#23 - All She Wants To Do Is Dance

Artist: Don Henley

Album: Building The Perfect Beast
Video: After a 45 second commercial, you will be treated to this blurry video from DailyMotion which was hijacked from YouTube.  Sweet Jebus.

A great year to be a former Eagle, was 1985.  Three videos on the countdown so far, and we ain’t done yet.  The top 25 videos are littered with tunes by ex-Eagles turned solo artists.  Too bad Joe Walsh and Timmy B couldn’t join the party.

While Glenn Frey was dominating soundtracks, Don Henley released “Building The Perfect Beast”, his strongest solo album to date.  Eleven tracks, solid all the way through.  “All She Wants To Do Is Dance” is the second biggest hit from that album, peaking at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

And yet, on this countdown it ranks forty-two places higher than the timeless classic “The Boys Of Summer”.  Sigh.  Their positions should be flipped.  “All She Wants” is a decent song, but I never counted it among my favorites.  I can classify it as no higher than pretty good.

It’s a song about a woman with a single-minded desire to shake her booty, even though all around her chaos is raining supreme.  Many have speculating that the woman is a metaphor for America, obsessing over shiny new baubles while the world falls apart.  Don Henley sure does enjoy his biting social commentary.

The video has an unwashed feel, taking place in some sort of underground cave.  Filled with fast cuts and severe camera angles, soldiers share space with the band, each staking out territory.  A fiery Latina temptress gyrates throughout, for that is all she wants to do.

#65 - The Boys Of Summer

Artist: Don Henley

Album: Building The Perfect Beast
Video: From DailyMotion.

This is one of my all-time favorite songs.  It was like a "gateway drug" that led to my discovery of the Eagles' classic tunes.  It was a rare positive 1985 introduction to a rock 'n' roll legend.

"The Boys Of Summer" peaked at #5 in the Billboard Hot 100.  Filled with beautifully poetic lyrics, the song is a melancholy lament of lost youth and innocence.  The “Dead-Head sticker on a Cadillac” line is a condemnation of yuppie hypocrisy.

The video won the MTV Video of the Year award in 1985.  So why isn't it #1 in the countdown?  Or at least in the top 64?  The order of MTV's list continues to baffle me.

Shot entirely in black and white, this is one of MTV's classic videos.  We see a number of scenes in which Henley appears to hover above Los Angeles.  He is actually being filmed while riding in the back of a pickup truck. 

The enduring image is of two young lovers running and playing on the beach.  It recurs as if it were a memory of the video's characters, who appear haunted and touched by the theme of lost innocence.  In particular, the small, intense-looking boy playing drums bears a striking resemblance to Henley.

I saw Don Henley live during the "End Of The Innocence" tour in 1989.  It was a terrific show, much better than the disappointing and overhyped Eagles' "Hell Freezes Over" tour, which devoted a ridiculous amount of time to the individual band members singing their solo hits.  Seriously, I paid a premium for Eagles tickets so I could hear Joe Walsh sing "Ordinary Average Guy"?  If you're going to get the band back together, sing the songs that made the band great in the first place.