4: Things Can Only Get Better - D:Ream

The only thing was when I was watching the video for the angiest time today, it just kind of attracted Scott's reaction because he wasn't sitting next to me doing work and he just kind of had the what the fuck are you doing with your life face, which I completely agree with him on that.

Hello and welcome to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far, a podcast where Scotsman, an Irishman and a Bulgarian review the most terrible, silliest and weirdest as fuck music videos.

Hello, I'm Neil.

Hi, I'm Nelly.

Hi, I'm Dave.

Today we'll be talking about a video that made all of us collectively sigh because we secretly missed those horrible, awkward 90s shot on green screen videos.

This, of course, is the 1993 hit by D-RAM, Things Can Only Get Better.

also known as the Labour Party campaign song.

This video, directed by James Leibon,

who is 100% more interesting to talk about

instead of the video itself,

he addressed some high-profile people in London,

including David Bowie,

and then turned film and video filmmaker in London and New York.

He would eventually start directing videos for the likes of Kylie Minogue,

Riteshead Fred, and the video we're discussing today.

He was known as the person you go to as you're starting out

to get cheap, stylized videos and get your name out there,

which begs the question, what would you really looking to stylize here?

Yeah, the style is definitely subjective.

I was trying to actually find if this was the norm for 1993 music videos,

and I think a lot of them were kind of on the fence of making,

From what I can find, you know, like narrative style videos where they don't have the bands.

They have, you know, people doing something almost like a film, but nowhere near, you know, as good as a film.

But yeah, this just takes the biscuit in terms of stylization.

I mean, the thing is, I did try to watch, or did try, actually watched some of his other videos.

They're not amazing, but they're coherent, I guess.

You can say whatever you want about I'm too sexy, but that video is really, it's banging.

it's great i think i think the first video i can remember that actually had a story was

fucking guns and roses i don't i don't i really can't remember if it was the norm or that's kind

of a more of a modern sort of trend yeah i don't know it's it's a really fucking bad video but i'm

100 sure whether it's completely the director's fault i couldn't really find any information of how

much it was like james lebon versus dream being like oh yeah we want this a lot of the background

and green screeny stuff is very sort of literal.

So it's all pretty much just exactly what the lyrics are saying.

Yeah, which is bad because the lyrics are saying fuck all.

It makes you wonder, like,

did they have any sort of discussion about what they wanted?

I sort of feel that, I mean,

I'm not going to put any blame on anyone here

because I don't know who maybe made the decision,

but I just sort of feel like there wasn't really much thought.

I kind of feel like the band were just told to perform

and dance in front of this green or blue screen,

I think it might have been.

And then they'll fix it later.

I never was.

It begs the question.

Maybe it was like, you know, cheap and effective music videos just to kind of try to get people,

you know, out there and going, I think.

To play Devil's Ad, it does kind of capture the sort of atmosphere of a gig where you're

just going like, woo, yeah, it's going to get better, I guess.

Although looking at it from 2020, not sure if I agree with that, but, you know.

Speaking of what actually happened in 93 that was the bottom of the barrow for Northern Ireland,

Neil, that question was towards you, obviously.

Well, I mean, I was three at the time, so let me think really hard about this.

I think, I mean, it was probably still pretty rough to be over there, but I actually didn't

know this band was Northern Irish until I did a bit more reading into it.

I mean, they don't sound like anything I've ever heard from back home, but I mean, if I

knew they were a band, you know, I probably wouldn't have listened to them, even though

they're technically local.

It's hard to tell sometimes because there's loads of times where I've found out a band

Scottish years after hearing them. If they don't sing in a Scottish or Irish or Yorkshire accent,

you can't really tell where they're from. Twilight Sand and stuff like that. They sing in an accent,

but very few bands actually do. So sometimes you just miss that a band is from somewhere until you

see them. I don't know, the video is like so fucking baffling. It's giving me a fucking headache.

I was trying to figure out what exactly to say about it. And all I could think of is,

why the fuck did they have the Garden of Firty Delight in the background? Like that painting that

they keep showing is the garden of first city lights and i just could not understand why of all

paintings they are going to use that one i'm gonna have to look at the video what is the painting of

uh it's called the garden of first city lights it's by mironius bush bush sorry he is a dutch

thing late renaissance painter and it's really fucking famous but it's batshit crazy and i just

could not figure out of all depictions of heaven did they choose that one oh yeah properly like

over it as well at some point yeah like fucking hardcore on the symbolism but symbolism of what

there's fire there's angels there's money flying around and there is a big gospel choir i don't

know the one thing that threw me off and feel free to call me walk for this but why in the flying

are you going to have a gospel choir full of white women only to be fair i think the choir i'm guessing

that's copy and pasted well i'm looking at it again it's definitely copy and pasted but

no it's not it's legit i was like absolutely legit i was looking like that that looks like

they really got that number of people in couldn't do that these days just a lot of twins who really

like to sing yeah so maybe the overall whiteness of that choir is just that the sex people who are

actually would just happen to be white it's such a bad video i feel like we're all like

struggling to define it it's there's okay there's there's nothing that really goes on in the video

that's that's that's that's that's what my issue is with it it's what has this thing where they've

literally just threw everything together at the end once they lit once they got the band dancing

in front of a wall a green wall um and then they're like okay let's put this together um outside of the

one scene that they did have like a club but i guarantee you that the green screen stuff was shot

in that club probably against the bathroom walls the whole video when you look at it you have shots

of like panning and zooming out and just kind of transitioning bodies from left to right kind of

kind of see that a lot in euro dance videos from the era i guess they were trying to be consistent

with that we have them performing and then we have to make it interesting somehow so let's just throw

them in front of a green screen and figure it out later uh do it in post maybe give a guy a saxophone

have we mentioned the tony blur connection yet nope yeah you two take over because i don't know

about this much beyond it happened.

I think this music video

might have been forever tarnished

because it was the theme tune

for the sort of new Labour campaign.

Do you want to very quickly define

why new Labour?

Just for context of people

who might be a bit too young?

Well, young or not in the UK.

Basically, layman's terms is

Labour is like the left wing.

Ish, ish, ish.

Well, this is the point.

They're like the left wing

sort of socialist-y party

in the UK until new Labour.

until Tony Blair came along.

All right, sure.

And he pushed it towards the centre

or possibly to the right,

depending on how extreme you want to get.

And he did it all with a sort of cheesy

car salesman sort of vibe to him.

Oh yeah, and he invaded Iraq as well.

So basically whenever I watch this music video,

I just hear bombs going off.

That's one way to put it.

It's like a Vietnam flashback.

I think for the outro,

You should just have the song

with like disposition

with like bombs exploding.

I can make that happen.

And in his defence,

I would take him over

any of the current lot any day.

But he was still bad

in his own special way.

I wonder how D-Rim,

D-Ram, D-Rim,

however you say it.

I wonder how they felt

about being used

in a political campaign.

For what I know,

they weren't.

They weren't very happy.

I mean, I'm not sure

what the Northern Irish

feeling towards

New Labour was

late 90s.

Northern Ireland has its own sort of political stuff going on.

So the whole New Labour thing, I don't think really affected it or impacted it in any way.

Well, you know, it did in some way, but not as much as it did in the mainland.

Like, I can't really personally remember anything outside of, say, you know, John Major and Tony Blair

when they were starting to come into the political spotlight.

outside of just what was you know being broadcasted on like you know the evening news but i was too

young to really care at the time um so i i honestly don't think there really was much thought about it

um maybe that's why they are allowed them to use it in the campaign i mean it did say that they asked

if they could use the song but it might be the case of them asking the label versus the actual

band it was probably like rights i would say the song makes me physically angry um as the

repetition of things can only get better getting constantly bashed into my head

isn't really the thing that I want to have as a personal mantra you know when a

song gets stuck in your head this is one of those songs and not in a good way but

in a really really really negative way it's a short song but it's not a sweet

song I feel that the band members don't really even want to be involved in it

going by this sort of vibe with the video I sort of feel that they sort of let out

a big sigh whenever they were told yeah we're shooting a music video and it's going to be against

this green screen it's been cool everyone's doing it everyone flail your hands i was trying to find

other music videos from 1993 and the only one i could find which actually done a better job was

proclaimers um i would walk 500 miles now the green screen in their video was only them literally

them doing the whatever the course or whatnot it wasn't fancy wasn't technical but it definitely

looked a hell of a lot better didn't look like a rush job 500 miles is arguably a much better song

not because it's actually a better song or a good song but it's i feel attacked no no i love the song

but it's not a good song if that makes sense like i love it like i wanted to place my wedding

and my funeral but it's not okay come to your funeral party okay

like yeah i would agree you know it's not a bad song you know i wouldn't choose to listen to it

It's the sort of song, if it comes on, you're just like,

hey, you know, it's a bit of fun.

It's not bad.

But when this shit comes on, you're just like, oh, fuck.

You know, I kind of feel, because it's a statement song, right,

for what, you know, it's called and what it's trying to say,

I think it sort of brings problems into the spotlight.

Because it's a saying that people say when stuff's not going good.

That's a question for you, actually,

because Proclaimers, obviously, it gets played at every single,

if you're ever at a function for your auntie's birthday or something,

it gets played at every single Scottish function ever.

Is this kind of an Irish equivalent?

No, it's not.

It's really not.

Let's just say for argument case, R6, yeah, this is the song I was going to play at Andy's

funeral at Andy's birthday party and stuff.

To me, they're sort of like visual flashbacks of, you know, moments in time.

And like one thing I really picked up on was, you know, the effect where they're constantly

trailing and then they sort of catch up with themselves.

that reminded me of when windows desktop uh uh like windows used to freeze oh god you're right

just make like yeah just make that weird distortion of just you know dragging i was like that reminds

me of something but i can't put my finger on what it was and that's what it was do you know what it

also reminded me of uh when you back in like in windows 95 you played solitaire when you finish

so there then it just the car started falling off like one by one yeah that exact thing yeah that's

true that's it too yeah weird weird trippy visual disturbance whatever you want to call it so we're

all agreed that the video had one good effect well i mean i dare say it was good but it was definitely

something i think it uh it was it was interesting i mean outside of all the fades constant fucking

fades um i kind of think it was nice to see something else going for we never spoke about

Brian Cox's involvement in all of this, by the way.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, we do. Maybe we shouldn't drag him

into this. No, drag him in where

we're going to need to fill out the time.

I sort of mentioned that the keyboardist

hates his life, clearly spamming the

copy and paste to cause that visual distortion.

Maybe Brian, you know,

started that whole Windows

crashing screen, but I'm not surprised

he had a career change after this.

How do you go from a keyboardist in a band

to a professor of physics?

I think we should probably say just in case there's someone who isn't aware of Brian Cox.

Brian Cox is like a TV science man, basically.

TV science man.

Like, come on, he's a professor.

Well.

He's a particle physics.

He's a TV professor, man.

He's not TV professor.

Give him some credit.

He's very good.

He's smarter than us.

I think he's fucking great.

And he was like the scientific advisor on, what was that film?

Was it Sundown or something like that?

Sunshine.

Sunshine.

yeah yeah sunshine yeah yeah that really yeah i didn't know this is fantastic for you since it

seems like half the band is missing at this point and there's some random extra people possibly

pretending to be in the band it's like it could just be that they filmed it at such short notice

in a rush that they forgot that yeah that brian cox and all the rest were busy that day so they

just went fuck it the green screen's already up we've already done it just do it no one's gonna

care we're just gonna sell this to tony blair anyway

You can only get better

You can only get better

Now I'll have you

You can only get better

You can only get better

Faith and worst parts

Well, my personal favourite part

was the use of

the Garden of Fertil Delights

by Bosch

Not because I understood why

but because visually

it was the only good thing there

Like, at least occasionally when they knew that people get bored of the visuals,

they just put back the image and you're like,

oh, that's an amazing masterpiece of work.

Yeah, well, can I just watch a whole video just of that?

Like, I generally don't mind.

And the worst part is the raining money,

which I'm still not sure why they had fucking raining money.

Also, I'm pretty sure they were dollars, were they?

They were green, I think.

Green, but they don't look like pounds.

I don't know what they are.

They're just fake money.

Yeah, it's DRAM credits.

The worst part for me is the random raining money,

which I genuinely don't know what they're doing there.

And white people dancing.

It made me dance, but you know,

which is not sure what a dance video should do, really.

You could feel it taking hold.

Yeah, I just want to flare my arms and scream.

I think my favourite part is he's dancing.

And then on the green screen in the background,

they put his face zoomed in really close.

So it just looks like there's a tiny version of him.

dancing in front of his face to about 38.

That's pretty glorious.

Gotta make a gif out of that.

Oh god, yes!

I think you've deleted that from my mind.

His dancing is just...

Why?

This is why people make fun of white people dancing.

Like, he's the reason.

And I'm saying this is a very, very, very white person.

They should be making fun of us.

And that's your favourite part of the video, right?

That's my favourite part.

I think my least favourite part is

the sort of horde of angels

I don't think they're angels

they're just choir people

because it has kind of a

sort of cultish vibe to it

which is mildly

it reminds me of the

polyphonic spree

if you ever listen to them

no really no

they were a band that

would basically dress like that

we're all white

and their thing was that

they were a cult

but it was done as a joke

so unlike these guys

who seem to be taking it seriously

Neil?

I said to the hatred for the entire video

I did find

And I think my favorite part was just like creepy.

Peter was 16 seconds in where it's the first time you see him and he just goes,

and then it fades out.

Oh, yes.

No, I get that.

It's very, I'm going to stab you at night in a way.

What's your opinion on that song, gentlemen?

I don't know

I'm kind of torn on it

the song in the music video

because I think

if you heard it

sparingly

and not like

repeatedly played

as I presume it was

on the radio at the time

I think it would be

it would be

a decent sort of

listen at first

and sort of

same with the video

you could watch it

and just go like

oh that's a nice

wee daft video

that makes no sense

but it's just upon

repeated viewing

that it becomes

a bit of a

hellish nightmare

I'm going to go

an in between

on this one

I know-ish

not sure

results were non-conclusive

it's not a good video

It's not a good song.

It's not hard to listen to,

but it's the sort of thing I would recommend to my enemies

because I know it'll get stuck in their head

and I know anytime they hear it,

it'll remind them of me.

Did you ever hear that website,

sendyourenemiesglitter.com?

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

It's kind of the musical equivalent of that.

Much like Dave,

I'm actually,

as much as I hear it,

I'm going to be on the fence

because I feel this song

is sort of a weapon of mass destruction.

It's a device for terrorism.

I feel that harmoniously segues

into the whole meaning of the song.

With all the connotations and hints of in the song

that it maybe can tell the future,

there could be something there.

Maybe that's why Brian Cox was in the band.

He's traveled back in time

and he's making some sort of message with it.

Or maybe it was a warning.

Maybe, yeah.

You think he'll be like,

no, it's not going to get better.

I am very strong no on this one.

Just pretentiously dumb.

And the video is, it's not, there's nothing to remember it for.

And it's just bad.

I mean, it's fun to talk about it and be like, this is really fucking bad.

But also, don't waste your time.

There's other bad things that can actually entertain you.

Yeah, it probably comes under the sort of so bad it's good scale.

It's not so bad it's good, it's just kind of bad.

Yeah.

Unless you're weaponizing it, as we've just discussed.

I'm going to be stuck in my head until the next song we listen to.

And it's not so hard.

I'm good.

This video doesn't really deserve as much attention we just spent on it, to be honest.

Yep.

I agree with that.

What are we listening to next time?

I mean, I've not watched them.

I don't know the songs, but they just look dreadful.

There's a song by Michael Bolton.

Oh, God.

I love you, but I lied is the song.

I want to do this.

It just looks, I don't know, it just looks like there could be promise in it.

It's got a man who's clearly balding, but he has very long hair.

And there's horses and fades and, oh my god, there's fire on the screen with the horses running.

Yeah.

Let's go for Michael Bolton.

I'm all for it.

Tune in with us next week when we'll be discussing Michael Bolton's I Say They Love You, But I Lied.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Bye.

Wash your hands.

Stay safe and work from work and home and work.

Don't listen to Boris.

and remember things can only get worse