What's your favorite overwrought, overly dramatic '80s MTV music video?

CL crying over her ugly boyfriend =

Meatloaf - Bat Out of Hell

Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart

Pat Benatar, Love is a Battlefield

Laura Branigan, Self Control

Papa Don’t Preach……

Duran Duran, Hungry Like the Wolf

Total Eclipse of the Heart

I tried tying a scarf around my head and kids on the bus tore it off.

Hotline to Heaven by Bananarama.

Cocaine was too cheap in the mid 80s.

Bonnie Tyler - Holding out for a Hero.

Barbra - Left in the Dark.

Liza - Losing My Mind

Diana - Eaten Alive.

Voices Carry for sure.

And amazing vocals.

R14, that last minute of Voices Carry is one of the best short-short films ever made!

Liza's music video is a capsule biography of her life. She wants the hot straight guy but is comforted by her gay neighbor.

Vitamin Z, “Burning Flame”. Worst song and band of the 80’s, but the video is entertaining.

It WAS Total Eclipse of the Heart until I found out Russell Mulcahey posts here and is annoying as fuck.

R3 I always enjoyed the part where the pimp gets scared when they shimmy aggressively toward him.

Fleetwood Mac, Gypsy

The epitome of overwrought

Meatloaf - Bat Out of Hell

Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart

When Doves Cry. High, high drama!

Op I like that Motels song

Saw The Motels just this past May in LA, and they were fantastic. Love hearing those old Motels songs

Paul Young's "Come Back And Stay" video is like an episode of Dynasty. Lots and lots of shots of him and his lady fighting. At one point she defiantly spills out her purse out on the ground. There is a vicious face slap. Paul pushes some elderly man down a flight of stairs. He sneaks into her bedroom in the night -- his lady is nowhere to be found. And there's a twist ending!

How are some of you able to get YouTube previews to show?

R20, fun fact, Gypsy was the most expensive video ever made when they shot it in Summer 1982. $750,000.

[quote][R3] I always enjoyed the part where the pimp gets scared when they shimmy aggressively toward him.

Men are terrified by the titty-shaking dance!

Oh this one

R26 If you use You Tube's "share" function to copy link, it won't show up here. So I copy the link at the top of the page and it seems to work.

Wow I had no idea, R27! Then Michael Jackson was like "hold my Jesus Juice" and Thriller was born.

You inspired me to rewatch Gypsy as it's been years. Wasn't expecting to be brought to tears. What a glorious video.

"Stand or Fall" by The Fixx. Lots of images of war, of horses collapsing, blocks tumbling, raindrops on windowpanes. And fog, so much fog. One of my very favorite songs of the era -- it's a masterpiece. But the video used to totally bum me out when I was a kid. When I got older I suddenly became very aware of how hot the lead singer Cy Curnin was/is. He's still attractive to this day

OP when you say overwrought do you mean the song or the video treatment?

Alone by Heart is tops of this category

Almost Over You by Sheena Easton

MR. ROBOTO by STYX

The song, the video, it's all pure over-the-top operatic madness

Streisand's LEFT IN THE DARK. Ugh.

R33, as the videos above show, the big songs and the over-the-top, drama-filled videos fit perfectly together. They go hand in hand. So I'd say both.

"Lost Without Your Love" by Jacqui Brooks

Ah the Big 80s! Big Hair! Big Shoulders! Big Feelings!

40 posts before the most overwrought video of the entire decade.

"Well, I hope and I pray, that maybe someday, you'll walk in the room with my heart..."

Like A Prayer

R41 -- please see R3

Nothing is more overwrought than 31 year old Pat Benatar as a teenage runaway becoming a prostitute and later leading a whore rebellion. MTV would not stop playing it.

Hello.

Op —that’s hardly overwrought—it’s under.

I do love OP's choice.

If I was ever going to do drag, THAT would be my song.

R20, how is it that I’ve never seen the video for Gypsy before? Good call!

Definitely this.

Desert Moon by Dennis DeYoung

Broken Wings by Mr. Mister

The video for Father Figure took itself pretty goddamn seriously.

I feel like this observation has been made many times before on DL, but I'll offer it up again that Cully Holland, the actor who played the yuppie douchebag BF in "Voices Carry" was smokin', but, sadly, he died of AIDS in '91.

I had no idea, R53! Whoa.

Prince R50 is trying sooo hard. Yet he’s so soft.

A Girl in Trouble is a Temporary Thing by Romeo Void.

And I'll offer up Wham's "Everything She Wants." The overly dramatic part is George Michael looking directly at the camera for the lip-synch, earnestly bringing the audience into his confidence. There's also the funny bit at the end where he's in bed with the woman whose heavily lacquered nails are on his chest, as if to project George's misery with this chick because all she wants is his money.

Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin - Separate Lives (1985)

R27 Stevie plays it like she was the Galadriel of the Great Depression!

Patrick Swayze reaching #1 on the US Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary charts for a song entitled "She's Like The Wind" and belting it out with a mullet in a black and white video for the song, is about as over-dramatically 80s as it gets.

Tina's "Private Dancer" is pretty up there

Love is a Battlefield

Holding out for a Hero

Total Eclipse of the Heart.

That Billy Squire one.

Tears For Fears - SHOUT

The one that destroyed his career, R63? It wasn't dramatic so much as ridiculous

I'm probably the only one who remembers but Louise Tucker Midnight Blue.

[quote]Bonnie Tyler - Holding out for a Hero.

R10 that's not overly dramatic, it's the DL nightly prayer.

Louise Mandrell!

Speaking of Marilyn Martin.

Janie's Got a Gun.

There's lots of crying, running, crawling, hair flipping, gunshots, and broken china and stemware.

And Leslie Ann Warren's facial expressions of consternation.

This always cracks me up.

K.T. Oslin. 80's Ladies

Berlin's "No More Words" was a bit much, but I liked it back then.

R70 do better.

I had totally forgotten about the "No More Words" video, R73! It's...a lot.

Paula Abdul's "Rush", starring Keanu Reeves!

Oy vey with the cheesy dialogue and the drag racing fatality, R76. I could feel the cringe taking over my core.

I’m not going to back down. Price Akeem is on halt. I’m sick of this shit. Fix the fucking site. Learn who is who.

HUH, R78?!?! Where did that come from?

His ass —it’s the gas!

The gurl can’t take a mafuckin’ hint of a joke. Kick her from the juke joint, wig first.

Muriel, clean-up on aisle R78

"On My Own," sung by Michael McDonald and Patti LaBelle.

Re-enactment of a break-up involving a wealthy, bi-coastal couple who feel like they're getting divorced, but they weren't even married.

Patti's lyrics sound more like she is dreading being alone more than being without Michael McDonald.

I LOVE Laura Branigan's "Self Control." It is one of the most deliciously bizarre videos of the 80s. It probably belongs in this thread but I cannot bring myself to nominate it. I live among the creatures of the night and I haven't got the will to try and fight.

This song "Meeting in the Ladies' Room" is a little dramatic, but there was club drama in those days.

R76, I was going to mention Paula Abdul's "Rush Rush" but that was a '90s song.

Cacophony of crazy that 40 years later comes off as predictably pretentious.

R56 It was overwrought but it was also the record label trying to be weird and serious to find literally anything they could do to trick the MTV viewer into not noticing Debora Iyall (RV's lead singer) was a fat girl.

Same thing they did with Alison Moyet in her first few videos. Dress her in a bedsheet! Shine light on only part of her face!

To me Self Control was the most iconic song to come out of the 80's. That opening riff is everything.

Love the song. That is Lisa VanderPump in the video. Shoot that Poison Arrow to my heeeaaart

[quote]All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You - Heart

Whore!

R85 you're absolutely right, my apologies. I'll have to replace it with "Jessie's Girl".

"Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats

R91 Jessie's Girl?! C'mon now.

Janet and her mafuckin Escapade.

I think people are misunderstanding what "overwrought" and "overdramatic" mean, if "Sweet Dreams" and "Safety Dance" are being nominated. Think romance, crying, furtive looks, weeping, grandiosity. Candlelight, rain, fog, sleet, snow. Longing, pining, arguing. Someone getting slapped or pushed onto a bed. Someone high-fiving/fist-bumping every single one of her fellow teenage runaway prostitutes in the morning sun in a tattered dress after shimmying en masse out of the seedy bar that was keeping them all trapped in a life of sexual slavery.

I will nominate this Eurythmics video: Here Comes The Rain Again.

R88 Agree.

The song itself is at the precipice of over the top but is saved by that insistent beat - really close to a disco beat, Italo Disco as it were.

The video is gloriously over the top, in every way.

But the song really does still stand up today. Even with the 80s production.

R93 I'll try again. How about Crazy by Icehouse (1987) ?

Oh shit, R97! Tuxedos, candles, bedroom scene. Check, check, check.

"November Rain" came out in 1991 (darn), but that's an example of something overwrought & overly dramatic. However, it's a well-done video and a really good song, so all is forgiven.

Self Control could be released today and still sound out of the oven fresh.

R99 I realized Escapade came out in 90 too.

Came here to post "Poison Arrow" or "Self Control" but two of you beat me to it.

So it's a toss-up between Roxy Music's "Avalon" (featuring Sophie Ward) and "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles

That’s not overwrought. That’s MTV

If you add up all the views on the several Self Control videos on YouTube the song has been watched about a billion times. I wonder if her estate gets any coin for that.

We are the world

I know Rock Me Amadeus is tongue in cheek, but if we are talking overwrought, as in intricate, rococo, high drama, etc, then this video is IT. Falco brings the intensity to the part. That wig is "overwrought."

In a similar vein (i.e., not "overwrought" but high-drama and very mannered), then "She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby gets my vote, also because I thought he was sexy as hell.

Definitely Billy Squire Rock Me Tonight

Correct video

I give up

OP after this thread please do 90s.