Revisiting the Pop Videos That Turned 1980s Hits Into High Art

Forget New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and every other American city that ever laid claim to a skyline and a synthesizer. In the early 1980s, when pop went electric and post-punk swapped guitars for Yamaha synths, London was where it was at.If you need proof, look at Live Aid on July 13, 1985. London and Philadelphia went head-to-head for a global television audience, and London essentially settled the debate by teatime when Queen delivered their legendary 21-minute set. The North American stage was so desperate for a decent drummer with a decent mullet that Phil Collins had to hop on a Concorde from London just to save the day.London didn’t just host the pop pivot; it owned it. That signature synth-pop aesthetic, cavernous reverb, a musician hunched over a keyboard, and a frontman out front with a skinny tie and skinny mic was forged in a modest set of offices in Soho. It was there that the upstart label London Records assembled the most improbable roster in British music: Bananarama, Fine Young Cannibals, the Somerville-spanning Bronski Beat and Communards, and synth-pop duo Blancmange.Relaunched under PolyGram in 1980 after originating as Decca’s US arm, London Records built its reputation on releasing acts no other label could place, driven by a firm conviction that the music video was the future. They enjoyed five UK number one hits, 20 UK Top Ten hits and two Billboard Hot 100 number ones in the form of Bananarama’s “Venus,” and Fine Young Cannibals’s “She Drives Me Crazy.”Fast forward to a muggy August night at Leicester Square’s Prince Charles Cinema where the Music Video Preservation Society hosted a retrospective on London Records’ 1980s and ’90s video legacy. Hosts David Knight, Katie Baron, and Siân Pattenden opened with Bernard Rose’s surreal 1984 video for Bronski Beat’s “Why?” The video epitomized how the label’s unique vibe was composed of a radical indie ethos, powered by PolyGram’s deep pockets.That financial backing, and autonomy, gave its acts license to parade their politics openly through the Thatcher era rather than sanitizing them for mass consumption. As Ms. Pattenden put it: “London took Bronski Beat and instead of saying, ‘We’ll just do pop,’ they said, ‘We see that you’re political, we see that you have ideals, you talk about them in the songs. We’re not going to hide that, we’re going to put that right to the front.'”Still, conviction was combined with pragmatic self-preservation. The audience heard how Jimmy Somerville’s raw, autobiographical video for “Smalltown Boy” was forced to cut a scene showing him propositioning a straight man in a public restroom, a line the label insisted on drawing solely because airing it would guarantee an immediate, total TV ban.The video for ‘Smalltown Boy,’ by Bronski Beat, 1984. Video stillAlongside that political edge was a sharp commercial engine built on 7-inch hits rather than albums. London excelled at pushing acts toward inspired cover versions, often over artistic objections. “They were very good at singles, they weren’t always good at albums,” the panel concluded, recalling how reluctant acts were “strong-armed into doing covers.”The best stories of the night belonged to Bananarama. The panel detailed how director Don Letts shot “Cruel Summer” in Dumbo, Brooklyn, during a 1983 heatwave. Headquartered in a bar under the Brooklyn Bridge, the group applied their own makeup in a cracked mirror in the ladies’ room. Returning for lunch, they fell in with local dock workers who, learning of their exhaustion, produced vials of cocaine. “That was our lunch,” Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahey later recalled. She had never previously tried the drug. Watch the video, Ms. Fahey suggested, and you can pinpoint the exact scene where the drug kicked in, as the trio switch from being visibly miserable to euphoric.Katie Baron emphasized at the event that Bananarama’s signature look was born of financial necessity. In their early days, the group were signing on the dole and dressing on a shoestring. “They were given 50 quid,” Ms. Baron recalled, “and they took it down to Oxford Street and bought army surplus [clothing], that they’d call their ‘cave-man’ outfits and their ‘murky’ things.”London Records’ ear for the unplaceable was often aided by complete accident. Siân Pattenden noted that the label’s executives had a knack for spotting pop potential, picking up Blancmange from the Sheffield scene where “people were playing washing machines, cardboard boxes…” When label bosses Tracy Bennett and Roger Ames heard the duo’s potential, Ms. Pattenden explained how London Records “could turn this into pop music, and that’s their alchemy.” This extended to the visuals. Blancmange’s video for “Waves” was highlighted by Mr. Knight for its bizarre location shoot, “a fishing boat in the North Sea.”Then came the label’s dance transformation under Pete Tong, hired straight from the music press in 1986 to launch its dance imprint, FFRR. Under Tong, FFRR signed heavyweights from Orbital to Goldie, whose seminal hit “Inner City Life” got its iconic video when director Mike Lipscombe laid out his terms:. “He said he’d only direct the video if he could drop a shopping trolley off a high-rise building.”By the late 1980s and ’90s, music video budgets surged. Visual ambition reached a high point in 1996 with Orbital’s “The Box.” Starring Tilda Swinton as a time-dilated alien traversing London, Jes Benstock and Luke Losey’s ten-day, frame-by-frame shoot elevated pop visuals into high art, ultimately earning a spot in the British Film Institute’s national archive.The video for ‘Stay,’ by Shakespeare Sister, 1992. Video stillShakespears Sister, one half of which comprised Ms. Fahey after she decamped from Bananarama, received equal reverence, with the panel praising director Sophie Muller for bringing a rare “female gaze” to a medium that had rarely offered one. Host David Knight added a choice fact from their iconic “Stay” video, the song for which topped the UK charts for eight weeks in 1992: “Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey are fighting over a comatose man on an altar. The guy playing the body was actually Bananarama singer Keren Woodward’s ex-boyfriend!”It was only fitting therefore that the night closed with Bananarama’s 1986 Stock, Aitken and Waterman smash hit “Venus.” Then, everyone spilled back out onto the streets of Soho, right where it all started, all those decades ago.

Revisiting the Pop Videos That Turned 1980s Hits Into High Art

Revisiting the Pop Videos That Turned 1980s Hits Into High Art

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