This week on Two for Tuesday, the two similarly-themed songs I’m looking at have the commonality of obsessing about someone in a romantic way, or not, depending upon your perspective.
Obsession by Animotion
and
This Maniac’s in Love with You by Alice Cooper
Obsession, originally written and recorded by Holly Knight and Michael Des Barnes in 1983, included spoken lines, which didn’t go over well with listeners. The feedback for the spoken lines was ‘sinister’. This version was in the 1983 movie A Night in Heaven and in the 1986 trailer to the movie 9 ½ Weeks.
When the synth-pop group Animotion covered the song in 1984 on their first album, they had a hit on their hands. The bizarre, and more than a little over-the-top creepy video so captured MTV viewers that by 1985, the song reached the Top 10 on the music charts and the Top 40 dance charts as well as achieving really annoying earworm status.
I remember the song most as the theme song of the Saturday Night Main Event of the World Wrestling Federation, of which I was a fan with an (cough cough) Obsession for pro-wrestling during its heyday of Hulk Hogan, Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, Rowdy Roddy Piper, the Vachon Brothers, Andre the Giant, Miss Elizabeth, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, et al.
Gosh, I miss those days.
On to Obsession…
I can’t think of another music video that is as creepy, bizarre, nonsensical, or hilarious as the one for Obsession. I understand the creators were going for ‘who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me’ via the costuming, but they missed the mark. It’s just hilarious Halloween costuming.
Adding creepy insult to injury, This Maniac’s in Love with You by Alice Cooper lacks a goofy music video, but Alice Cooper doesn’t disappoint with his living-on-the-edge-of-sanity persona and the creepy, stalker lyrics. Only Alice Cooper can pull off this kind of song and get away with it.
- Your fears coming true
- Pleasure and pain
- Mind in decay
- Out of control
- Coming to take you away
The song was written by Robert Held, Desmond Child, Tom Teeley, and Alice Cooper. This Maniac’s in Love with You is a track included on the 1989 album Trash (my personal favorite album of his, by the way), which was Alice Cooper’s eleventh studio album. The album is categorized as glam metal and heavy metal. Trash went Gold, mostly because of the popularity of the song Poison, and it peaked on Billboard at Number 20 on November, 17, 1989.
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
Lasterday Stories
writing through history one romance upon a time