Music Video
The humorous music video (directed by Jim Yukich) illustrates the artifice and false glamour of television advertisements. Phil Collins comments that the video was designed to poke fun of the models in jeans commercials, and each verse refers to things that models in these commercials do. The ending is a parody to the "Black or White" music video, depicting Collins parodying the "Panther ending" in which Michael Jackson dances erratically. Banks and Rutherford eventually arrive to escort Collins off the set, at which point he goes limp and they have to drag him away.
"Weird Al" Yankovic also created a parody of the "I Can't Dance" video in which he appears alongside the band. Mismatched lighting suggests his shots were separate from the others.
The song created the "I Can't Dance dance" (a series of stiff, stylized motions). Collins explained in an interview that when he was at stage school, that he would see kids that would always use the same hand and the same foot when they were tap dancing, meaning they could not coordinate. He then copied their movements and the "dance" was born.
Read more about this topic: I Can't Dance
Famous quotes containing the words music and/or video:
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)