Let’s say this now: “The Way You Make Me Feel,” written by Jackson, and produced by himself and Quincy Jones, is excellent. Jackson walks around her slowly enough that we can notice the strand of hair artfully dangling over his forehead, and then sings a cappella: “You knock me off of my feet now, baby.” And then, he jumps in the air with a “whoooo!” He moves his limbs, kicking his feet and waving his arms, and seems to be summoning the music into existence. The white sash he’s wearing as a belt, tied in a bow at the front: that makes him look like a backup dancer in an old Gene Kelly musical. Black pants, white T-shirt, long-sleeved denim shirt: all plausibly tough. The vaguely menacing effect is ruined by his outfit. As he advances on her, he flashes a V-sign at waist level and then snaps his fingers, moving his wrist like he’s showing off a switchblade. Jackson curls his lip and turns towards her. Jackson yells: “Hey!” Thumbzen stops and turns around for a beauty-shot close-up: dangling earrings, bouffant hair, impeccably groomed eyebrows. There will be two more in the higher reaches of the chart.) (This is, by the way, the third of seven singles released from Bad, and the third Michael Jackson clip we’ve seen on the 1988 countdown, after “Another Part of Me” at #94 and “Smooth Criminal” at #60. His Bad-era plastic surgery has settled in more fully than it had on the “Bad” video (not in this countdown-it was released in 1987), so his face no longer looks like a constant rictus of pain, although it still has some unsettling mask-like qualities. We now see that our spurned hero is Michael Jackson, who tries to look tough. “She gonna pass him up,” our play-by-play man informs us. With the slightest of detours, she walks around the mysterious figure. Our B-boy keeps giving live commentary, as if he were a streetcorner Marv Albert: “I thought I told him to go home! What is he doing?” One of them points out the woman who’s turning the sidewalk into a runway and tells his friends, “Look at that! Look! Whoooo-oh! Now, that is foxy.” A silhouetted figure steps up onto the sidewalk, in the path of the woman. There’s a half-dozen B-boys hanging out on the corner.
The neighborhood is grimy and covered with graffiti it’s supposed to look like a sketchy part of New York City, but it’s pretty obvious that this video was filmed on one of the standing “New York” sets maintained by Hollywood studios.
A funky guitar riff plays in the background (the song “Hot” by Roy Ayers). New to the countdown? Catch up here.)Ī beautiful woman walks down a city street: tight black dress, bangles on her wrists, long kinky hair, flawless mocha skin, high heels.
0 kommentar(er)
