Saturday, September 16, 2017

This Music Video Thing...It Won't Catch On



Our Lips Are Sealed by The Go-Go's

Released in June of 1981, the perfect song of summer, it was a huge hit for this all girl group. Reaching #20 on the US charts with their first single solidified them as one of the forerunners of the New Wave scene and darlings of the new MTV generation. But not if you asked them...

Lead singer, Belinda Carlisle, didn't think videos would be popular and the rest of the band thought the whole idea a waste of time and money. The president of the record company, Miles Copeland, (brother of Police drummer, Stewart Copeland) disagreed and insisted, even going so far as to pay for this video with unused money from the Police's video budget.

So the girls rented a convertible from Rent-A-Wreck, drove around the Hollywood area and generally goofed around, stopping at Trashy Lingerie in Hollywood (it still exists on La Cienega) and danced in the Electric Fountain at Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvd. In between shots of them driving up and down random streets, the girls perform the song in a place called Club Central (which later changed its name to the Viper Room).

The song, by the way, was written after Jane Wiedlin had a brief affair with the member of another band that the Go-Go's were touring with (he had a girlfriend). They wrote the song together because their "lips were sealed"......although, if they wrote the song together, they did the exact opposite of keeping it quiet.

Please enjoy...


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