A Flock of Seagulls--I Ran (1982)

     The memories of the 80's and it's music seem to be indelibly stamped on the minds of those who lived through it in a way that no other decade of music ever will. That's isn't necessarily because the music was that much better (although there was great music made), but with the advent of MTV and it's rock and it's country offspring, the images that were connected  in a way never done before. By the 90's and beyond a generation of music listeners and TV watchers had  gotten used to it and videos became strictly promotional tools rather than a combination of that and cable entertainment.
     Because it was so new our minds become wedded (for better or worse) to the images regarding a song or artist. When one mentions Cindi Lauper, Thomas Dolby, Duran Duran, or Eurythmics you can certainly remember the song, but the image that comes with it cannot be untangled. More than a few artist might never had a hit in the states if it were not for those images which brings us to Mike Score's hair.
     In the early era of videos, very little was actually spent on making them, and the video to "I Ran" was one of the cheapest, with the band surrounding the one camera as it spun around taking pictures. However, one could not take your eyes off of Score's hair that seemingly sprouted wings on both sides while dipping over the front covering one eye (on re-watching this video, it occurs to me that it's isn't nearly a pronounced on this video than it would be later)
     For music fans who were still recovering from disco, it was a strange sight, and the music provided a backdrop that seemed odd as well. However it just seemed to be the right sound and look at the right time. "I Ran" went to number 9 that year and it's followups, "Space Age Love Song" (#30) and "Wishing (I Had a Photograph Of You) (#26) made 1982 a very successful year for the band.
     They reached the Hot 100 once more in 1984 and then vanished from sight. The song proved that just like dozens of other songs from the 1980's, a picture was worth at least a couple of hundred thousand in sales.