THE VIDEO Pretty Boy Floyd, "I Wanna Be With You," Leather Boyz with Electric Toyz, 1989, MCA
SAMPLE LYRIC "I wanna be-eee with you-oooh / I wanna be with you-ooh! / I wanna be-eee with you-oooh" (repeat endlessly)
THE VERDICT I've been doing mostly well-known, everyone-can-sing-along power ballads so far, so I decided to throw in one lesser-known track. Now if you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that the last time I talked about a Pretty Boy Floyd video, it took quite a beating.
If that upset or distressed you in any way, you should probably stop reading right now, 'cause spoiler alert: This song is horrible. But it's so amazing in its awfulness that I have to talk about it.
Recall that Pretty Boy Floyd claim to be "dirty glam," and to have styled their look and sound after Mötley Crüe. Now spend a minute thinking about how awesome Mötley Crüe are, especially like Shout at the Devil. Once you feel you have sufficiently reacquainted yourself with how badass the Crüe are, listen to this song. I mean seriously, listen to it. Make yourself do it.
Good lord. Listen to it.
I mean even just the beginning: "As I was walking out of class / the other day at school / I saw you."
One: We're supposed to believe these guys are in high school?!?!
Two: We're supposed to believe these guys are badass, dirty, raunchy rockers when they are singing about stuff like this?
I mean sure, on the one hand, if it's like "Yeah, I'm a gross twenty-something dude hanging around the high school picking up underage chicks," I guess that seems sort of like, LA Guns-ish. But based on the rest of the song, that's not what's happening here. No, it's something much lamer. "I don't live too far / we could walk down to the park / if you got nothing else to do." Seriously, this sounds like Milhouse trying to ask out Lisa Simpson!
The video more or less acts this out. Well, sort of. It's all in black and white, and one shot fades into the next really quickly.
Complicating matters further, there's some serious spotlight abuse going on. The spotlights keep shining directly into the camera, making it even harder than normal to tell who's who, since everyone in this band looks like Nadir D'Priest (except for Vinnie Chas [RIP] who as I've pointed out before looks like a glam double for Warrant's Joey Allen. But he's barely in this video, so).
They also keep throwing in crazy shots for no reason. Like there's a really long shot of drummer Kari Kane that's basically from the point of view of one of the cymbals. WTF is the point of that?
Anyway, Pretty Boy Floyd are standing around on these risers that are covered in spotlights. Singer Steve 'Sex' Summers (say that five times fast) is looking extra like a lady. I don't know if it's his big Carly Simon hat, or his little gloves, or just his like, smoky eye look, but the whole package does not fit with the everyone-firing-tommy-guns intro to the video.
And of course, we're supposed to believe that the girl in the video wants to "be with" him. She's a super-wholesome-looking blonde, very much not your usual metal video gal. She kind of reminds me of Victoria Jackson, the comedian with the breathy voice who used to be on SNL in the late 80s/early 90s —probably best remembered as the lady who had all those extra fingers.
Anyway yeah, they literally act out the song in the video. Steve calls her from the video — like right there, in the middle of all the risers and spotlights, there's a freakin' payphone. While Kristy Majors rocks out in the background, he coos this song's ridiculous lyrics to her.
She's lying on her bedroom floor reading a magazine, and seeming more genuinely like a high school girl than most of the women you see in metal videos (though to be clear, she seems way older than high-school age).
I also need to point out that everyone but Steve seems to think this is a wayyyyy more intense song than it is. Kristy machine-guns his guitar and throws punches at the camera, Vinnie thrashes around and glares intensely, and Kari looks like he is competing in a "Make Your Best Tommy Lee Face" contest.
Seriously, his mouth is open in that sort of fake "Oh no!" pout the whole time — then again, his nickname was 'The Mouth.' I should also mention the enormous amount of drumstick spinning going on, like way more than you need for a song like this. I mean this is a drippy, slow-ass song.
Anyway, of course toward the end of the song, the girl shows up at the video. Steve leaves with her, acting awfully bashful for someone whose nickname is 'Sex'. The other guys are left to just sit there with all the spotlights, but then look — she called all her friends! Yeah, they look more like, you know, not-super-young single moms than like high school students, but whatever. It's still enough to get Kari to do a double-take. High school girls for everyone!
They all leave, but the spotlights are still going. What, is this just like, where Pretty Boy Floyd hang out? They never do any meta-stuff, like showing cameras, the fact that they're making a video or whatever. Likewise, the girls don't seem like, impressed or interested by the band's whole setup.
Does this mean all these spotlights and crap are actually in like, Kristy's mom's basement or something? You know actually, that would make sense.
Oh man. I kind of alluded to it before, but seriously guys, this song is awful. Why does Steve suddenly have a Madonna-esque British accent? And the freaking chimes every time the verse begins again? This is verging on being physically painful. Could anyone have done this song and made it into a good one? Possibly Stryper, but the lyrics seem a little too risque for them.
I talked about this at length the other time I talked about Pretty Boy Floyd, but here it's even more apparent. They think they're doing a whole "dirty glam," sleazy Mötley Crüe thing, but come on. You're asking high school girls to take a walk in the park with you! And you actually mean a walk in the park, it's not like, a gross metaphor for some weird sex act.
But alongside all these wholesome lyrics, we've got all kinds of black leather, draggy makeup, and the lascivious nicknames. This makes the whole situation even less realistic, if that's possible.
I mean, I can't imagine my high school self sitting in my high school bedroom, and my mom like yelling up to me, "Honey, Sex is on the phone!" Or like, "The Mouth called while you were in the shower." And then to have him call and screech "I wanna be with you-ouuu!" into the phone? Sorry, but no. Just... no.