Terence Trent D'Arby - Wishing Well
** (out of four)
The peak of the "Wishing Well" video comes about nine seconds in, when Terence Trent D'Arby comes sliding into the opening shot. There's just this utterly bored-looking backing band - three white guys clustered together in sunglasses, leather jackets and black jeans, strapped with instruments and stuck in a song where you can't really play them - and in glides D'Arby, sliding straight for the microphone, almost uncontrollably. You really want to buy him a pair of TredSafe shoes so he won't slip on that wet floor next time.
D'arby is a two-hit wonder (this and "Sign My Name"*), Columbia Records' light-skinded, mini-dreaded answer to the '80s mulatto magic of Prince. And, sure, "Wishing Well" is a solid funk-pop novelty jam, but D'Arby looks closer to Milli Vanilli than The Purple One as he does his vertical finger-snap dance, shows off his silver sheriff star on that double-breasted working-woman power suit and charms his girlfriend in black-and-white park bench footage.
"Wishing Well" is one of those videos that, if you've seen the first minute, you've seen the entire clip. It doesn't go anywhere or say anything - really, the only reasons to hang in there are to see what new watered-down James Brown move D'Arby will do next. Oh, and three or four times, the same soundstage view cuts from D'Arby with his bland-ass band to D'Arby with his bland-ass group of dancers in the exact same spot. Two-star music videos don't get much more mediocre than this.
* = He's also noteworthy for providing Beavis and Butthead with a giggle-worthy comeback single in "She Kissed Me" in 1993 ("When I'm bare / She kisses me there")
The peak of the "Wishing Well" video comes about nine seconds in, when Terence Trent D'Arby comes sliding into the opening shot. There's just this utterly bored-looking backing band - three white guys clustered together in sunglasses, leather jackets and black jeans, strapped with instruments and stuck in a song where you can't really play them - and in glides D'Arby, sliding straight for the microphone, almost uncontrollably. You really want to buy him a pair of TredSafe shoes so he won't slip on that wet floor next time.
D'arby is a two-hit wonder (this and "Sign My Name"*), Columbia Records' light-skinded, mini-dreaded answer to the '80s mulatto magic of Prince. And, sure, "Wishing Well" is a solid funk-pop novelty jam, but D'Arby looks closer to Milli Vanilli than The Purple One as he does his vertical finger-snap dance, shows off his silver sheriff star on that double-breasted working-woman power suit and charms his girlfriend in black-and-white park bench footage.
"Wishing Well" is one of those videos that, if you've seen the first minute, you've seen the entire clip. It doesn't go anywhere or say anything - really, the only reasons to hang in there are to see what new watered-down James Brown move D'Arby will do next. Oh, and three or four times, the same soundstage view cuts from D'Arby with his bland-ass band to D'Arby with his bland-ass group of dancers in the exact same spot. Two-star music videos don't get much more mediocre than this.
* = He's also noteworthy for providing Beavis and Butthead with a giggle-worthy comeback single in "She Kissed Me" in 1993 ("When I'm bare / She kisses me there")
posted by daytime at 5:27 AM
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