5 Classic Songs Everyone Forgets Had Insane Music Videos

5 That "Da Da Da" Song From The Volkswagen Ads Features Sexual Harassment And Murder

Up until recently, I could've sworn "Da Da Da" was a mere mid-'90s stock jingle, invented by Volkswagen to peddle their wheels with the help of models who are so pleased with their shiny new wussymobile that they can't stop silently whatever-ing about it.

But, nope, that's an actual song, by an actual band called Trio. What's more, they recorded it in 1980, making it older than me. And it has not one, but two, music videos. The first is a fairly boring performance shot that never gets stranger than the drummer playing indoors but under an umbrella. The second is, well, more complicated. And murdery.

We open not with the band performing their song, but with the singer covertly showing us his mini keyboard like a flasher displaying his big ol' fleshsaber. Since nobody takes up his metaphorical dick duel, he lashes out by slapping a pretty waitress's ass. She promptly flips him off, and the bassist responds by chucking a knife into her back. This kills her instantly, despite it being a butter knife and thus duller than seeing Trio live.

Of the dozens of witnesses to this brutal murder, how many immediately pounce on the band and hold them down until the cops arrive? Zero, of course -- nobody even flinches. Instead, they just mill about doing whatever they were doing before somebody died in front of them. They only change their routine once the band decides to hit the stage and play.

So, it's now a raucous dance party ... with Trio both on stage and in the crowd. Trio is one; Trio is Legion. Crowd Singer and Crowd Bassist groove the night away while Crowd Drummer sits and depressingly stares at the same shot of champagne he'd been nursing since frame one. Finally, at the very end, he works up the courage to chug the thing, making his story line the only part of this video that makes even a lick of sense.

And that includes the dead waitress, who miraculously returns to life off camera to dance with everybody else. She must be part-Wolverine because there's absolutely no sign of her mortal injury at all.

Then, there's the baffling bar TV, variously displaying the singer with his head bolted onto his body ...

... the waitress in dying mode, spitting out blood like wads of tobacco ...

... and the bassist donning a ski mask, but doing absolutely nothing with it.

This suggests an alternate universe where a cat burglar murders a poor couple and beheads the husband, and if Volkswagen had filmed that instead of two dudes scouring for furniture, I might have actually bought one of their crappy Jettas.

4 Haddaway's "What Is Love" (The SNL Head-Bobbing Song) Botches Both Vampirism And Decent Editing

I apologize in advance for the upcoming challenge of reading while acting like you're trying to shake a beetle out your ear.

While Haddaway's "What Is Love" was already huge before Saturday Night Live Pavlov'd us into forever associating it with, "Oh right, Chris Kattan existed," that show is absolutely what gave the track eternal life -- despite a music video that birthed the "sexy/terrible vampire" genre a decade before Twilight.

Haddaway's stuck in a dark castle with three lovely ladies, one clearly a vampire (with the Party City Dracula cape to prove it) and the other two ... clearly pretty. They're not vampires, and they serve no purpose but to dance and deal with asshole trick-or-treaters throwing chunks of garlic all over the lawn.

As for the story, Vampira bites Haddaway on the neck, but does he die or become a vampire? Nope! He simply gets electrocuted, mildly shakes like he's trapped on a 1950s fat jiggler, and magically changes his clothes from a blue suit to leather stripper gear. Why yes, this is the worst vampire ever. Even Edward could draw fucking blood.

Because the video's editor clearly cared more about cutting at ludicrous speed than continuity, Haddaway constantly alternates between dancing and trying to escape. The latter at least gives us the strangest, most unnatural bit of stair climbing I've ever seen. He's lying on his side and scooting up, like a half-paralyzed dog trying to scratch its ass.

Shortly after his stair theatrics, Haddaway is gliding along the floor -- with his blue suit appearing and disappearing like a strobe light made out of JCPenney's fashion -- and moving none of his body while doing so. And, because this editor should've been tarred and feathered, using whole, live chickens, he immediately reverts back to his Chippendales vest, like he can't decide if he wants to interview for a job or simply collect tips from the CEO's bachelorette party.

Actually, there's the power to dance. Now in double-speed, just like old-timey slapstick! For not even a second!

Finally, at the end, he shows off a cool vampire power: setting a fireplace ablaze simply by singing near it. Which, of course, they show for maybe one-tenth of a second, before cutting to more dancing. Because, obviously, watching this awkward douchebag dance is definitely more interesting than the power to control fire.

Sadly, Haddaway didn't film any sequels in which he sets everything on fire simply because he can, preferring to disappear and live off Lorne Michaels royalties instead. It's too bad because insane sequel videos can be even more than the original. Like ...

3 Greg Kihn's "Jeopardy" Is A Trilogy That Gets Progressively Weirder

Greg Kihn and his Greg Kihn Band had a huge hit in 1983 with "Jeopardy," and, when it came time to video that shit up, they created an adventure so sanity-mocking, it took two additional songs to wrap it all up.

In "Jeopardy," Kihn's ready to get married, but gets cold feet upon seeing the bride's parents argue. Because true love never has down times, dontcha know. At the altar, he sees sad couples with their hands literally sewn together, an awfully creepy visual for a song named after a quiz show.

Also creepy is when Kihn lifts his bride's veil, and she immediately transforms into a living skeleton. Everyone then sheds their human skin and becomes flesh-crazed zombies. I'm guessing Kihn doesn't think highly of weddings.

Kihn panics and runs off, grabbing a plank of wood to fight off the zombies. While strumming it like a guitar. Because if you can't kill the undead, you might as well confuse them.

Then, we learn it was all just a dream. Except for the squabbling in-laws -- that was totally real. And the part where the fucking horror-flick nightmare was enough for Kihn to run away for real, ditching his poor bride at the altar. But, not to worry -- a bride just ditched her wedding across the street, and the two selfish pricks quickly lock eyes and drive off to be terrible together. And thus ends "Jeopardy," unless you count the new couple collecting Weird Al in his parody video and probably dropping him into a pit of starving, crazed weasels.

But, the Kihniverse wasn't close to ending, with "Reunited" seeing Kihn and Not Mrs. Kihn drive through Kansas, get swept up by a tornado, and wind up in Oz.

An Oz now populated by sentient inflatable tube men, by the way. The ever-popular tube men. From the movie.

Of course, there's a Wicked Witch, appearing via the most adorable Cheap Special Effect in the history of Cheap Special Effects:

Harnessing the power of More Cheap Effects, she turns Kihn's band (conveniently caught by the same twister) into the Tin Man, Lion, Scarecrow, and Flying Monkey. Then, she turn's Kihn's girlfriend into ... dust. Yep, she fucking kills her, which is what you get for leaving your groom.

Dorothy's house then flattens the Witch before she can do the same to Kihn, which is what you don't get for leaving your bride. Seconds later, Glenda the Good Witch arrives, sees Kihn, gets hot, and magically transports him and herself to Kansas, where THEY drive off together. Kihn is oddly accepting of this.

But, we're STILL not done. Long after people stopped caring, Kihn wrapped up his epic tale with "Lucky," where everyone went completely off the rails:

Kihn is now homeless, divorced by the Good Witch once she realized no way would his career survive the '90s. He and about 20 dancing bums go shopping, where Kihn and yet another girl fall in love. Also, he wins a cruise with apparently unlimited seating, since all of his bum buddies tag along.

Enter the Good Witch, piloting an evil Russian submarine because we were right about her all along. She torpedoes Kihn's ship and sends everyone straight into the cold, unforgiving drink.

Kihn and his lady get swallowed by a whale, one that immediately beaches so they escape unscathed. They play Gilligan's Island until a tribe of red-skinned cannibals arrive to turn them into dinner ... by setting the single most pitiful fire ever.

The cannibals get run off by King Kong because we're no longer telling a coherent story, but rather playing Mad Libs with Kihn's movie library. Then, a ridiculously high tide washes Kihn and Still-Not Mrs. Kihn to a New York City beach. This must've been Noah's flood because it caught every other character in the video, too. Nobody fights though, thanks to the soothing sounds of ... King Kong's saxophone.

With that, the sordid tale of why Greg Kihn needs a hug finally ends. And his fiance is probably still at the altar, frantically calculating how much coke she'll need to dull the pain.

2 Asia's "Heat Of The Moment" Is Too Literal Even For Amelia Bedelia

Hardish-rock band Asia's biggest hit, "Heat of the Moment," is a classic rock staple. Its video, however, is a staple of nowhere -- it simply couldn't survive a culture of gigantic hair and entire Maybelline catalogs smeared over everyone's faces ... despite it doing the one thing that almost never works -- taking its lyrics literally -- and stretching it to such a hilarious extreme that the band deserved at least one Nobel Prize.

Since they're called Asia, a spinning globe stops on Asia, with a giant ASIA in 500-point font across half the nation. It somehow gets even more obvious, with a woman looking left because the singer mentions "a look from you." And when he sings about "a fall from grace," we get a close up of her praying hands. Whatever pseudonym Drax the Destroyer used when directing this thing, it was too obvious.

Wait, it gets worse. We hear "wipe this smile right from my face," and some dude does just that -- smiley face, hand across mouth, frownie face. "Do you remember when we used to dance" brings us a dancing go-go girl, in case anybody watching had forgotten what dancing looked like.

Then comes a moment that proves, yes, even glorified slideshows can jump the shark. Amazingly, they found a way to take the line "an incident arose from circumstance" literally: by showing us a bouquet of roses. GET IT? Arose? Roses? It's a pity they didn't single out the "cum" in "circumstance" instead.

Then, there's the chorus, which represents "heat of the moment" by, well, both those things: open flames followed by various clocks and watches. And when the heat "shone in your eyes," an angry girl appears with fire reflecting off her sunglasses. Singing about eyes, but not actually showing them, is their version of a creative risk.

Amazingly, Asia doesn't literalize the second verse, despite lines such as "catch the pearl" and "ride the dragon's wings" practically begging for it. Probably all of those clocks (especially the Mickey Mouse watch) wiped out the budget before they could procure any clam irritants or toy Smaugs. But, fear not -- they quickly remember their mission statement, with a calendar for "how many nights" and fingers tapping near a phone for "sit beside the phone."

Finally, at the very end, Asia shows actual creativity, not to mention some surprising schadenfreude. They sing "what were the things you wanted for yourself" and show a girl with money. And then, the big fuck-you to whoever this song's about: "teenage ambition you remember well," coupled with a baby carriage.

So, as awesomely terrible as this was, it's very possible that "everything is literal" only happened because MTV wouldn't let the band flash their exes the finger for three minutes.

1 The "Oh Yeah" Song From Ferris Bueller's Day Off Is A Straight-Up Mindfuck

I started with a song I didn't know was a song until recently, whose video makes me question everything I know and love, and so I end with one as well. This article is an ouroboros, a snake eating its own dick.

With Yello's 1985 hit "Oh Yeah," I always assumed it was just a Hollywood creation, an audio blurb for whenever characters sees something they really, really like. Like so:

Along with everywhere else. This makes sense, since the song showcases how the band really, really likes the sun and moon. Its video, however, simply showcases their love of peyote.

If there's a story here beyond "just say no," I haven't figured it out. An easily excitable toddler sporting an extreme man bun holds a cardboard cutout of the moon, below a cardboard cutout of the sun. The "Oh Yeah" guys clearly assume its the real thing, based on their wide-eyed gawking that less conveys "oh yeah" than it does "run for your life."

Later, the child puts on a show with what's probably a moon rock? It doesn't look like one (too not-grey), but if this is a Moon Baby, what else could it be? Yello #1's poisoned, corrupted brain?

Post-show, the manbunned tyke chucks away the rock brain for reasons that- who cares it's time to DANCE. Kind of. Dancing white dudes is always a mixed bag (shit mixed with vomit), and Yello gleefully dumps that bag right down our throats:

This ends with a piggyback ride, keeping with the moon theme because Neil Armstrong famously did the same thing to Buzz Aldrin. Randomly, the kid takes his moon brain back, with the singer's giant head staring him down the whole time. After all, maybe a couple of you were planning to sleep peacefully tonight, and we can't have that.

Next up, Yello has the moon rock! He didn't actually take it from the baby -- it just randomly became his. Naturally, it now bounces up and down like a big, lumpy Super Ball as the band gets buried to their necks in cardboard because the dartboard used to script this thing said so. They don't seem too worried, anyway, having a grand ol' time blowing around the moon brain that's suddenly made of paper-mache. Bouncy, bouncy paper-mache.

Probably they didn't panic because they knew, with the way this video is going, they'd be free within seconds. Sure enough, seconds later, they're fighting each other like cartoon characters, content with knowing they just went three minutes without explaining one goddamn thing.

All of this was perfectly insane on its own, but Yello's choice of background (Jefferson Airplane psychedelics taken to its logical extreme) took "Oh Yeah" to a whole other level of mind-ouch. If you have anything resembling epilepsy, this warning is probably several paragraphs too late for you.

I will never again moongaze or eat Twix without this video -- particularly Yello's "Here's Johnny" eyeballs -- peering at me from the abyss. And, in some weird way, that kind of makes the world a better place for me.

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For more from Jason, check out 5 Adults Who Just Brutally Destroyed The Dreams Of Children and 5 Adorable Animals Who Are the Biggest Assholes on Earth.

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