6: If I Ever Loose My Faith In You - Sting

I think it's fine having like a swearing opinion on something.

It isn't like it's a negative thing.

You can fucking love something as well as fucking hate something.

Hello and welcome to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far.

A podcast where a Scotsman, an Irishman and a Bulgarian

review the most terrible, silliest, weirdest-as-fucked music videos.

Hello, I'm Neil.

Hi, I'm Neil.

Hello, I'm David.

This is the first episode that we've recorded after releasing the show, so we're now aware that actual people are listening to this, so hello.

And I hope we're not all too hard to understand.

Good luck.

People don't understand it on a good day, so...

That's true. Podcast the accents. The accent podcast.

In case you can't tell, I'm the Bulgarian one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Today we are trying to keep our faith in music videos for Sting's If I Ever Lose My Faith

in You.

You've guessed it, it's from 1993 again.

What happened in 1993?

Who hurt all the music video directors?

Directed by our old friend Howard Greenough and collaborating with Doug Nicol, an American who has done some movies and music videos.

I'm sure we'll tumble across some of his works as we go on with this podcast.

By far, most symbolism-ridden video yet, yet very easy to follow and understand, because even 8th grade English-lit symbolism is still symbolism.

The video is full of references to historic and biblical figures.

Joan of Arc, Danish king, the first Danish king to ever get canonized.

Also patron saint of Denmark, Moses, Louis the...

Fourteens.

Fourteens, thanks.

For listeners at home, there's Roman numerals happening here

and I don't speak Roman numerals.

There are also references to what I believe

is the times during the Black Death

via imagery reminiscent of the movie The Seven Seals,

which would make sense since one of the motifs of the film

is the silence of God and the loss of faith.

Also, pick transformation,

which doesn't really have anything to do with anything else.

it's an interesting video there's a lot of different things going on which i guess it

connected in the sense of faith and lots of faith and different forms of faith a lot of the sort of

characters that pop up are they all like i'm not i'm not a man of faith are they people who have

lost their faith along the way or something like that moses is a biblical character i

does anyone know what specifically happens who was it that wandered in the desert in the burning

bush not like shit jesus was that jesus that did that oh shit i think so was it not i don't know

neither of us did like fucking sunday school actually i don't know neil did you do sunday

school you might have i probably did i just can't remember it all i remember about sunday school was

every christmas santa came and gave us you know selection boxes so that was the highlight everything

else is everything else is a blur so it's so long ago i can barely remember but in primary school

they did have reception or something like that where you all get into a room together and sing

hymns and shit like that and they i think they told some stories so i have a vague recollection of

they didn't tell this story no no they didn't tell the story of sting

wandering through the desert.

So unfortunately.

If they did show music videos

that were kind of like this,

you know, in those sort of classes back in school,

I think I would have remembered more.

Though I don't think it's totally factual

because there is a mermaid.

Yeah, the mermaid does kind of come out of nowhere

because everything else loosely hangs on the same theme,

but then there's just a mermaid.

I don't know.

I kind of thought the mermaid was something to do with

the little mermaid story.

is that disney you're talking about no the the story the disney movie is based on which is an

actual like story oh okay didn't know that you know that there is a there is a famous statue of

the little mermaid in copenhagen nope okay well there is i'm not 100 sure what does this have to

do with like loss of religion or loss of anything loss of faith because it doesn't i don't know it's

This video gives me a headache.

I would like to believe in our old friend,

friend,

Harry,

that there is a deeper meaning to it.

Yeah.

It was definitely full of a lot of,

a lot of weird magic and whatnot.

I mean,

we had the,

the scene where,

um,

is it,

was it Sting transformed into a pig or is it someone else?

I think it's a random guy.

I think.

Yeah.

Like why can anyone tell me why?

Uh,

magic.

This is Sting.

He plays a son and a cross and,

all sorts of objects in this video so i guess it must be magic uh two minutes 55 there's a bunch

of old men surrounding it wait no that is sting that is sting yeah it is what about the old man

surrounding sting of what looks to be the start of a possible orgy you see i saw this in the notes

when about says this it's not the same old man as a pig is it it's yeah it's the same old man i

I think it's towards the end.

Oh my god, I guess.

Yes.

The world you guys are looking for is bestiality.

3 minutes, 26 seconds.

35 seconds.

Just watch his face, okay?

He's in the middle, by the way.

Just watch his face go from smiling to, oh, shit.

Or it kind of looks like, why am I doing this video sort of face?

There's a couple of points where I'm watching it go, and I don't know if this is acting or

just Sting being pissed off.

A lot of the scenes where he's standing in or near the castle,

he looks like he's genuinely freezing to death

because he's just kind of rubbing his shoulders and going like,

oh, when can I go home and have some tantric sex?

Because he's into that kind of thing.

What about you tantric sex?

You put it in the notes as well.

Yeah, there was a news story that he was bragging about

his tantric sex prowess

and that he'd go for like seven hours and shit like that.

Yo, peace for a wife's vagina.

I think later on he admitted he was talking shite.

I'm shocked Sting's talking shite never.

There's Joan of Arc,

which not sure again how it's connected to loss of faith.

I think it's more about having faith.

The one thing that kind of tripped me over was

Sting's character when he's sitting in the chair.

It's kind of what was referring to as the philosopher from the Enlightenment.

It reminds me of someone that just can't quite place who he's supposed to be.

It's kind of like very enlightening when they're starting to question everything,

including religion and science and life in general.

It's definitely a good chair to be sitting in and philosophizing.

It's a good quill to have.

It's a very philosophical quill.

There's a scene in it where he's on stilts.

You guys pick that up?

Yeah, that's when they're going through a desert.

No, 129, he walks out of the castle on stilts.

Oh, yeah.

That takes skill.

But also, why?

Why is he on stilts?

Was that something maybe they did back in the day

To make themselves look grander

Maybe

Because they'd basically do anything to make themselves look a bit fancy

Big feathers and shit

Three feet

Hold on, I didn't realise he plays

He doesn't

He doesn't play the Moses, does he?

Yeah, he does

That's not Sting, is it?

Yeah, he's Sting and

Big Beards

Oh, come on, really? I didn't pick that up

That's ridiculous

I think that's one of my favourite parts of the video

because he's standing there,

kind of looks like he's on a stage,

starring in a primary school production

of some Mosey thing,

and he's just taking it way too seriously.

He's a full method actor there.

I will see.

There isn't actually a single blink from him,

so that's, yeah, that's talent.

Yeah, I think just in general,

I think his performance in this

is pretty on point.

Basically playing everyone

apart from a couple of the odd

support characters,

Joan of Arc and stuff.

I'm happy that he doesn't play,

he's not in drug.

Yeah, that wouldn't have aged well.

Not really, no.

He does play that mental knight in the ocean.

That's King Canute.

Who is King Canute?

I don't know who King Canute is.

Danish king.

I think he's the first Danish king, isn't he?

Well, like, actually, no.

Is he a water king?

Did he hit the waves?

I don't know.

He could be him.

But yeah, he is sitting in the ocean,

kind of slashing away at the water,

which I appreciate at multiple levels,

because it's kind of just, it's funny to look at,

funny to think about him actually filming that.

Maybe he's trying to fight the mermaid.

Hold on, Neil.

I need to read this out because Wikipedia.

So there is a story of King Canute and the tide.

It's a proclifical anecdote illustrating the piety of humility of King Canute the Great.

In the story, Canute demonstrates to his flattering courtiers, people from his court, I guess,

that he has no control over the elements, the incoming tide,

explaining that secular power is vain compared to the supreme power of God.

Wow.

The episode is frequently alluded to in context where the futility of trying to stop the tide

of an exorbitable event is pointed out,

but usually misrepresenting Canute as believing he has supernatural powers,

where the actual story is in fact the opposite.

So that particular shot of Sting waving his sword at the water

actually does have a historical backstory.

So maybe I wasn't giving this video enough credit.

Maybe everything in it has some sort of historical backstory.

No, but they do.

Everything has a story, but it's still not...

I don't quite understand why the song is about losing your faith.

And some of the things are about losing your faith,

but then some are about having stronger faith in religion,

where he's literally thinking that he has no faith in religion.

It's just a bit baffling.

I think they just kind of gathered different religious allegories.

without actually connecting them to the point of the song

and they were just like, oh, it's religion is good enough.

They got a couple which were actually about people losing their faith

or their faith being challenged or whatever.

And then they thought, fuck, we've still got two more minutes to fill up.

Put the Little Mermaid in there, it's fine.

I'm going to quickly look up and try and find out what the story behind that pig is

because I need to know.

Talk about yourself.

Yeah, the pig must mean something important.

Hopefully it's a bacon-related biblical story.

I can't find exactly the pig, but I did find a page on there and it called 14 Bible Verses about pigs.

So a boar from the forest eats it away and whatever moves in the field feeds on it.

Deep.

Anyway, right.

So the video.

Sure, yeah, the video, yes.

The whole thing with like the beginning with the people walking through the desert, it just keeps on reminding me of the movie The Seventh Seal.

Like the imagery that they have there, which is like a traveling circus.

And the movie itself is about loss of faith and God kind of abandoning people.

And it's about a crusader who comes back and he's dying, basically.

And the whole thing is about him trying to speak to God and realizing that God is not there, but death is there.

So it's kind of on point.

I've seen the scene where he's playing chess with death.

I've never watched the full thing.

Well, there's like different scenes where there's several main characters and one of the

like part of the cast is the traveling theater group, kind of.

And the final scene, like which is a very fucking famous scene, is them doing the death

dance, I think.

Hold on, I'll try to find it for you.

Like when you see it, you kind of immediately get why.

So he's kind of continuing

we had with the Black Hole Sun video.

We were talking a lot in that one

about how he's basically

ripping off Blue Velvet

or not ripping off

but homaging Blue Velvet

by David Lynch

and in this one

he's homaging another film.

He's going for the

the great artist's steal

sort of approach maybe.

There you go.

I'm just going to take a break

in the podcast

to watch some

some old art films.

yeah oh yeah no it does look like he has definitely taken some inspiration from it i don't think

there's anything wrong with that it's uh no like if anything that actually makes perfect sense

um because it is actually something directly related to losing your face which is what the

kind of thematically on point yeah even like i would have not held it against how he had he decided

to make the whole video kind of um reproduction of the whole movie but sting like i would have

i would have understood it it would have made sense yeah it's quite interesting seeing go west to

black hole sun to this you can kind of see maybe a sort of maturing of his kind of style no that's

this is before Black Hosson

ah fuck that ruins that whole idea

I think

Black Hosson is 94

isn't it

no it's actually probably the other way around

he started with

something a bit more

grounded

although you know

go west

which

we don't go there

but he started with something a bit more grounded

because he didn't have access to CGI

the way he wanted to

then something

something hit in 94

and he was like

oh CGI everywhere

just throw it

that's quite interesting

because this one actually

I think it looks a lot better because he's not

going full hog with it so maybe this is

a lesson in sometimes a little bit

of restraint or limitation

is a good thing. Could be. We kind of get

back to my point with Black

Olsen that had they gone for

physical makeup as opposed to CGI

would have probably worked better

due to limitations they had at the time. It's got

some similar stuff in it like, sorry I was

vaping there, I probably shouldn't do that while talking

It's got some

similar stuff in it like

there's like kind of Dutch angle-y shots of Sting standing about

and you can see the sky is all weird looking

and going faster than it would in real life,

which they also have in Black Hole Sun.

Definitely you can see elements of his sort of style in there,

but in my opinion, this actually works better

because it's more, I don't know if you can call this video grounded,

but compared to Black Hole Sun, it's more grounded.

It's more on the nose, but that makes it a bit more concise.

You have four and a half minutes,

So I don't want to feel existential dread.

Existential dread?

Dread, thanks.

Words.

Like, I don't want to feel existential dread

because I didn't understand your fucking music video.

It makes you think more of this.

I've been looking up pig stories.

It seems like it definitely makes you think a bit more of this one,

the Black Hole Song,

which just makes you kind of want to run into a corner

and go into the fetal position.

It definitely expanded down origin history

and like biblical apocryphical stories.

Yeah.

So we learned something today.

Learned something new every day.

Right.

I really, really like this video.

Not sure why,

but I just think it's technically solid.

It's full of energy.

And I think what gives a slow paced song enough visuals to not make, well, me bored.

I think it's got a great use of props, makeup, lights and whatnot are all standout points to me.

Now, I think this is a point.

I just want to ask you guys.

I don't think there's CG in this.

I think it's clever camera work, especially with him looking like the moon.

Oh, really?

Not the moon, like the sun and whatnot.

I don't know.

It just sort of stands out to me that looks higher end than other stuff we've seen before.

That's quite interesting.

I never really clocked that maybe the whole moon, sun, face, whatever it is, isn't CG.

So you think it's some kind of camera trick or something like that, maybe.

It looks a bit smoother than what you would think like a CG, you know, fire, for instance, would look like.

Or the way it's blended and whatnot.

I mean, I might be wrong, but it doesn't look like there's any green screen put into this.

It looks like most of it was in camera.

Maybe like basic effects and whatnot, but nothing too ridiculous, I guess.

Well, he is on the screen for a couple of shots, you know, as a cross.

So that has to be some sort of, you know, CG whatever overlay stuff.

But I thought it was quite slick regardless of it.

But I mean, it wouldn't have been too out of the ordinary

if a big badly rendered CG dragon just flew in.

But I'm kind of glad it didn't.

But it does feel kind of epic.

It feels like a bigger story.

I kind of liked it.

It has a similar sort of vibe and style to it as other videos,

like Black Hole Sun and stuff like that.

I think it's just a bit more sort of tastefully done, shall we say.

but it does continue the sort of tradition of just being a big long stream of nonsense but i think it's

a much more well-constructed stream of nonsense this day i mean we think i think we all kind of

agree that in the grand scheme of howie videos uh this one is actually not that bad it's it still

keeps the symbolism but it makes more sense and it doesn't try to be it's still like symbolism

like eighth grade symbolism but it doesn't try to be more than it is it's definitely better than

many other videos especially at the time where everyone was just kind of going crazy with colors

and cgi and effects and it's it's just overall like it's a video that i wouldn't necessarily mind

watching again even though i'm not actually a stink fan so i might mute it it's like it's

Surprisingly, as Dave said,

it's not...

It's fine.

Yeah, I enjoyed it.

For a change of the videos we've been watching.

I think for me,

best part would be

sting fighting in the water in full armor.

Definitely a highlight.

Worst part would have been

the nightmare-inducing floating cross

and moon faces.

Not a fan.

Not gonna be asleep tonight.

Oh, yeah.

Forgot about that.

Yeah, shout out to the wooden throne,

which makes multiple appearances,

including getting drenched in the water

and it still freely spins afterwards.

I thought it really stole the show.

They must have had a good supply of WD-40.

I mean, I feel like they really got their value out of that prop.

Yeah.

I'm going to say the same as Neil.

My favourite part was him sitting in the water

on his throne, waving sword at the sea.

Yes.

And he's generally given it.

Good choice.

Given it what for?

Good choice.

I've heard of getting the fucking sea,

but I've never heard declare war on the fucking sea.

Although I wrote that before we realised

that there was a deeper meaning to that part.

So there you go.

Oh, the more you know.

And I do have a runner up for this,

which is at three minutes, 25 seconds,

the group of guys who transform Sting into a pig.

It sort of cuts to them clearly singing along with the song

and just having what looks to be a grand old time.

So I enjoyed that.

And the worst part was when Sting's in the castle or around the castle

and he's kind of hugging himself, looking like he's freezing,

because I genuinely believe he actually was freezing.

And it gives me a lot of flashbacks to being out filming

and nearly dying of hypothermia,

which happens quite a lot when you film in Scotland.

I believe the first movie we shot together was that.

Yes, I was actually thinking of that, yeah.

Yeah, me and Ellie worked on a film years ago,

and it was cold.

It was really fucking cold.

It was great, but...

The film was great.

Phone box, look it up on YouTube.

uh my favorite part was actually the desert scenes and the norm breaking the the collective

here but i kind of really enjoyed the theatricality and kind of the fantasy feel and the soft

of soft um focus like filter it i just it was just kind of very like it felt fake in a good way

if that makes sense i quite like that um and the worst part for me or the least favorite at least

for me was the louis 14th scenes um i just didn't quite get what did that have to do with losing

face at all it's it's just like a french king who thought he was god or whatever so it was just kind

of whatever symbolism they were trying to do with that it was a bit lost on me but feel free to correct

me if i'm wrong please do which which parts were louis the whatever it was sting's face in the sun

I am pretty 100% sure that that was supposed to be a reference to Louis XIV

because he did that a lot.

He put his face in the middle of the sun.

He's known, clock really, as the sun king.

Well, he must have had one hell in marketing department.

Yeah, I'd imagine French kings did have that.

Up until they stopped having heads.

A great lesson for us all, UK, anytime now.

Eat the rich.

And it's an I from me?

Definitely an I from me.

Yep, an I, yes from me.

What do we do next?

I don't know, I'm thinking maybe we can go something very cheesy like

Bonnie Tyler or Whitesnake,

holding out for a hero.

I see an explosion right off the bat, that's a good sign.

We're standing in the desert, shouting at the world.

it's like

definitely a video

that has to

happen in it

and it looks like

it may have a bit

of a story which

I think some of

these have been

lacking so

looks terrible

but love it

what year was

the shot

we'll talk about

that next week

2011

it's like

Michael Bolton

all over again

yeah but

with actual

story plot

well I think

and a bit more

bondage

a bit more

bondage

everybody loves

a bit of bondage

in the podcasts

Thanks for listening to...

Thanks for what we called again.

Thanks for listening to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far,

and join us next week for Bonnie Tyler holding out for a hero.

Yeehaw.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Never darken my door again.

Thank you.