“Everybody Hurts” - R.E.M.

Back in my day, bands routinely made short films to accompany some of their more popular songs.  These short films were called “music videos,” and there were entire television stations devoted to playing nothing but these short films - music videos, that is - all day long.  Some music videos were little more than footage of a band performing live, but others were more artistic and thought-provoking.

And when something in one of these videos piqued our curiosity, we couldn’t just hop on Wikipedia and find out, for example, who arranged the song’s string section or if the video’s director happened to be related to Ridley Scott.  Most of us didn’t have the internet, and those who did certainly did not have a connection that was always on and ready to go.  But now that I think about it, we really didn’t need the internet back then.  We had something better. We had VH1’s Pop Up Video.