10 Music Videos That Changed Music Forever
7. Once In A Lifetime - Talking Heads
Talking Heads were a band that were always on the cutting edge of art rock. From experimenting with post punk in their early years to incorporating world music on their later works, the band could literally say they did everything they could by the time they disbanded.
When their career started to pick up, the band decided to shoot a then-new music video for MTV, back when it was in its infancy. With the help of future "Mickey" superstar Tony Basil, frontman David Byrne employed just the right kind of sporadic dance moves to make the song unbelievably energetic.
The vocal inflections you hear from Byrne, as if he is a preacher on a pulpit, go perfectly with the whirlwind of images unfolding behind him. The song's message details the meaninglessness of everyday routines and how it will one day lead you to go insane, which is represented tastefully in Byrne's dance moves.
The basic patterns in his dance moves start off fine but gradually get more and more stagnant, as if the humanity of Byrne's functions are being stripped away from him. MTV still had a long way to go before it became a cultural giant, but "Once In a Lifetime" gave every other art rock band a template for what could be done in the visual medium.