10 Best Rock Music Videos Of The 1980s

6. We’re Not Gonna Take It - Twisted Sister

Twisted Sister were a band that were never going to survive after the glam rock experiment died out. But hey, they made a boatload of money during the mid-80s, so they probably don't care.

A lot of that money came from their 1984 song We're Not Gonna Take It, which was a massive hit at the time. As a result, it needed a music video, and the band were more than happy to apply the track's philosophy to a short film.

A father (played by Animal House's Mark Metclaf) scalds his young son for playing his darned rock 'n' roll music too loud! To get back at his stuck-up old man, the boy blasts him out of the window with the sound of his guitar and then transforms into Dee Snider.

Every parent's worst nightmare.

The video might seem a bit cliche by today's standards - the "disobedient kid standing up to his parents" trope is a joke by now - but that's only because Twisted Sister made it so.

At the time, this was cutting edge stuff, and there's a reason so much of this video's imagery has persisted long after the genre's death.

Contributor
Contributor

Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.