Music Videos From The 80s

This new-wave, Electro-punk, Pop-Rock and Alternative Norwegian band released this track in 1985. The video follows a narrative structure of a girl imagining a cartoon containing her lover in it. The bands lead singer Morten Harket taking on the role of star image. The video fits well with the stylised genre that the band falls into because it combines animation and visual effects into its music video which was an innovative and new thing to do at the time. Aha's video has been the most successful video to have followed this structure and it is considered quite iconic in the nower-day. 


This New wave reggae-rock band released this performance based video in the year of 1983. Some artistic effects and transitions as well as camera angles and shots are included into this video. Artistic shots: the ash tray at the beginning and end, the chandelier, the man cleaning windows not to mention the delightful mise-en-scene of the use of a covered sofa to make it seem like the video is shot in a theater. The lead singer, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner (sting), takes on the role of star image here as he is performing the lipsynching and therefor the performance resonates around the words of the song. 


This video, released in 1993, follows the over exadurated mimicked narrative recreation of a rebellious teenage spirit and what happens behind closed doors of a family life. Cyndi achieves star image as she portrays the role of a teenager acting out the lyrics included in the song and therefore emphasising them, e.g the use of the characters of mum and dad help to make the lyrics more relatable and understandable to people- its also possible that other teenage girls could relate to these events. There is a large amount of use of editing and computer generated imagery in this video which would have been considered new and different of the time. There is an intertextual use of the shot from the film which extenuates the lyrics 'hide her away from the rest of the world' by actually acting out the actions to match the lyrics by showing a monster running away with a woman or girl. 


This video released in, 1982, contains the star image (lead singer of the new wave synth pop band- Simon Le Bon) performing a narrative structure of himself being captivated in the jungle and entranced and seduced by a native woman from the area which makes him take a rather predatory role. all the while his fellow band members are running around the foreign land trying to look for him in a city. 


This video featuring Michael Jackson has his own star image follows both narrative and performance based elements. It was considered the most scary video of its time (1982). His girlfriend and he are watching a film in a cinema which features Jackson and a girlfriend beginning a relationship and he transforms like a werewolf and tries to kill her- containing all of the usual features of a classic horror film. His girlfriend walks out of the film that he is creepily enjoying and so Jackson follows her. He then beginning to sing thriller to her to keep her entertained. as they walk past a graveyard the dead begin to raise from their graves and ackson dances with them ( the performance element) as they all chase after his girlfriend. In the climax of the moment he reaches for her and it is revealed to be all and illusion.