‘music videos took place in courtrooms’

In the decade of the Nine­teen Hun­dred and Eight­ies, most mu­sic videos took place in courtrooms. 

This af­ford­ed lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties for mug­ging, gooferies, ju­ries lip-sync­ing cho­rus­es, and that tropi­est of 80s court­room video tropes: The stuffy old judge who gives in to the jams by the end and finds him­self singing or clap­ping along. Al­most al­ways, the video ends in mu­si­cal bed­lam with every­one in the room crunk­ing out to the tune. 

This will be a post to cel­e­brate these videos.
 

El Debarge’s Who’s John­ny seems to be a court­room video by de­fault, as if they had a set and no bet­ter ideas so what­ev­er. It does get bonus points for find­ing a way to in­tro­duce clips from the movie it sound­tracks as video­tape ‘ev­i­dence’ in the courtroom.
 

I have no proof of this and the in­ter­net is not back­ing me up at all, but I am con­vinced Sir William made a dozen videos in court­rooms be­tween 1983 and 86. This one is unique in that the court­room is like a John­ny Rock­ets in space or something. 

I could have sworn Rod­ney Dan­ger­field was in this one play­ing the judge, but I think that about everything. 

(Watch till the very end for a Joe Pis­copo cameo)

(Yes, we lived at one time in a world where there was val­ue in a two sec­ond Joe Pis­copo cameo in your video)
 

This is from 1976. Georgie was a pi­o­neer in the field of court­room mu­sic videos.
 

The Tri­al, from The Wall.
 

If you were a child in 1984, an old­er rel­a­tive would try to bond with you by mak­ing a joke about how he should be called Girl Geor– HOLY SHIT BLACKFACE!!?!?!??
 

Sam­my Hagar’s video only half-takes place in a court­room but it’s the bet­ter part of the video. I al­ways smile when the judge hangs the Han Solo ac­tion figure. 

Had Sam­my dis­ap­peared in Cabo af­ter this song – nev­er to sing again – he would have been a True Legend.
 

A Rod Stew­art jam lit­er­al­ly no­body re­mem­bers from a movie no­body knows if they saw or not from the sum­mer of 1986. 

Per­haps we were all too en­am­ored of Top Gun­ning around with Howard the Duck, Co­bra, and The Gold­en Child to en­joy a court­room ro­mance that summer? 

Prob­a­bly. Also this song seems far dirt­i­er now than it did when I was 12.
 

Ohh­h­h­h­h­hh, this may be why I was confused
 

It’s ’92 but in Coun­try years that’s ac­tu­al­ly 1987.
 

Even­tu­al­ly the 80s ended.
 

But we still have courtrooms.
 
 
 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2017 Ja­son Malm­berg. Ad­di­tion­al finds by Ken Koch, Lela­nia Ar­lene, and Steve Mehallo.

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