WHY GOD CREATED YOUTUBE™: Billy Ocean's "Loverboy"

Last week, an extended illness provided me with ample free time at home. While most of it was spent sleeping, re-watching the fifth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm or vomiting, I managed to find time to digitize a few of my old vinyl records. After giving the 7" single of Billy Ocean's Loverboy a spin, it reminded me just how much I adore the ramped-up cheesy 80s production on that song (courtesy of Robert John "Mutt" Lange, the man who made the backwards snare hit synonymous with Def Leppard on the Pyromania album). I couldn't really remember what the video for Loverboy was like, so of course that led me to YouTube and the above-embedded gem.

WTF--I mean really, W...T...F. It has absolutely nothing to do with the song. The director apparently got the concept for the video from the song's synth overture that sounds vaguely Vangelis-like, so of course this means the video must be set in a futuristic...oh, shall we say, "cantina" of sorts, populated by a madcap crew of aliens and robots that would have been slightly more fashionable had this video been released a year previously when Return of the Jedi was still in theaters. The aliens are just amazing...there's the alien with a TV for a head, the robot DJ prop dusted off from the set of Herbie Hancock's Rockit, and the pink-haired Gelfling love interest. But my favorite creatures of all are the Jawas-that-aren't-Jawas -- because they're tall -- whose miraculous reappearance at the video's climax as the choir singing the octave-higher reprise of the refrain is nothing short of brilliant.

Truly, this is why God ceated YouTube.