Dream Academy - Life in a Northern Town (1986)

**1/2 (of four)



Name of this song doesn't ring a bell? Think of the anthemic refrain "Hey-oh Ma-ma-ma / Hey-eee-doo-bee-die-yah / Hey-oh-ma-ma-mee / Hey-ay-ay-ie-yo," sung by dozens of voices while African kettle drums pound away. It reads pretty obnoxious on paper, but "Life in a Northern Town" is one of the more recognizable, anthemic, distinctive and actually distinguished one-hit wonder pop songs of the '80s.

Dream Academy - fueled by production from Pink Floyd CEO David Gilmour - features a vest-wearing lead singer who looks half like George Harrison and half like the lead singer of Men Without Hats. The female backup singer, wielding an oboe, looks like Linda McCartney. So the entire affair is pseudo-Beatles-esque*, in a subdued '80s way.

The video, unexciting but watchable, features slice-of-life stock footage of rolling street shots of middle-class houses, river crossings and street signs. After awhile, you feel like you're looking out a car window on a road trip that's never going to end. Add to the mix old home movie footage and that telltale shot of JFK in the motorcade immediately pre-head wound.

There's also plenty of footage of George Without Hats, Linda McCartney and the rest of the band play-synching from an empty, dimly lit rehearsal hall. You know, for a video from such a synthesizer-ridden decade, it's reassuring to know there's a live violin player and kettle drummer and clarinetist to compete with the closeups of the guy playing the same three notes on his Casio. But don't worry - there are plenty of those closeups, too.

COMPETING OPINION
courtesy of Rate It All.com user Scriptfis

"The video is a poignant study
in wet wintry industrial monochrome**."

* = This marks the first time in eleven years of writing that I've ever attached the prefix "pseudo-" and suffix "-esque" to the same word. I don't plan to make a habit of it.

** = Note the lack of commas in Scriptfish's punctuation. It speaks urgency.