Artist: Billy Ocean
Video: From DailyMotion. Beware of the 30-second commercial intro.
Billy Ocean's birth name is Leslie Sebastian Charles. I think choosing "Billy Ocean" as a stage name was a great move.
I liked some of Billy’s songs all right, but he was a little bit too VH-1 for me. “Loverboy” was one that I enjoyed. Compared to many of his other hits, this was a hard rocker. I like that he expresses a clear, unmistakable desire to be “loverboy” to the woman he is singing about.
Here's an interesting fact about Billy Ocean's chart success: he has had three #1 hits, and the title of each of those songs is exactly eight words long. I leave it to you to look up the names. This one-word hit nearly crashed that party, peaking at #2.
The video includes many interesting looking, uh, creatures. Apparently this is some type of homage to Star Wars. I didn’t get that since I’m not a fan of that movie. To me, it looked more like the Muppets on an acid trip. My favorite scene is the odd, cartoonish-looking horse galloping across the ocean in the opening scene. The closing beach shot provides a nice bookend to the story.
Lastly, please remember to vote in the poll shown on the upper-right portion of the blog. I've been extending the ending time of these polls because not many people are voting. Every vote counts, and your vote will ultimately help determine the blog's favorite song of 1985.
I really can't say I remember the Cantina scene in this video. And I was a HUGE Star Wars fan. I must have missed this one (though I do recall it was a hit over the winter...so I was limited in my MTV watching by school hours and also by the fact that it was a pretty nasty winter and required me to take care of the driveway.)
ReplyDeleteAs the one guy who bothered to vote in your poll so far, I say let it go. The only vote that matters is there, IMHO.
At this rate, Chris, I should just ask you what your favorite song of 1985 was and we'll have that be the winner.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to take down the polls for a while. The results just aren't meaningful right now. Hopefully in the future the blog will gain a wider audience and we can try again.