Over 40 years ago a music video featuring a woman with an orange crew cut and a bunch of cows became an MTV hit and a #1 single. Now it’s joined YouTube’s Billion Views Club.
Eurythmics‘ 1983 clip for their synthpop classic “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” has racked up 1 billion views on the platform — and it’s their first to have reached this milestone.
One of the most iconic videos of the early days of MTV, it features singer Annie Lennox, rocking a man’s suit and that orange crew cut and brandishing a cane while standing in a boardroom. Her musical partner Dave Stewart is dancing in a field wearing a mask, and a lot of cows are seen wandering around.
Lennox said of the video in 2017, “I was trying to be the opposite of the cliché of the female singer. I wanted to be as strong as a man, equal to Dave and perceived that way.”
Stewart said, “I wanted to make a commentary on the music business but also make something a bit performance art – weird and dreamlike. So we mocked up a record-company boardroom in a studio … and put a cow in it, to signify reality. There we were: Annie and I laid flat on a table, and this cow, which was peeing everywhere.”
“Sweet Dreams” was the duo’s only U.S. #1 hit, but they went on to score a string of bestselling albums, as well as other MTV hits like “Love Is a Stranger,” “Here Comes the Rain Again,” “Would I Lie to You?” and “Missionary Man.”
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