The Most Awesomely Bad Music Videos of All Time: 2nd Edition

Okay, so last night, it struck me like a rickety ceiling fan falling from the ceiling: No, no, THIS is a better bad video than Journey's "Separate Ways!"

Steve Miller Band--"Abracadabra."



Dudes, I LOVED this song when I was like five. And I still do, although the stalkerish lyrics make me cringe. "Abra-Abra-cadabra. I wanna reach out and grab ya!"

But there are simply NO WORDS for the video! The animated flames! The animated pegasus in the window at :14. (I swear to God!) Our sexy magician's assistant heroine with her big hair (with animated glittery effects), leopard-skin headband, and a pet rat! The cheap and completely unnecessary special effects! And, of course, the band...why does Steve Miller have the black box over his eyes? Why is he in such an ugly t-shirt? Why does he look like such a douche? These are just some of the mysteries posed by "Abracadabra."

Whew. Now that I've got that off my chest, I welcome your continued suggestions. I promise I will present some of them for this series in the future!

The Most Awesomely Bad Music Videos of All Time: 1st Edition...

Hi there, everyone!

There is still nothing interesting going on in music, unless you count the fact that Trent Reznor has shown us that he has multiple greyhounds too. (See, [Trent_Still_Reads]!)



See, he's even got an Italian greyhound on the couch...hardy har.

Oh, and he's working on the follow-up to Year Zero or something. Here you can watch Alessandro make a piano sound like a Vegas slot machine.

Anyhoo, I thought it would be fun to revisit some bad, bad music videos of yesteryear. And you guys can post nominations of your own!

Now, the video in question can't just be bad...it has to be awesomely bad. It has to have *some* redeeming quality to its badness.

Here's my first candidate:

"Separate Ways" by Journey



What makes this video awesomely bad? First of all, it's got to be the most low-rent video ever made by a wildly popular (at the time) arena rock band. What is this location? "Hey, Steve Perry, my cousin says we can film behind his warehouse, on like a Sunday or something, when no one's there." At the beginning of the video, you're slightly worried that they didn't have money for instruments, but then they magically appear...via a CAMERA TRICK! There are many of these sorts of CAMERA TRICKS in this video, so watch out!

The icy-hearted love interest has a killer wardrobe: white pumps, pantyhose, black leather skirt, white jacket, long dangly earrings, and really big hair. She walks a lot in this video, completely disregarding lead singer Steve Perry's desperate emoting.

The band look no less impressive in this video. All forms of unfortunate 80s fashion have been brought to the table. Most of Journey's members are sporting mullets, and one even has his mullet permed. There are tight jeans, aviator sunglasses, goofy t-shirts, collars turned up on denim jackets, sportcoats worn with t-shirts and jeans, and porn mustaches. Oh, and they have the most retarded-looking bass guitar I've ever seen.

So there's not a lot going on in this video, re: location, special effects, storyline, wardrobe. But we do have Steve Perry gesticulating dramatically. You can FEEL the anguish. This is also definitely Journey's best song, although "Don't Stop Believing" comes close. And that is what elevates this video from being merely bad to awesomely bad. It's like a little time capsule from 1983...all the things we wanted to forget about 1983, that is.

Any other nominations? Future posts will be dedicated to the most awesomely bad of the bunch.