80s music video reviews: Ready For the World

Music videos, aren't they great? (Still open to debate...)
They've been around for a while, but it was the 80s when they harnessed their potential and made their mark on the world, just like cold war fever or telephones the size of a coffin.
I'll be taking you step by step through one of the more notable (In that I saw it the other day) videos of that era, the song 'Love you Down' by the band Ready For The World. An inoffensive archetypal RnB lurrrrve song that's like a Smartie; sure it's Ok enough...but there's hundreds more like it (and according to a year 4 rumour, the red ones give you diarrhea....this is still unconfirmed by the NHS).
It reached number 9 in the US in 1986 and the incredibly prestigious place of 60 on the British charts (A moment of solemn respect and admiration) before disappearing faster than an West End musical about Myra Hindley.



Look down at your feet. You are probably now wearing legwarmers because of this photo.

Let the unnecessary scrutiny begin!

The video begins with a Hitchcock-esque silhouette of a woman in front of a pair of curtains, perhaps the most SEXIEST image known to man? Who knows? If you stare at it too long her proportions and hair resemble an inaccurate rendition of how a woman would look by a blind Austrian making a doll out of a carved beetroot.

Suddenly, apropos of nothing the woman begins to laugh. What at though? We're left to ponder this quagmire of a mystery. Some possible suggestions.

• A crude limerick about a sexually frustrated sea captain
• When Del Boy falls through the bar.
• Insanity, caused by the pale orange blizzard of light that isolates her existence.
• An old man getting shit on by a formation of seagulls.

Before we have a chance to discover the source of her amusement, we're introduced to the lead singer (Check name later) and SHIT* GETS SEXY YALL.
*Metaphorical. That'd be gross.
The camera then zooms closer to her, will it go into her ear, like an arousing version of David Lynch's Blue Velvet intro?

HERE'S HOPING.

Appearing henceforth into our world, like a cosmic vision from the dark void of funk, we have our lead singer, surrounded by nothingness because he...is all we need (budgetary concerns).

Notice what appears to be a cross between a Jheri curl and a mullet? A Jullet, or a 'Merry Curl' as you would. If a Mullet is 'Business at the front, party at the back', than this is 'party all over the place...seedy, unsettling, substance abusing partying to the sound of a sinister ethereal slap bass solo'.

Needless to say, that hair is the pinnacle of follicle achievement and if you disagree then you need to call up the guiness book of records and demand a place, holding the record for most SEVERELY WRONG  HUMAN BEING on the planet.

And then the chorus kicks in, and a microphone tears through the very fabric of space and wills itself into existence, appearing in front of our lead singer through the magic of love (Not affiliated with 'The Power of Love').

Let me love you down,

Even if it takes all night.

I'm a bit...boggled by this. Can you love somebody down? I know you can love somebody 'up', as in 'I am loved up', but can love go in many directions like a boomerang or racial bias in the BNP?
Maybe this woman is so loved up, perhaps she is so used to fantastic lovers that she feels as if there is no zenith left, nowhere to go. Then this soulful white (not racially) knight appears and whispers 'Hey babe, why don't you take a break, and settle for something a bit more mediocre?'.
SAY YES WOMAN.
SAY YES DAMN YOU.

LET HIM LOVE YOU DOWN.
Downgrade your love like a devolved shanty town of emotion.
Unless he wants to physically throw this woman to the floor with 'love', which kind of sounds like a sexual assault charge...

Also, 'even if it takes all night' warrants a mention for completely missing the intended mark. I love the detached eye rolling attitude that 'even if it takes all night' conveys. It tries to seem seductive and passionate, but has the frustrated lack of denial and single minded anger of a single father trying to inflate a paddling pool to impress his kids.

(Please bear in mind, the last person I dated would that I were cast into a pit of fire, so please take my knowledge on 'love' with a Russian Oil tanker full of salt.)

Back to the verse, and the camera pans around this warehouse showing the only prop in the video...this large illuminated ...rectangle with various sections...
It's just there.
It doesn't do anything, or provide any obvious aesthetic purpose.
I don't even know what it is, it could just be some lazy placement, but I'd like to think it's a sentient lifeform. A malicious and cruel entity that demands Ready For The World perform for it, lest the galactic rectangle render them asunder.
PLAY A SLOW JAM FOR ME. THE RECTANGLE DEMANDS IT. PLAY LEST I CAST YOU INTO THE ICY VOID OF YOUR OWN FEARS.

Also, this line makes me chuckle.

Remember when I drove you home from work?

That's right, because nothing's sexier than CARPOOLING!

I don't like to imagine where those thumbs are going...

The rest of the band then appear, and here we have our bassist, bathed in the same orange light, giving him the appearance of a funky bronze statue. Like an idol outside a Greek Parthenon to the God of Slap Bass.

This guy drums.

That's all I have on that.

And the woman is back. Laughing arbitrarily at something and spraying herself with something (insert your own product placement here.) The room she's in reminds me of the tiled bathroom at a Waterpark I went to in Crete a few years ago. Based on this, I assume there are used bandages by her feet and a spider the size of a tangerine on the wall opposite her.

Like a well dressed interlude, the lead singer interjects once again. Reminding us that he still exists, and will continue to do so for the entire narrative of this music video.

He sings some more innocuously unoffensive lyrics about romance and all that malarkey.
Try and guess the odd one out.

All that really mattered was you're my girlfriend

You know it's got to be so right

Oh baby all night long.

They'll have to identify you with dental records.

(It's not as obvious as you may think)

And then we're back in this woman's bedroom, the camera descending from the rafters like a sexy pigeon.

And she's lying on her bed, presumably for sexy reasons and not food poisoning or gout.
And the bed is where the 'magic happens', as they say. Well, I know my bed is where the magic happens...because magic, doesn't exist. (Zing...?)
Because her bed isn't against a wall it's like she's lying on a table, or a sacrificial alter.
But that's just me.

But no time for sacrifices and blood tributes now, it's guitar solo time!

The guitarist silhouetted by the lead singers face, like a broken memory or a regretful past crime he can't escape from. He also kind of looks like the boss from a Metroid game, the behemoth funk head.

The woman wistfully plays with the curtains, and it's at this point I'm believing she may have dementia or be mentally ill.

That's all she does. Bat at the curtains like a bored cat, enthralled at the movement it creates. It's all she lives for, her lifeblood, her soul.

Curtains.

Curtains.

Curtains.

And we're done, full circle. The song fades out, as the giant hyper-rectangle of tolerance and obedience demands the chorus be repeated forevermore, like a solemn ever repeating SOS to the dark recesses of lonely space..

PLAY FOR ME

MAKE MUSIC FOR ME

READY FOR THE WORLD

LOVE ME DOWN

LOVE IS OBSOLETE

ALL YOU NEED IS HYPER-RECTANGLE
LET THE HYPER-RECTANGLE LOVE YOU DOWN.