and Words
Talking away
I don’t know what I’m to say
I’ll say it anyway
Today is another day to find you
Shying away
I’ll be coming for your love. OK?
Take on me (Take on me)
Take me on (Take on me)
I’ll be gone
In a day or two
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I grew up a child of the 80’s. The melding of video transformed the experience from merely listening to music to seeing moving images. I spend hours tuned to MTV, though somewhat in the background. We never got the “stereo hookup” that they kept pushing on the commercials. I imagine they were merely RCA outputs that piped that signal from the television through your stereo. It was just as well, as the televisions in our house were either large console television, about the size of a fireplace, or a modest 13″ set that sat in my bedroom. Their speakers were tinny and miserable, but they resembled the washed-out screens that flashed those grainy images.
I discovered music alternating between preset stations on the radio and whatever played on MTV. My sisters and I were fascinated by the videos. For weeks, the VJ’s spoke about Rick Springfield’s video premiere for “Don’t Talk to Strangers”, to which we tuned intently. We imagined it would be a monumental event from all the hype; we didn’t anticipate it would be literally just the playing of the video and then promptly on to the next video… No other videos by Rick Springfield, nor interviews. We were more perplexed than disappointed.
And though that was anti-climactic, videos added depth to the musicians and their music. Popular music without videos, or with boring ones, became less interesting; interesting videos elevated the popularity of the artist, even if the music itself was merely average.
“Take on Me” by a-ha is prototypical 1980’s music. The song is distinctive from the first sound of the electronic snares and synthesizers. It’s the quintessential melding of music and fun. Many songs will carry you to a particular moment in time; in fact, I built this very website behind that nostalgic premise. However, there are songs that will unite many and anchor them to the same experience. This is one such song. While the song is exceptional and stands in its own merits, the video may raise many levels above that.
The clip brings you along in a little fantasy. It pulls a young woman into another existence, into the world of a black-and-white comic. She is beckoned by a character in the comic book, as his hand extends from the comic into the real world. The images flash back and forth between rough charcoal images into rectangular cells and this young couple in live action (and of course, his bandmates). All along neither acknowledging that this defies the laws of nature and should not occur.
We get to watch the delicious start of a young romance. You see his cartoon hand extend from the comic and invite her into his world. With little more than a wink from the comic and that hand, she plunges into a two-dimensional existence in the pages. They barely touch, save for the moment when he pulls her in, yet they wander fancifully in these pages. They gaze at each other through the panel of a comic cell, blissfully ignoring that they’re on borrowed time.
Interspersed with the fantasy and romance, there’s action and conflict. The story starts with his winning a motorcycle race and enraging one of his competitors. We see images flash of the motorcycles and they speed past each other. If you listen carefully, you’ll even hear the shot signaling the start of the race as well as the engines revving. It’s subtle, and not in the original song, but it’s definitely there in the video. As we near the end of the song, we see that same angry rider looking to get revenge, wielding a wrench. Our hero rips into the panel of the comic book, in order for his love to exit into the safety of the real world, only to be left behind to face his adversary.
Finally, there’s resolution. As the young woman escapes into the real world, she comes to find that she accidentally skipped on her tab at a restaurant. She collects the comic book and runs home to see how the story resolves. Subsequently, she helplessly follows the story as he’s injured and knocked out. She looks out into space as she wonders about his fate. However, as the song ends, you see him fighting his way out of the comic world and into the real world. In the final moments, you see him emerge, both alive and in her world.
And it all happens in the span of three minutes and forty-five seconds. It’s glorious.
Many people talk about 80’s music as if there’s a common understanding to what it is. There isn’t. In one conversation, someone added The Pixies to their 80’s playlist. Nonsense. Oh, sure… it was technically released in the 1980’s. There were many bands that released music in the 1980’s, but there’s a certain flavor to what I call 80’s music.
- It needs to anchor you back to the era. It may include a flashback to a particular moment, or perhaps generically an activity (like roller skating).
- It is whimsical. It’s generically happy either in music, lyrics, or both.
- It needs to have been released in the 80’s, and furthermore most of the artist’s music is limited to that era. Yes, bands like The Rolling Stones, Journey, or Chicago released many songs during the 80’s, but they also spanned much longer than this decade.
- It is composed disproportionately heavily with electronics. Like keyboards (not piano) and electronic drums.
There are plenty of other groups and songs that qualify. Having grown up in the era, each song inhabits deep recesses of my mind and elicits unexpected and wondrous memories. They’re journeys, nay… they’re instances of time travel. I shall tackle them one at a time. 🙂