So basically what brings me here is that I was watching Con Air this last weekend, and it reminded me of the song that plays at the end…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXtojVGEZmg
…and it got me thinking about the heyday of music videos made specifically for movies. I mean, it used to be a pretty regular occurrence in the 80’s and 90’s. So I have decided to review my own arbitrary Top 11 Cheesiest Movie Music Videos of my life. For each video, I will give you my thoughts on it, and down below in the comments section, you can share your own thoughts on these videos or any of your own personal favorites that didn’t make the list.
11. Cocktail-The Beach Boys: Kokomo:
12 seconds in: Let’s get two people riding horses on a beach just for the hell of it. Is riding horses supposed to be romantic and set the mood of the video? Have you ever ridden a horse? It’s painful and in no way romantic.
There are shots of Tom and Adventures in Babysitting’s Elisabeth Shue being really flirty on the beach. Saying they lacked chemistry in this movie would be an understatement. Forrest Gump and Jenny had more sexual chemistry than these two.
We move to a shot of the Beach Boys singing at a campfire with people sitting down and the lead singer with a lottttttt of chest showing…maybe two buttons buttoned.
Three hot blonde chicks are running on the beach in their bikinis. Kudos for that, Mr. Director.
Holy shit, that’s Uncle Jesse, John Stamos!, in a pink tank top…Wow…He really milked that Uncle Jesse plays with the Beach Boys thing for all it’s worth. Good for him. Has John Stamos ever been in anything after Full House ended? I can’t think of one thing….Does he just live off of Nick at Night Full House checks? Can 60 Minutes please do an investigation on this?
Aw, 80’s white people dancing…aka a lot of clapping and snapping with elbow movement utilized. Seriously, watch this video a couple of times and pick out a random person in the background when they cut to the crowd and you will see the pure beauty of 80’s white male dancing.
Clips of Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown show how playful they are, casually flipping cups like they’re a couple of really big swinging dicks…
We have shots of Tom Cruise forcing himself to make out with women…You can feel his struggle with that twenty-five years later.
So basically, this video is a 50/50 mix of movie clips and the Beach Boys performing on the beach. The movie itself, if you remember, is way too serious at times. I mean, (spoiler alert) Bryan Brown commits suicide in the movie for reasons that really don’t make sense…Like one day he just commits suicide and that’s it….OK?
Then Cruise knocks up Elisabeth Shue which leads her to move to Las Vegas to get into drugs and prostitution, and then she gets involved with Nick Cage and lives happily ever after. I like the part when Elisabeth’s Shue’s dad tries to pay him off to go away. In my twenties, it was my goal to knock up a girl and get paid off by her father to go away. On a non-related side note, I am currently single. Anyways, as music movie videos go, this one isn’t bad, but it’s not as good as others on this list, so let’s move on to those!
10. Dirty Dancing-Patrick Swayze feat. Wendy Fraser: She’s Like the Wind:
We can already tell this is going to be an emotional video as it starts in black-and-white with Jennifer Grey running in the woods. What makes this video great is that the rumor was Swayze and Jennifer Grey hated each other while they filmed this movie.
We get shots of Swayze doing ballet spliced with clips of the movie where he does dance lessons with Baby. God, his hair is perfectly feathered in this video…
There are shots of Swayze singing with his back to the camera in a black leather jacket… very powerful stuff. Did he write this song? Was he asked to perform this song by the movie company? Was this a hobby of his?
Who in the hell is Wendy Fraser? How did she get in on this song? I did a quick search on YouTube and couldn’t find anything other than this song that she was ever a part of. I hope– because I’m lazy and didn’t research more– that she didn’t die in like 1989 or something.
Dirty Dancing took place in the 60’s right? So why are there so many 80’s songs in the movie? The song Time of My Life that they dance to at the end clearly was not a 60’s song, and then here we have Swayze’s song that doesn’t exactly fit in with 60’s music culture. Couldn’t he have shoehorned this song?
Can you imagine if this still happened today? Think of Christian Bale, somebody who clearly takes himself too seriously, coming out with a ballad on the Dark Knight soundtrack… How great would that have been?
9. Stand By Me-Ben E. King: Stand By Me:
This is such a great song that it’s hard to put this on the list…but fast forward to the 1:40 mark….My god, that is horrible….Why matching shirts?…Why so many horrible white people dancing awkwardly?..Why are River Phoenix and Will Weaton engaging in a forced, awkward handshake….I guess they’re standing by each other….
I love the clips of the movie with the kids smoking, something that you would never see nowadays… not that it’s a horrible thing, but at least back in the 70’s and 80’s they portrayed youths as somewhat realistic and not Mickey Mouse Club personalities like they do now.
At the 1:45 mark of this video, the director said “Oh, shit…I just realized that we don’t have a single person of color in this video…Quick, find me one!!!! And give him a close-up.” Maybe Donald Sterling produced this video?
2:32 mark…..Let’s just say that Gordie should stick to telling stories about Lard Ass vomiting at the pie eating contest because having rhythm is clearly not his strong suit..It’s painful to watch him do the snap and step with the right foot move….
8. The Goonies-Cyndi Lauper: The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough:
Wow…Rowdy Roddy Piper, the Iron Sheik, Captain Lou Albano…What does this have to do with The Goonies? …OK… a plug for Benihana’s? I mean, everybody likes Benihana’s, but what the hell is it doing in this video?
I have no idea what the theme of this video is. Who directed this? Hunter S. Thompson on mescaline?
So at the 4:25 mark, we get the kids from the movie making a cameo…everybody except the red-headed chick, Annie. Maybe she was making out with Troy at the well when they were filming this?
I love the WWE, but I really don’t understand what they’re doing in this video….and wow…there’s Steven Spielberg. You would have thought with him involved they would have used something better than a set from a junior high play for this music video.
I guess Goonies the Sequel is really going to happen…I don’t know how they got Corey Feldman to say yes. I mean, he has Estranged Alleged Children of Michael Jackson DNA press conferences to go to every month. I wonder how he is going to squeeze filming in.
7. The Three Musketeers– Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, Sting: All for One:
We get Bryan Adams and Sting casually chatting…and whoa, whoa… here comes Rod Stewart in my mom’s coat from 1994. I guess Rod Stewart is the edgy wildcard of this group. Do you think he and Sting had a sing-off or something to decide who got to play that role?
So the director’s only plan for this video was: shoot Rod Stewart, Sting, and Bryan Adams, and everybody get the f**k out of the way.
I am loving the cut-away shots of the guys talking without sound, like they’re good ole boys just here to have a good time.
Rod Stewart really puts the video over the top at the 2:54 mark… From his half-buttoned shirt to his feathered hair to his passion as he’s singing, it’s just fabulous.
So basically, the producers were like: “We have to get Bryan Adams because he killed it for us with Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, so let’s up the ante and throw in Sting and Rod Stewart to increase our cool factor.”
It’s always been strange to me that these guys are supposed to be “bad asses” but really they’re singing a ballad.
Even though this song was made for The Three Musketeers movie there is no reference to the movie at all. I guess they knew ahead of time that it was going to suck. Seriously, can you right now think of one moment from that movie?
Is Sting wearing a dress? Go to the 3:10 mark; it looks like he’s wearing a dress.
The 3:43 mark is great when Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams flirt with each other….And out of nowhere we get a dinner scene that makes no sense whatsoever.
The song ends with Bryan Adams pinching Sting’s cheeks…Do you think Sting thought to himself: “I left The Police for this shit”?
It’s just so strange that we lived at a time in which film companies had to do things like this to make money off of a crappy movie. The sad part is that I definitely liked this song secretly when it came out….Let’s move on.
6. Over the Top-Kenny Loggins: Meet Me Halfway:
OK, we start out in an empty bar with a short- haired Kenny Loggins singing with his sunglasses on…not a bad way to start a song.
We have Kenny Loggins walking on the highway with just his guitar…just a man and his music in this lonely world.
We get a shot of the movie where Sly is reflecting about life on his truck at sunrise- showing us that Lincoln Hawk isn’t just some dumb truck driver…He has more to him than meets the eye, and if only he can get his shot in the national arm wrestling competition, then he can make everything right in his world.
We get some shots of the movie spliced in, perfectly synchronized with the song. “Meet me halfway…across the sky” with shots of Sly and his son beginning to bond for the first time in their lives…a really powerful sequence.
At the 2:26 mark we get the most powerful moment where Kenny Loggins takes one of the pool balls and flings it in a “F**k society” type of way….Good for you, Kenny…Good for you.
As we watch clips of the movie in this video, I’m reminded that no movie did more for flipping your hat backwards than Over the Top…It really made us all feel OK about it.
Spoiler alert for this video giving away the whole plot and results of the movie…Come on, Loggins. You’re better than that.
How many made-for-movie songs did Loggins do? I mean, you got this, Footloose, Caddyshack, Top Gun….This was really his niche.
5. Batman Forever- Seal: Kiss from a Rose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ateQQc-AgEM
This was a huge hit…I definitely remember being a big fan of this video. This was Jim Carey at his apex, his popularity at an all-time high. And looking back, this movie sucks! But hey, let’s talk about this music video…
We get Seal in a Hugh Hefner pajama suit…unbuttoned, of course…
Perfectly spliced shots of the movie and Seal are showcased throughout this song. It really makes you forget how awful this movie was, because Joel Schumacher took over and completely submarined this whole franchise for ten years by making it all colorful and comic bookie.
God, how awful was Tommy Lee Jones in this movie? And how awful was his make-up in the movie? If you can’t tell by now, I’m really not a big fan of this movie.
The most emotional part of this video begins at the 2:20 mark where we get shots of Val Kilmer (pre-heavily medicated) doing action Batman stuff with Chris O’Donnell looking on in despair as the song comes to its most intense moment. Any good movie soundtrack video has to have the moment where the most intense scene in the movie is synchronized to the most intense part of the song…It’s a huge must.
Watching clips of this movie with this video is just making me feel like every single actor in this movie is miscast…Val Kilmer, Chris O’Donnell, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman…Everyone is just awful in this movie and I’m convinced that I lied to myself when this first came out and pretended to like this movie….I was living a lie…..and now I have to live with the consequences.
4. Armageddon-Aerosmith: I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG_VMJg7oMM
OK, good start to the video… We get a shot of a huge asteroid, presumably the same antagonist from the movie that requires the best oil drill men in the world to save our planet.
Is that a transvestite or Steven Tyler? (not that there’s anything wrong with that…just wondering).
Is it possible that the reason why the rest of Aerosmith hates Steven Tyler is that he gets all the face time? So far a minute into this video and all we got is a 1998 close-up of Steven Tyler like he’s a solo act.
Finally as they light up the rocket launch area, we get the rest of the band. Joe Perry looks pissed off like always. Do you think this is how he envisioned his music evolution twenty years prior to this?
Doesn’t Bruce Willis play the harmonica or something? How much better would this video have been if it included Bruce Willis in his Harry Stamper role from the movie playing the harmonica emotionally during this video?
How do you know this is an emotional video?…Well, we get the slow-motion walk of Bruce Willis looking very serious with the song’s emotional peak playing…That’s how you know.
Every member of Aerosmith has badly dyed hair, highlighted at the 2:35 mark with close-ups of each member….That is all.
Do you think NASA secretly plays this song and video before each rocket launch?
3. Mannequin-Starship: Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1BtFzgS3-w
OMG, I love this song so much. Even though the movie is really creepy, as when you strip off all the bells and whistles, it’s really about a dude that wants to hump a mannequin…even before it comes to life…
Wow, this video is sweet. I don’t think I have seen it in the last twenty years, so this really is a treat. Any video that starts off with Andrew McCarthy riding a motorcycle with the wind blowing against his hair lets you know that you are in good hands.
I like how they’re milking this Mannequin thing for all it is worth with the female lead singer playing the part herself, overacting and over lip-syncing every line in the song.
To think that Mannequin was so popular that they made a sequel to it…
Why is the female lead singer’s grammar so bad…“Them think were crazy”????
Wow, love the 1:03 mark where the two lead singers join the rest of the band and over lip-sync every line…Wow.
Double-wow on the 1:22 mark where we get the drummer rocking a mullet parlayed with a mustache….That guy is clearly the band “party guy”…the guy that probably started out being a lot of fun and then got into cocaine and spiraled out of control.
OK, OK…Go to the 1:36 mark and just focus on the background guitar player who is really showcasing some serious shoulder moves….clearly he’s the ladies’ man of the group that gets them with his bedroom eyes.
Kim Cattrall somehow pulled off looking like she was forty-six years old at all times from 1985-2004….
At the 2:10 mark, you’ve got to love the 80’s highlight reel of dance moves the male lead singer is pulling out…Can you fathom that we lived in a world where that was considered “cool” at some point?
3:20…Wow…Great ensemble dancing by the group.
Apparently they couldn’t get Andrew McCarthy or Kim Cattrall to appear with the band for this video, so they got the wacky black guy who rocked the 80’s sunglasses that were in a lot of 80’s movies, which however, I never saw anybody wear in real life yet somehow they’re synonymous for that time.
This is overall the quintessential 80’s video; it has mullets, over-exaggerated lip-syncing, and fantastic dance moves. It quite possibly could be the most dated video of all time….
2. Robin Hood Prince of Bad Accents-Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do It For You:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoWtY_h4xo
In my opinion, this is the second best movie music video of all time. I mean, it’s just so powerful. This was a blockbuster movie at the time it came out. I’m pretty sure this song was number one on the charts for some amount of time. I know talent shows for the next two years were littered with people singing this song horribly.
Let’s just start with the elephant in the room, Bryan Adams rocking the full denim wardrobe….Was this his choice or the wardrobe department’s?
We get shots of Costner’s awful Robin Hood hair and forced sex appeal….Really, he was horrible in this movie. For half the movie he uses a British accent, then it’s like the director realized that it was going to ruin the movie if he continued and had him stop using it for the second half of the movie…They should have had a voice-over actor dub his lines like they did for Darth Vader.
LOL… Bryan Adams is walking on the shore in a trench coat looking Emo, and that sequence was taken seriously at that time….Wow…
At the 2:04 mark: You’ve got to love the slow motion arrow flying in the air synced to the song at the perfect time.
Do you think they tried to get Bryan Adams in a costume for this video? Maybe a Friar Tuck robe?
Wow, that’s Christian Slater at the height of his Christian Slater-ness…I totally forgot that he was in this movie. His character was Robin’s long lost brother, clearly shoehorned in the movie to grab the 15-30 demographic because again, Christian Slater at that time probably had six different teen magazine covers hanging up in Michael Jackson’s room.
At the 3:50 mark, Director to Bryan Adams: “I want you to walk on the rocks with your trench coat, hands in your pockets…Pause and find a space on the rock wall to lean back on and look afar like you’re longing for love……And action….Perfect Bryan, perfect!”
This video just has the greatest mix of lyrics matching slow-motion action scenes with a singer taking himself way too seriously. When you add all that up you get….magic.
1. Karate Kid 2- Peter Cetera: The Glory of Love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWHOF_0-6Hg
This is number one for a reason…Peter Cetera starts off walking into the dojo wearing all black with his beautifully feathered hair letting us know that he’s a good guy, but maybe he has a slight bad side to him as well…someone you like, but you don’t trifle with.
The expression he has at the 40 second mark of this video is one of intensity mixed with maybe his “O” face.
Daniel Larusso needed a song titled The Glory of Love…he just did, OK? Nobody ever rubbed people the wrong way like Daniel Larusso. In part one, he’s the new kid and within two nights he already had the “in crowd” against him. In part two, he goes to Japan and within a few days pisses off the biggest bad ass over there. The only thing that got him through those situations was the glory of love….
1:42- What is Peter Cetera looking at there?
3:02- Director: “Let’s get a shot of Peter Cetera’s apparently gigantic hands. Was Kurt Rambis his hand-double or something?
Really, stop and ponder this for a moment; this video was made with the intention of being perceived as serious. This was not made as a joke. The intention of this video, for you the viewer at the time this video came out, was to feel the glory of love. This video puts you into the shoes of Daniel Larusso as he shows us all that the glory of love has to offer……Thank you, Peter Cetera….Thank you.
So there you have it. That’s my list that is neither based in fact, nor of any real importance or meaning. I hope you liked it, and like I said, if you have your own personal favorite, then share it down below in the comments section! Thanks for reading.
