Music videos that feature Thunderbirds

[Dave W]

They sure are looking old. Are they in their 90s now?

[gearHed289]

I don't know what's worse - hair metal, or hair metal parody?

[uwe]

Steel Panther had their 15 minutes of being funny. Long ago.

[wellREDman]

Jamie Stewart and ebony Bicentennial:

ooh thank you for that, Jamie Stweart was one half of the reason I took up bass, but by Sonic Temple they had got too "american" for 20 year old me.

I very rarely played sonic temple even when I had Cult Freak painted on the back of my jacket, and this was it as its most schmaltsy.

oddly enough 50 year old me likes it more

and definitely the best use of Ciao Baby in a song.

[Chris P.]

I'm not sure this vid is in one of the million posts here.

[Pilgrim]

While I have always liked the song, even reading the lyrics while listening to it I'm totally clue-free as to what it means.  That's true of a great deal of music...another recent one is Kate Bush's "Running up that hill".  The music is very cool and listenable, but lyrics mean nothing to me, and the video doesn't help.

A recent article says: "It's about a relationship between a man and a woman. They love each other very much, and the power of the relationship is something that gets in the way. It creates insecurities..."  "It's saying, if the man could be the woman and the woman the man, if they could make a deal with God, to change places, that they'd understand what it's like to be the other person and perhaps it would clear up misunderstandings. You know, all the little problems; there would be no problem".

My response? ...OK...whatever.

[amptech]

True, lots of cool sounding meaningless pop lyrics.
They can't all be Neil Peart, you know

[Basvarken]

If you don't understand them or if you don't like them, it doesn't mean they're meaningless.

[Ken]

Thunderbird and Firebird

[uwe]

While I have always liked the song, even reading the lyrics while listening to it I'm totally clue-free as to what it means.  That's true of a great deal of music...another recent one is Kate Bush's "Running up that hill".  The music is very cool and listenable, but lyrics mean nothing to me, and the video doesn't help.

A recent article says: "It's about a relationship between a man and a woman. They love each other very much, and the power of the relationship is something that gets in the way. It creates insecurities..."  "It's saying, if the man could be the woman and the woman the man, if they could make a deal with God, to change places, that they'd understand what it's like to be the other person and perhaps it would clear up misunderstandings. You know, all the little problems; there would be no problem".

My response? ...OK...whatever.

Aber Pilgrim!!! Where were you when you should have had text analysis in English class?

Compared to a lot of outright nonsensical or overly abstract lyrics, the words of Running Up That Hill are actually quite concrete and the (nicely done) modern dance-vid is almost didactic in its effort to bring the message of the song across: the dance represents the couple's struggles, when they do archers' poses it alludes to Cupid and their love for one another, but there are always issues of men being one way and women another - hence the groups of men and women wearing a portrait of Kate or her partner as masks. It's a constant struggle, running up that hill, running up that road, running up a building to reach/stay in touch with someone of the other sex. I think that's actually a pretty profound, deep and very adult way of looking at the issues a man/woman relationship faces. And the music transports that too, there is something longing, yearning, struggling in the music and that galloping rhythm.

That said, when I first heard the song, I thought Kate's deal with God entailed swapping places with Him - which I felt was an interesting idea as well.

High marks for using the beautifully literary word asunder in a song text.

And Heart's Barracuda is in the tried and trusted tradition of rock bands having a go at their management/record ompany once they have become estranged from them (as fishes go, Barracudas don't have the best image), other examples are:





In Heart's case, Ann's rage was not only about money:


Ann Wilson revealed in interviews that the song was about Heart's anger towards Mushroom Records, who as a publicity stunt released a made-up story of an incestuous affair involving Ann and her sister Nancy Wilson. The song particularly focuses on Ann's rage towards a male radio promoter who came up to her after a concert asking how her "lover" was. She initially thought he was talking about her boyfriend, band manager Michael Fisher. After he revealed he was talking about her sister Nancy, Ann became outraged, went back to her hotel room, and wrote the original lyrics of the song.[3]

Producer Mike Flicker added that Mushroom Records was so obtuse in the contract negotiations that Heart decided to discard the album they were working on, Magazine—which the label still released in an unfinished form—and instead sign with the newly formed Portrait Records to make another record, Little Queen. As Flicker put it, "'Barracuda' was created conceptually out of a lot of this record business bullshit. Barracuda could be anyone from the local promotion man to the president of a record company. That is the barracuda. It was born out of that whole experience."[4]

The riff, btw, is ripped off from Nazareth's cover of Joni Mitchell's This Flight Tonight as Heart themselves have readily admitted:



Not that they were the first to purloin that galloping guitar idea ...

[Ken]

as fishes go, Barracudas don't have the best image

That kinda funny.  I'm a pretty serious scuba diver and barracuda are always fun to see.  Never a threat to humans.  Rarely even are sharks, for that matter.  I'm around them all the time.

[uwe]

But I personally like Barracudas! They remind me of pikes, which I also like. My favorite fish are sharks, sturgeons, catfish, pikes, eels - more the predator or bottom dweller guys really. I even have a handful of sturgeons and a (white/yellowish, though not albino) solitary catfish (they don't like the company of their own species) in my pond + a couple of eels. The larger sturgeons and the catfish are all in the 4 foot range by now and the catfish will no doubt continue to grow (European catfish are much larger than North American ones, up to 10 feet or even more)





If mine ever reaches that size I will no doubt have an impact on my pond fish population at large.  But so far I have yet to see mine attack, much less devour another fish, lazy bum prefers those expensive sturgeon food pellets! Supposedly, it grows by a third of its initial body length during every season (it hibernates in the older months here in Europe and stops eating, coming as it does originally from warmer climates in Asia, but they have been in Western Europe for hundreds if not thousands of years and adapted well).

There was a time in the 60ies when Barracudas were ill-reputed to attack divers if they wore something silver (probably mistaking it for prey fish reflecting in the sea). Dunno if there is any truth to that, but I couldn't really see a Barracuda seriously hurt someone except maybe a good scare and a small flesh wound. But while man is the worst predator on earth, humans do have a tendency to identify other predators with something bad.

[Ken]

Sturgeon are funny.  Ancient creatures.  Terrible eyesight from what I understand.  I'm on the volunteer dive team at the NY Aquarium and you have to watch out for the sturgeon because they'll bump into you.  Humans ruin everything.  Humans kill something like 100 million sharks per year, but sharks kill fewer than 10 humans per year.

[Chris P.]

Britney Spears once said: 'No, not all of my songs are about love. Some are about parties.' Love that!

[uwe]

Britney is an airhead and a tragic figure. She does deserve to live her own life though, never mind how misguided her own decisions are.

Of all the Aguileras, Rihannas, Arianas, Kylies and other chick dance acts, I found Britney's music, lyrics, choreography and jailbait image always the least compelling.