So this Musical Monday isn't really about the song, although the song is a good one. This Musical Monday is about the video, which for no real reason that I can discern, has a science fiction-related theme to it. In the case of You Got Lucky, the video presents a post-apocalyptic kind of Mad Max atmosphere. There's nothing in the song that is really thematically connected to the video, so I can only surmise that Tom Petty was a fan of the genre.
The interesting thing is that there are a number of other music videos that also bear a seemingly inexplicable science fiction theme. The songs themselves don't really have anything in them that suggests a science fiction or fantasy style video presentation would be appropriate, and yet they still have those themes. I can only assume that these sorts of videos are made because the performers are fans of the genre, because it has to be more expensive to make a video that has a bunch of science fiction props and a few special effects in it than it is to make one that is just a performance video, or some other mundane presentation of the song.
One would think that if they wanted to make a science fiction video, then more mainstream artists would write songs that relate to the genre. But even though science fiction music videos are not all that hard to find, a science fictional piece of popular music is almost vanishingly rare. There are a few songs here and there, but they are often deep cuts on an album, or the science fictional element is buried so deep in metaphor that it slips by a lot of listeners. I'm not complaining about this, but it is an oddity that I have noticed over the years - many pop performers seem to like the look of filmed science fiction, but don't seem to know how to make it actually part of their music.
Previous Musical Monday: Just My Imagination by the Cranberries
Subsequent Musical Monday: Magnetic by Earth, Wind, and Fire
Tom Petty Musical Monday Home
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