Every week, we dig in the archives for videos that we find noteworthy, memorable, or just unbelievably stupid. And then, Jon McMillan breaks 'em down for you. Why Video Hangover? Because when you watch as many videos as we do, you're going to feel it afterwards.
"I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying"
Sting, 1996
This video has a little bit of everything. And by everything I mean country music, a spaceship, and Sting with a Mohawk.
We are spirits ... in the new Larry the Cable Guy movie
In Sting's dystopian nightmare, pickup trucks fly, aliens line-dance with old ladies, and cows are slaughtered by walking through a "hamburger screen." In my dystopian nightmare, I watch music videos in which Sting has a Mohawk and sings really crappy country music while riding a metallic horse.
"Take me to pleasure town."
"Oh, we're going!"
The cringe-inducing lyrics ("joint custody/a trial separation"), the Mad Max-meets-Neil Young wardrobe, the flying cowboy spaceship -- if you can think of a more misguided genre experiment, I'd like to hear it. The present-day equivalent of Sting making this video a mere 12 years after Synchronicity would look something like this: in 2013, a bald Rivers Cuomo writes a reggaeton song about particle physics, then releases a video in which he makes love to a couch made entirely of chocolate.
Are you there, God? It's me, Sting.
At the 2:00 mark, a Christ-like Sting is elevated to a cosmic plane of existence. He offers himself up to the universe, and the universe, in what can only be described as a deeply spiritual exchange, lends him a shirt it bought for $3 at a thrift store in Williamsburg and sends his sorry ass back down to earth.
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