THE VIDEO Enuff Z'Nuff, "New Thing," Enuff Z'Nuff, 1989, Atco
Click here to watch this video NOW!
SAMPLE LYRIC "Get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing / get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing / Get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing / Get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing!"
THE VERDICT You have to feel kind of bad making fun of ENuff Z'nuff. What can we really do to them that they haven't already done to themselves? Much as I bemoan Trixter or Slaughter, it's the bands who really tried to force glam to keep happening at the very end -- think Nitro or Tuff -- who really get unbearable. But nothing, nothing compares to Enuff Z'Nuff. Except for maybe Nelson, and at least their songs were singable (cue me getting "Love and Affection" stuck in my head. I'm like Cartman with "Come Sail Away," except I'm like that with every song I know. It's a friggin' curse).
Anyway. Even more than any of the bands mentioned above, Enuff Z'Nuff repulsed me even at the time. Yes, you heard that right. As a ten-year-old (albeit one with enough taste in music to hate New Kids on the Block) I thought this band was awful. And no, I'm not backing off it just because allmusic claims we totally don't get them. I know good hard-rock-tinged power pop when I hear it, and this is not it. Want some? Listen to Gilby Clarke's old band Candy. With this band, I just. Can't. Do. It. This song is so hideously repetitive it is hard to make it through more than 30 seconds, which luckily you don't really need to since it just repeats anyway.
The bigger story here is the visual -- which blablabla, that was their problem all along and why no one understood them, blablabla. I'm sorry, but enough really is enough on that one, okay? We've heard it all before. Can't we just be honest and admit that this was not a very good band? Okay, moving on to the visual. This video looks like Lisa Frank threw up all over it. Sure, there aren't any unicorns or kittens, but aren't you kind of surprised there aren't? (Snap, it would improve the video if there were.)
About half the video consists of close-ups of Donnie Vie's face, headband, and ridiculous John Lennon glasses. The rest is Derek Frigo and his dozen or so colorful guitars, Chip Z'nuff doing some kind of Sandra Bernhard impression in a police hat and Ray-Bans, and the occasional shot of Vikki Foxx looking like a long-lost member of the Runaways. All of this occurs on a backdrop of over-sized neon paint splatters -- I feel like the director watched a bunch of Look What the Cat Dragged In-era Poison videos and was like "if only these were more colorful...."
This is interspersed with genuinely bizarre footage of models dressed in 60s clothing dancing around with peace signs, driving in and then cleaning a convertible, and then holding some kind of funeral on a little astroturf lawn. I'm not making this up people, but if you can't endure the video, you'll just have to trust me that this really happens. It's like a really bad episode of Laugh In. Or like a bad trip.
Coincidentally, this song is about a bad trip. Okay, maybe it's about getting out of a bad relationship and meeting someone new, but all the repetition about "getting hi-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-igh" implies it's about, you know, getting high. Apparently as an alternative to suicide. Why are their two most well-known songs about suicide? And why do they use the word "high" so dang much?
Ugh, I want to find something redeeming here, but it's like this band just gets crappier. Well, all these bright colors are perking up my blog a bit. There, I said something nice.