Music Video
In the music video, directed by Brian Jones and Piers Ashworth in December 1985, Jackson goes to a funky diner with her friends to talk about her relationship problems. Her boyfriend shows up with his friends, and Jackson decides to give him a piece of her mind. In the video, Jackson's reality is a dark world with faded colors. In a more dreamscape world, the colors are vibrant and everything is 2-D. The "What Have You Done for Me Lately" video won a Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B/Soul or Rap Music Video in 1987. The video's choreographer was Paula Abdul, who appears in the video as Jackson's friend. The video also featured Tina Landon who would later become a choreographer and personal friend to Jackson. It was made available on iTunes on February 1, 2007.
Music video actor-dancer Rudy Huston played Jackson's boyfriend in the video and was also in numerous other videos of the era including Pebbles' top ten hits "Girlfriend" and "Mercedes Boy". Jackson met Huston on the set of the television series Fame starring Debbie Allen, in which Jackson had a co-starring role and Huston was a featured dance student along with Jasmine Guy, before the latter's A Different World fame.
Read more about this topic: What Have You Done For Me Lately
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)
“These people figured video was the Lord’s preferred means of communicating, the screen itself a kind of perpetually burning bush. “He’s in the de-tails,” Sublett had said once. “You gotta watch for Him close.””
—William Gibson (b. 1948)