Music Video
The narrative music video features band member Jimmy Somerville as the boy who has experienced the issues described in the lyrics. In the beginning of the clip, he is seen on a train, contemplating his childhood and the events that have caused him to leave his parents' home: at a local swimming pool, his friends (played by band members Larry Steinbachek and Steve Bronski) dare him to chat up a man that he fancies, for which he is later attacked in an alley by a gang of homophobes, and a "bobby" brings him back to his home. It is implied that the boy's parents learn of his homosexuality for the first time through this incident and are shocked but only the father seems unsupportive. The boy then catches a train to London, on which he is reunited with his friends. The video ends with "friends" Steinbachek and Bronski joining him.
Read more about this topic: Smalltown Boy
Famous quotes containing the words music and/or video:
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“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)