The Sunday Column – Bring back the story

Last week’s column was tangentially connected to the race at best. This one has even less relevance but it’s so important I just can’t let it go.

Music videos need to tell stories again. I realised this at Def Leppard’s awesome co-headlining gig with Whitesnake in Belfast on Saturday night. During the gig Leppard played a video in the background for one of the song Nine Lives. I’ll let my buddy Steve describe the tale of this tape.

“There’s this girl... and she’s really hot. THE END.” The actual promotional video tells an even shorter story. There’s a band playing a song, the end. That’s right, the video Steve described actually had more thought put into it.

What the hell? I’m all for rock videos featuring raunchiness and attractive women but there used to be some attempt at context. Artists used to try and actually do stuff with their videos, to give them a point rather than just being pictures that played over music.

One man knew the power of a video more than any. Not Peter Gabriel, not Spike Jonze, no the man that truly said “I want to tell a story” was Lionel Richie.

Yes, ‘Hello’ is a cheesefest of the highest order but it’s a video in which stuff actually happens.

There’s a dude, Lionel Richie, who really fancies this girl in a university class he teaches. Dude is really nervous about hitting on girl, possibly because it’s quite dodgy to date a student, so instead he just walks around roaring HELLO. This is often done in close proximity to his victim, who happens to be blind so can’t see this nutter is in the vicinity. This doesn’t prove effective so Richie decides to ring her, showing that she isn’t even safe in her own home. Then a student tells our protagonist to check out the sculpture class where the girl this dude has been stalking has made a giant clay model of his noggin. The stalkee explains this is how she sees him, though she doesn’t reveal that the sculpture is so the cops know who to watch out for. Richie responds in the only way he knows how, by shouting HELLO. The end.

This is way more detailed than anything current artists try to convey. This is the level of effort we need to see from music videos. Music + moving pictures + stuff happening = Good.