They do not say what they are looking for in their judging, but


From the Magazine | Show Business
THE TOP 20 VIDEOS


Posted Monday, Dec. 26, 1983
Laurie Anderson: O Superman (directed by Josh White). Performance art in outer space; a satellite transmission from a forbidden planet.

David Bowie: Let's Dance (Bowie and David Mallett). A sexy song fused onto a magical love story set in the big cities and the outback of Australia.

Devo: Love Without Anger (Gerald V. Casale). The syncopated anarchists of rock postmodernism use animated Ken and Barbie dolls and humanoid chickens to dispatch a characteristically acid valentine.

Peter Gabriel: Shock the Monkey (Brian Grant). Scarier than most horror movies; an electroshock anthem of alienation, with bleak music and bleached light.

Eddie Grant: Electric Avenue (Steve Barron). Edgy evocation of nighttime violence in the city, all done to an insinuating reggae beat.

Herbie Han****: Rockit (Kevin Godley and Lol Creme). An infectious synth-jazz riff keeps a group of unlikely robots—all unfinished—dancing as they putter.

Billy Idol: Dancing with Myself (Tobe Hooper). A little tune about solitary recreation becomes a sci-fi nightmare of metropolitan devastation.

Michael Jackson: Billie Jean (Steve Barren); Beat It (Bob Giraldi); Thriller (John Landis). Even though Thriller is the most accomplished of the three, just think of all as one—the collected works of soul's youngest past master.

Billy Joel: Tell Her About It (Jay Dubin); Pressure (Russell Mulcahy). Elaborate, funny and winningly self-mocking; Joel's videos are true showcases and absolute showstoppers.

The Kinks: Come Dancing (Julian Temple). Memory, comedy and a bit of sentiment in this bemused evocation of Britain's era of big bands and dance palaces.

Malcolm McLaren: Duck Rock videos. Actually, four separate videos, all directed by McLaren, spun off from his irresistible Duck Rock album. Each is an exercise in back-beat anthropology: Double Dutch, for example, is a spectacularly simple film of some New York City schoolgirls jumping rope.

Randy Newman: I Love L.A. (Tim Newman). Girls! Freeways! Donut shacks! Flash-cut postcards from the sunshine capital that are as winning and witty as the song itself.

Lionel Richie: All Night Long (Bob Rafelson). A sensuous production number, with gliding camera and giddy dancers, done in loving homage to the Hollywood grand style.

Rolling Stones: Undercover of the Night (Julian Temple). Blood and revolution south of the border; this is a perfect representation of the Stones '83—tough, nasty, sardonic and hellbent.

Yosh and Stan Shmenge: Power to the Punk People (Polka) (Yelte Velton). Actually, Eugene Levy and John Candy, two grandmasters of comedy from SCTV, doing some memorable demolition work on excesses of the video genre. The Shmenges are a couple of accordion yankers whose attempts to go current have the impact of Lawrence Welk playing a guest set with the Grateful Dead.

Donna Summer: She Works Hard for the Money (Brian Grant). A nice bit of high-kicking feminism, angry and sexy at the same time.

Talking Heads: Burning Down the House (David Byrne); Once in a Lifetime (Byrne and Toni Basil). Psychedelic drawing-room comedy and fine-tuned anxiety, with a solid foundation of funk. If there were a contest for best of the best, Byrne would be the one to beat.

Tom Tom Club: Genius of Love (Anabelle Jankel and Rocky Morton). Animation that looks like student drawings on high school looseleafs come to life, all in sun-kissed colors. Charming and disarming.

The Who: You Better You Bet (John Crome). A simple performance video in black and white that would pass as the definitive lab experiment in harnessing kinetic energy.

Neil Young: Wonderin (Tim Pope). This is like an ersatz home movie, complete with bad cutting and discomforted principal players, in which the singer, accompanied by his three sleazy back-up singers, the Shocking Pinks, appears as a low-IQ parody of his public persona, neatly ridiculing himself and the extravagances of rock video.