1989

1989 is the decade signing off, and it does so with the two things it had become best at: enormous ambition and enormous controversy, frequently in the same video.

Like A Prayer

Madonna's "Like A Prayer" managed to be a genuine international news story. It featured burning crosses, a Black saint coming to life in a church, and stigmata, and the reaction was immediate and enormous. Pepsi had signed her for an advertising campaign and had built a commercial around the song; when the video appeared, the company pulled the advert while reportedly allowing her to keep the fee.

Whatever your view of the video, the episode demonstrated something important about where the form had got to. A music video could now generate the kind of public argument previously reserved for films and books. Nobody in 1980 would have believed that a promo film could cause an international corporation a public relations crisis.

Express Yourself

The same year, the same artist, and the outer limit of what a video budget could be. "Express Yourself" was directed by David Fincher, who would go on to make Se7en and Fight Club, and built on the visual world of Fritz Lang's Metropolis: vast industrial sets, dramatic lighting, rain, machinery. Its budget was reported at several million dollars, which made it about the most expensive music video made to that point.

That is roughly a thousand times what a typical 1980 video cost. In nine years.

Where it goes next

The decade ends at a peak that was not sustainable, and the 90s took a noticeably different direction: cheaper, stranger, more ironic, less impressed with itself. Some of the best videos ever made came afterwards. But the particular combination of huge money, complete sincerity and total confidence that defines the 80s video did not survive the decade that produced it.

What it means for the puzzle

1989 videos are frequently high-contrast and dramatically lit, which reads well through static: strong shadows and bright highlights survive noise far better than an evenly lit scene. If the fragment coming through looks theatrical, deliberately staged and heavily shadowed, the end of the decade is a reasonable guess.

The 1989 videos in WTV

These 27 videos from 1989 appear in the game.

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