The golden age of the pop video brought us a buffet of treats, didn’t it? Who could forget Simon Le Bon lashed to a windmill sail in ‘Wild Boys’? Or Paula Abdul flirty dancing with a cartoon cat in ‘Opposites Attract’. From the mid-eighties to the late nineties, labels piled as much budget into the accompanying flicks as they did the songs. Often considerably more. Cook up a compelling vid for your artist and the mighty MTV might pick it up for rotation, resulting in vastly increased sales. So ran the wisdom.
Eventually, of course, MTV abandoned pop videos entirely, in favour of reality formats (which they pretty much invented).
But before that happened, there was something of a creative arms race, which culminated in promotional clips more akin to feature films than standard, three-minute band performances. Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, directed by John Landis, is considered the pinnacle of the form, but it wasn’t the most audacious. Not by some distance.
"Don’t get me wrong, I love Lionel."
Whenever I see a movie or TV show which is unconsciously absurd, I try to picture the production meetings at which the concept was green-lit. Who pitched it and how? Who liked it and signed it off? And why?
However, try as I might, I simply cannot conjure the gathering or conversation which brought about the video for Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Lionel. His work with The Commodores is exceptional, and despite his rather slurpy inclinations as a solo artist, he’s still a giant of American modern soul music. ‘Hello’ isn’t one of my favourite numbers, though. Just too much saccharine, and plinky-plinky synth runs for my taste. It’s the video that draws me back to the song again and again. We hear of some endeavours being so bad they’re good, but the ‘Hello’ clip moves us beyond knowing irony, into a galaxy where all norms of taste and good sense are null and void.
Richie is cast as a high-school lecturer, teaching acting (first chuckle, right there). Anyway, one of his students is a very pretty girl, played by Laura Carrington, who we see rehearsing in the opening scene. Now, this is an ‘extended’ pop video. Which means there are sections where the song isn’t playing and the characters speak to each other. That’s the routine we find when we join the clip. Although fear not, because it isn’t long before Lionel fires up his tonsils and we’re into ‘I’ve been alone with you inside my mind …’
Next, our heroine is seen at flute practice (she’s very much the renaissance woman) and Lionel is watching her through the door. He’s nuts about her, you see. Is that a bit creepy? Yes, it’s a bit creepy. Would it be slightly more creepy if she was unaware of his observations, by dint of the fact she is blind? Well she is. And it is.
1:25 into the video and we’ve established Lionel is one of the most inappropriate lecturers in the US education system. Look at the evidence. He’s fallen in love with his student. He’s stalking her around the school, peering through doorways at her. And he’s doing this with impunity because she is without sight.
It’s worth noting this was all at a time when the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Centre, Tipper Gore’s slightly manic campaign) were pointing accusing fingers at heavy metal for being morally questionable.
And on we go. Richie’s getting confident now. Following the young lady down corridors and standing behind her as she eats her lunch – in a way that would inspire most reasonable folk to summon LAPD’s finest. And oh dear, here he is meandering into her dance class to clock her in a leotard (somebody approved this at script stage, remember).
A quick hang-up phone call hurries us to the shattering denouement. Mr. Richie’s piano practice is interrupted by a chap in a terrible jacket and he’s ushered to the nearby sculpture class. There, the object of his affections has crafted a clay head of … of LIONEL!
Only, it looks a bit odd; slightly grotesque and similar to the first draft of a Lionel Richie Spitting Image puppet. Lionel doesn’t care. He thinks it’s wonderful. Of course he does. And as we fade to black, it looks likely his unrequited love is going to be nicely requited.
Phew! The whole show is quite an experience and painfully representative of the excesses of its times (released in 1984). Directed by Bob Giraldi, and instantly familiar to anyone who had access to the eighties’ telly music channels, the video is still arresting in its sheer audacity and utterly bizarre concept. In truth, it’s not offensive, just fantastically, hilariously misjudged – and you have to love it for that.
Unlike Lionel’s mullet, moustache and sweater combo. They really are shocking.
Magnus Shaw is a blogger and copywriter
