "Billie Jean" mastermind Steve Barron, the video saw a-ha frontman Morten Harket and actress Bunty Bailey try to escape from a hand-drawn animated world together, with each frame painfully etched via a technique called rotoscoping. The original 1984 mix of "Take On Me" was ignored everywhere save for a-ha's native Norway, but a solid rerecording of the synthpop number, when paired with a stunning live-action/animated hybrid video, lead to it become not only a worldwide smash but also a-ha's signature song.
When "Thriller" premiered, it was as big-budget as music videos could get its impact on the form was even bigger.Īn outstanding feat of technical innovation, "Take On Me" pulled off the impossible task of completely reversing a flop single's commercial fortunes. The choreography is unbelievably tight, the dancers have incredible precision, and we can rewatch it time and time again and still be just as thrilled as when we saw it the first time.
#MO LINGUIST BUFFALO FULL#
While the production value and storytelling are all top-notch (especially given the full official clip clocks in at a then-unheard-of 13-minute runtime), the zombie dance sequence retains all of its punch nearly 40 years after the fact.
She's properly scared but is soon horrified to discover that Michael has turned into a zombie himself.
#MO LINGUIST BUFFALO MOVIE#
Taking the song's horror movie themes and giving it an appropriately epic treatment, John Landis' clip for "Thriller" features Jackson trying to scare his girlfriend with the verses to "Thriller" before eventually coming across a graveyard full of the living dead. Often cited as the greatest music video of all time, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is nothing short of pure entertainment. Helmed by Steve Barron (one of the first music video directing titans), "Billie Jean" is a star-making clip as there ever has been. MTV relented, and what do you know: "Billie Jean" helped turn Jackson into one of the biggest pop stars of all time. When the CBS Records president discovered that MTV was refusing to play it, he threatened to pull their entire roster off the channel and go public with such obvious, racist bias.
For all the great moments that MTV provided the world as a platform, their first few years were largely dominated by white artists. Jackson walking across those light-up squares is a memorable, lasting image, and, amazingly, MTV didn't want to play it. Thankfully, MJ outsmarts him with his magical ability to light up everything he touches: lampposts, bedsheets, and even concrete tiles. In a city street, Jackson is trying to meet up with hot press item Billie Jean just as a paparazzo is trying to get a compromising photo of him. Longer and weirder than you remember, the actual clip for Michael Jackson's legendary single "Billie Jean" has quite a bit of story.
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