Dreaming of a Mad World

More music videos, 'cause I'm lazy and it's Friday.

Last week I spoke of my pre-adolescent love for Blondie, or more specifically for lead singer Debbie Harry. "Die Young, Stay Pretty" is far from my favorite song of theirs. "Dreaming" very well may be.

I think every band, regardless of genre, can cover this song. It's cool and timeless. Even the New Wave getups in the video somehow seem less anachronistic than in other videos from this era, and Debbie Harry has never looked more pornstar gorgeous.

One song that I can't imagine any band trying to cover is "Birthday" by The Sugarcubes. I first became aware of The Sugarcubes through a concert I accidentally taped on MTV in early 1989 while trying to record The Young Ones. This was the song that caught my attention and made me notice the odd little lead singer who went by the name of Bjork.

(WARNING: Some non-pornographic non-explicit nudity is shown in this video, because Iceland - like most of the rest of the world - is well beyond the body shame that plagues us backwards, primitive, unsophisticated Americans. Deal with it, or don't watch it until you've evolved into something more enlightened.)

This song often leaves me curled in the fetal position, covered with goosebumps. Very dangerous when played while driving.

Another song that's dangerous to play while driving, for entirely different reasons, is "Winter" from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. After about 35 seconds in, just try to drive under the speed limit.

Like so many other classical* musicians, this guy was a freaking rock star centuries before Elvis. No wonder this song is used in countless commercials.

Another Vivaldi bit that I love is the Second Movement of the Guitar Concerto in D-Major. I only know what it is because I heard it on a classical radio station months ago and listened until they back-announced the title. Up until then I knew this as "that song they played on Sesame Street while showing time lapse photography of a flower opening."

(No, that's not Doc from The Love Boat.) This song was also used, I believe, in a haunting 1978 TV-movie called "The Bermuda Depths" which involved a possibly supernatural giant sea turtle and a mysterious woman named Jenny Haniver. **

Finally I bring you full circle, to a cover of a New Wave song by Tears for Fears. Gary Jules doing "Mad World" from Donnie Darko:

I woke up one Saturday morning a few years ago, turned on MTV, saw this video, and thought "There's hope for this channel yet."

I may have been wrong. But, still, it's a great song, and a great video.


*Technically, Paganini came after the "Classical" period, and Vivaldi came before it. Bite me.

**Interesting note from the Wikipedia entry on this movie:

It seems to have affected a mass of young children, people who were aged 7-14 in 1978 in some kind of hypnotic, "mass dream" way. So many people recall their surreal and dream-like memory of the movie. It has been suggested that this was the effect of the Vivaldi score, or the ocean scenes, or the haunting subject matter of the film.

I was 10 when I saw it...

P.S. Unsurprisingly, The Bermuda Depths can be found in nine 10-minute chunks on YouTube.