The Go-Go's - Turn to You

Most readers will be familiar with the Go-Go's, the all-female new wave band from California.  Best known for being one of the first successful female bands that controlled their music (i.e., wrote their own songs and played their instruments), they emerged on the scene with a hugely successful debut album, 1981's Beauty and the Beat.  That LP went double platinum and was the #1 record in the U.S. for six weeks, making it one of the most successful debut albums of all time.  Unfortunately, the band only released two other albums in the 1980s before breaking up due to drug use and creative differences.

"Turn to You" was the last of the band's five top 40 hits, reaching #32 on the charts and coming off the Go-Go's final studio album of the decade, 1984's Talk Show.  Talk Show is an interesting album -- it received generally positive reviews, and was seen as a return to form after the somewhat disappointing Vacation LP.  However, it did not do well from a sales perspective, peaking at #18 and failing to even go gold.  In recent years the band has generally avoided playing material from this album in concert, leading some to speculate that the songs are associated with the difficult time around the Go-Go's breakup.

The video is something else, involving lots of early 1960s period details, a young Rob Lowe, the band members dressed as men, and the like.  It was the band's first story video and I think they did a solid job with it.

Cool trivia fact:  "Turn to You" was written by Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin and was inspired by Caffey's boyfriend at the time, baseball player Bob Welch.

Cool trivia fact #2:  The video was directed by Mary Lambert, who directed a ton of 1980s videos, including Janet Jackson's "Nasty" and "Control" and Madonna's "Borderline," "Like a Virgin," "Material Girl," and "Like a Prayer."  Lambert then transitioned to feature films; she mainly directs horror movies, including Pet Sematary and Pet Sematary II and most recently, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.

As a cool added bonus, we found some footage on the making of "Turn to You," which is presented below, for those who are interested.

Clocks - She Looks a lot Like You

The pride of Wichita, Clocks burst on the scene in 1982 with their self-titled debut.  Drummer Steve Swain wrote "She Looks a lot Like You" after seeing a Cosmopolitan magazine cover model who bore a resemblance to his ex-wife(!)  The video and song both did well, but the band seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle, and their label dropped them before a second album could be recorded.  Unfortunately, we do not believe that a CD was ever issued, which is a shame, because this is a one catchy gem.  [Edit - 2020: As one of our loyal readers pointed out, a CD was issued in 2009, and there are copies of it on eBay as of this writing.]