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Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart's music Video makes no sense.

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T

Thorgal

Member
I was going on an 80's Music video marathon listening to some great songs and then i came across this one :

Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart .

Now let me Say up front that i LOVE this song ( DAT voice! ) and pretty much most of Tyler's work .

But ....

WHAT THE HELL IS EVEN HAPPENING IN THIS CLIP ?

it features Ninja's , Jocks dancing up stairs , 2 guys dueling each other with sabers , Half naked guys doing acrobatics , even more naked guys in loincloths , Ghost children , an angel , ghostly apparitions , a couple of guys celebrating at a table and then destroying everything on it and the table etc etc ...

WTH has anything of this to do with the song ?

I understand it was the 80 's but still ...
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
That was when music videos were a lot like straight-up performance art and circus acts mashed up. Didn't make all that much sense back when it was new, either, but a lot of videos from that period have that same fever dream quality to them.

Look at Quarterflash's Harden my Heart, Scandal's The Warrior and Rockwell's Who's Watching Me, and James Ingram's Yah Mo Be There for similar weirdness, though none as dramatic as the Bonnie Tyler vid. I think I'm feeling old now.
 
H

Henchmen21

Banned
MightyHedgehog said:
That was when music videos were a lot like straight-up performance art and circus acts mashed up. Didn't make all that much sense back when it was new, either, but a lot of videos from that period have that same fever dream quality to them.

Look at Quarterflash's Harden my Heart, Scandal's The Warrior and Rockwell's Who's Watching Me, and James Ingram's Yah Mo Be There for similar weirdness, though none as dramatic as the Bonnie Tyler vid. I think I'm feeling old now.
Click to expand...

What's wrong with that one? Pretty much fits the lyrics
 
T

teruterubozu

Member
Cocaine was a helluva drug in the 80s. These music video shoots were nothing but giant parties. The final results were always up in the air.
 
R

RumblingRosco

Member
She needed the person tonight because she was having horrific hallucinations after coming down from some cocktail of recreational drugs. Seriously, that's 100% the actual story behind the song and video.
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
Thorgal said:
I was going on an 80's Music video marathon listening to some great songs and then i came across this one :

Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart .

Now let me Say up front that i LOVE this song ( DAT voice! ) and pretty much most of Tyler's work .

But ....

WHAT THE HELL IS EVEN HAPPENING IN THIS CLIP ?

it features Ninja's , Jocks dancing up stairs , 2 guys dueling each other with sabers , Half naked guys doing acrobatics , even more naked guys in loincloths , Ghost children , an angel , ghostly apparitions , a couple of guys celebrating at a table and then destroying everything on it and the table etc etc ...

WTH has anything of this to do with the song ?

I understand it was the 80 's but still ...
Click to expand...

You need all these things to show how total the eclipse of the heart is. If you don't have all these things, then it's really only a partial eclipse of the heart.
 
C

CadetMahoney

Member
Thorgal said:
You could have a music clip from the 80's that is out there but still makes sense though :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914
Click to expand...

"the men have the same hair as the women."

giphy.gif
 
M

mclem

Member
MightyHedgehog said:
That was when music videos were a lot like straight-up performance art and circus acts mashed up. Didn't make all that much sense back when it was new, either, but a lot of videos from that period have that same fever dream quality to them..
Click to expand...

To truly understand 80's music videos, we need to look no further than Lufthansa Terminal's biggest hit
 
S

sinkfla87

Member
80's music videos > late 90's(with some exceptions), 00's music videos

I miss the days when a music video just threw in a bunch of random shit or told a story and actually entertained the viewer. For a long time now they've just been bands or artists lip syncing to a studio track and pretending to play their instruments in a room/stage/something else boring. If I wanna watch the band play I'll go to a show! Fuck bland music videos.
 
N

Nick Laslett

Member
Just for people that don't know, Jim Steinman also wrote and produced Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" as well as Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", which held Air Supply off the Billboard No 1 spot for three weeks in 1983.

The great Russell Mulcahy directed the "Eclipse" video, he is the Mozart of pop video's check Duran Duran's videos from this period all directed by Mulcahy, "The Wild Boys" his "Mad Max 2" homage is one of my personal favourite, it was so good people talked about it being made into a feature film.
 
E

Earthpainting

Member
Nick Laslett said:
The great Russell Mulcahy directed the "Eclipse" video, he is the Mozart of pop video's check Duran Duran's videos from this period all directed by Mulcahy, "The Wild Boys" his "Mad Max 2" homage is one of my personal favourite, it was so good people talked about it being made into a feature film.
Click to expand...
Isn't that the Highlander director? If so, then I'll just see as Total Eclipse of the Heart as an entry in that series, which would explain a lot.
 
T

Talyn

Member
If you think that's weird go watch Self Control by Laura Branigan. They used the Eyes Wide Shut imagery nearly 20 years before Kubrick.

Edit: Those literal videos are quite good as well. The one for Safety Dance is especially funny.
 
Z

zeemumu

Member
Soka said:
She needed the person tonight because she was having horrific hallucinations after coming down from some cocktail of recreational drugs. Seriously, that's 100% the actual story behind the song and video.
Click to expand...

Yeah okay I can buy that.

But looking through the wikipedia, it's apparently about vampire love and the music video is about her fantasizing about her students? That's kinda creepy. Explains the shirtless dudes, though.
 
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