Friday 3 August 2012

It's Raining Men - The Weather Girls

Quite simply, I hate this song.

I cannot stand it at all.

Easily my least favourite song of all time.

The song really is rather privileged to have this level of hatred from me since I very, very rarely dislike a song as much. There is a lot of music out there that I will choose not to listen to, or that may not be to my taste, or I feel does not demand my time at all. But for me to hate a song, well, that takes something special. So, congratulations to The Weather Girls for managing it. There's some obvious reasons why I might not take a liking to this song:

The lyrics declare joy at an abundance of men being available... I'm not looking for men.
Therefore, it's considered to be a gay anthem... I'm not gay.
And also, it's sometimes considered to be an anthem for women... I'm not a woman.

However, there are other songs that could be described as such, and I don't necessarily dislike them as a result. In fact, in terms of determining whether I enjoy a song or not, it being a "camp classic" or a "female anthem" really plays very little part at all. Geri Halliwell (of Spice Girls fame), did a cover of this song in 2001. Whilst I'm no big fan of it, I don't hate it the way I hate the original version.

Nope... there's just one single reason why I dislike the song so much. And, really, the music itself isn't even to blame. So what is it? What's the reason why I find myself leaping across the room to turn it off if it gets played on the radio?

The god-awful music video.

There's a chance that, before I saw the video, I might not have minded the song particularly. But the moment I'd seen it once, I could never un-see it. Specifically, it's the awful chroma-keying (aka green-screening) that hits a nerve. From about a minute into the video, The Weather Girls look out a 'window' to see men falling from the sky. Except the angle, perspective and size is ridiculous and nonsensical... not to mention the acting. Then the ladies decide to leap from the building, and they are shown 'floating' down to the ground. At one stage, the chosen chroma-key colour is extremely similar to part of a lady's clothing, and so she's somewhat transparent in front of the city background.

My assumption is that it was an extremely low budget video - the rest of it certainly suggests as much. And clearly the whole thing is all very tongue-in-cheek and not expecting to be taken seriously at all.

But... for some reason... the awful special effects frustrate the hell out of me. And so now, even when it is just the song playing, all I can think of is those moments where things don't quite look right. I'm sure it is terribly unfair, awfully pedantic, and more than a little pathetic to let myself get worked up about some cheap video effect. But I do, so there!

I almost don't want to link the video here, but I will as a warning to you all!



"My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary." - Martin Luther

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