Friday, February 13, 2015

Separated at Birth: 3 Music Videos That Could Have Been Shot on the Same Set

No More Blood From a Clone has been around for a while now, but it's been a minute since we introduced a new series of articles. So today, I bring you the first installment of "Separated at Birth," in which we explore multiple music-related things that are seemingly unrelated, but share some family traits.

First up, the following are three music videos that (and I'm sure they aren't alone) have a similar nature feel and artistic direction.

In 1985, the somewhat obscure but well-respected group Talk Talk released the video for their song "Life's What You Make It." The video was filmed at the Wimbledon Common and directed by Tim Pope (famous for his work with The Cure). 



Now, in case you're unfamiliar with the work of Talk Talk, let me just tell you, videos were not lead singer Mark Hollis's favorite thing. Their original video for "It's My Life," also directed by Pope, was a protest against lip-synching. But for this video, the band obviously did more to embrace the medium, making "Life's What You Make It" the band's strongest music video.

Perhaps that's why, in 2009, the video had an affair with Spike Jonze's rendition of Where the Wild Things Are, and gave birth to Mika's "Rain" video.


The song itself was described my Mika as "an unapologetic '80s pop record," making it a stone's throw away from the sound Talk Talk were in the process of leaving when "Life's What You Make It" was released. The video, directed by Nez Khammal was filmed in the Epping Forest in Essex, but I think it could have easily shared the set with it's half-brother (providing Wimbledon Common even looked the same by 2009).

Just a year later, a brother much more closely related to "Life's What You Make It" was born, in the form of Jamie Woon's "Night Air."


"Night Air"'s video is very similar in artistic direction to the Talk Talk single, complete with close-ups of the creatures crawling in the night.

While there is seemingly no other link between these three songs, I think the videos are a crazy connection. Stay tuned for more musical artifacts that were separated at birth.