Because we love ‘em all. Here’s your 90’s Video of the Day
Blues Traveler- Hook
John Popper’s speed lyrics in the middle are pretty impressive. Can you do it? Emma Stone kinda can. When things are back to normal, this could be a fun karaoke nightmare.
In one of the more meta songs of the early 90’s, Blues Traveler used the lyrics and video for “Hook,” to break down the fourth wall essentially about the formulaic banality and deception of modern hit songwriting. Those kinda tropes are generally annoying when they’re used in bad songs, (and just come off as someone complaining that well, they can’t write a hit), but hey, it worked out pretty well for Blues Traveler. Game show host Ken Ober stars in the video as a channel surfing insomniac with a cameo from Paul Shaffer who also contributes keyboards to other tracks on Blue’s Traveler’s Four. If you also saw the video for “Runaround,” approximately one million times like I have, you’ll also see a callback to that storyline as well.
But let’s take that break that aforementioned wall down even further. The song was given a bit of hate because music geeks united and figured out that the song was essentially Pachelbel’s Canon, (big hit at your sister’s wedding ceremony, not a dry eye in the house). It was transposed to the key of A and viola, brand new song. I laugh about this because there’s been many an exposè that some of the biggest songs in the world are no more than four chords, many in the same progression. The formula keeps working on your animal brain and after a while, I say stop fighting and just enjoy “The Hook.”
Hit me up with 90’s Video’s you wanna see featured at abby@wxdx.com