Forgotten Classic Video of the Week

This week, I'm continuing this new trend of taking requests by sending this one out to my sister, Tootsie, who has been begging for a little Corey Hart action.

Obviously, the monster hit "Sunglasses at Night" wouldn't qualify as a forgotten classic, so that left me with quite a bit of thinking to do. The only other Corey Hart song that I could remember off the top of my head was "Never Surrender," which was also quite over-exposed and is probably still fairly well-known. After checking out song snippets from his "Singles" collection on Amazon.com, I was reminded of a couple other tunes that I knew by hart back in the day but had forgotten all about since then - "It Ain't Enough" and "I Am By Your Side." They're both kind of the same song, so I just chose the one with the better video. And by "better," I mean "hilarious."

"It Ain't Enough" was obviously shot on the same day as the "Sunglasses at Night" video because it's the same set, same outfit, same lighting, same everything. I'm surprised Corey remembered to sing different lyrics. Next.

The video for "I Am By Your Side" proved its post-worthiness immediately. I could probably watch the first minute and 10 seconds of this about 100 more times and still laugh every time. There aren't many things funnier than a cheesy singer attempting to play lead in his own poorly conceived concept video. The "concept" of this one goes something like this

Boy hates job. Boss yells at boy. Boy quits. Boy wanders off into the mountains. Wise old Indian dude looks on. Boy roams the land. Boy motors away to rescue his girfriend from her awful job at some kind of sweat shop. Flashbacks reveal reason boss was mad - boy played an impromptu concert on top of an oil rig. Boy and girl let it roll down the highway. Boy is by her side.

If I've missed an integral part of the storyline, please let me know.



I've always thought that Corey Hart reminded me of someone, but I could never quite put my finger on who. Now I see that he's a lot of David Duchovny, a little Michael Biehn and just a dash of Sting right around the duck bill. And when he delivers his pivotal, powerful line, "I only do a few things...much," he sounds like Emilio Estevez. Trust me. I'm an expert at celebrity voice recognition.

I know that Corey is still puttering around somewhere in Canada, eh. He wrote a song or two for Celine Dion and he probably owns a turtleneck store or something. But I really want to know what happened to the R. Lee Ermey acolyte who played his boss. He kicked ass, and had quite the impressive vocabulary. Maybe he'll make his big comeback in the next Fall Out Boy video for their yet-to-be-released hit, "We Wear Our Sunglasses at Night and Make Countless '80s References That We Don't Even Understand Since We Were All In Diapers Through Most of the Decade ('Cause We're Totally Awesome, Spicoli)."