Reading yet another thinkpiece about a music video, I think I now understand exactly why the years 1955-1985 were a golden age of popular music. 1955, of course, was the birth of rock’n'roll. But what happened in 1985 to draw that golden age to a close? It was time when the music video eclipsed radio as the primary means of promoting mass-market music.
What’s happened since is we’ve regressed to the days of 1930s musicals, in which the music took second place to the choreography, and is little-remembered. Today all the talk in pop isn’t about new albums or singles, it’s about the videos and their content. The actual music seems to be an afterthought.
I’ve always loved that clip – although thanks to the craziness of the New Romantics, it’s verging on Poe’s territory.