Thursday, June 28, 2007

WHY GOD CREATED YOUTUBE™: "MOTORINNNNNNNN" ... Er, I Mean "Sister Christian" by Night Ranger

Earlier this week, Shady challenged me to find a way to work this song into one of my posts...and although it would have been nice to make it a sly reference in a post about something else, I think this video is worth a moment in the spotlight. Embarrassingly, when Shady described it to me as "that cheesy song that starts out kinda quiet and then builds up to the guy singing 'MOTORINNNNNNNN'," I couldn't immediately tell her the real name of the song OR who sang it. I mean, I remember listening to it while driving around in high school with one particular friend of mine who, somewhat stereotypically, was as clean cut as your typical Young Republican yet was totally into all the hair bands like Night Ranger (altho his all-time favorite was Bon Jovi), so it breaks my heart that I wasn't able to retrieve this data as quickly as I could, say, give you a list of every single released from No Jacket Required. I wasn't even sure of the refrain's real lyrics, but I'm proud to say I did not steer you wrong, Shady: he really is singing "What's your price for flight?" in there, which is either a stroke of non-sequiter genius, the biggest pile of lyrical gibberish this side of "mama se/mama sa/mama coo sa," or the worst attempt at poetically expressing the desire to pay an underage woman for sexual favors ever put to song.

But enough chit chat, it's time for you to give Night Ranger a look-see. First, I have to mention this song's groundbreaking use of quiet/loud contrast in the verses and choruses, undoubtedly an inspiration to both The Pixies and Nirvana. Second, please note my two favorite visual moments here: (1) when the drummer lip syncs within a lip-synched video (he's just SO feelin' it that you almost feel like you've caught him alone in his room mouthing the lyrics into a mirror) and (2) when the graduating girl inevitably flings off her robes, runs down the stairs of the school and into the waiting convertible driven by Night Ranger, which then drives off into the sunset. Absolutely classic.

Truly, this "embedding-disabled-by-request" video is why God created YouTube.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't miss the subtle subcontext of the song, which is:
"Barely legal girls are hottt, AMIRITE???!!!!"

The video made my stomach hurt; the music made me wanna rollerskate.

8:41 AM  

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