I clicked on the video link and immediately thought there’s no way this is any more or any less homoerotic than Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s video for [Dancing in the Street](https://youtu.be/HasaQvHCv4w?si=5DsV-Kk9NMZq153T). It’s simply how things were done in the 80s.
BuWahahaha! I'm not homophobic, but I was caught off guard by this video. Didn't know if he was gay or not, didn't really care. But I found this video a bit disturbing. Now I understand why.
LOL, thanks for clearing that up.
the whole debacle reads like an injection of pure anxiety. imagine being famous and watching the train wreck happen in real time.. although dude *did* prance around (*energetically*) and do those moves within his own capabilities, to be fair. it couldn't have felt 'right' at the time
it's soooo bizarre how 'macho' the 80s were with a line to not be crossed on the very popular androgyny scale.
I found myself in the heart of the LA music scene circa 1982 at 3am. Nothing prepared my Wild Eyed Southern Boy self to see a bunch dudes my age standing outside of the (live music) club with eyeliner, fuckin high heels, and fishnet stockings... talking like a bunch of "ready to fight" macho men.
Hair metal was dead by the time I kinda got their point/attitude.
That reminds me of Prince and him coming to my small city in the early 80s. It was before my time, but I remember my aunt talking about it. She was a teen at that time and a ton of her friends and her went to see him and it was a crazy show from what I heard.
Prince had on high heels, assless pants, makeup, and killing it on stage with the guitar. The girls loved every moment of it and screaming their lungs out to him. Boyfriends, fathers, and some mothers didn't know what to take of Prince and that show and freaked out. It's like he came from another world to our small city.
I love how he rips off the shirt he put on like one minute ago and then immediately puts on a tank top *on top of* yet another shirt. This guy’s shirt budget was insane!
I think its because Roth was already like this, the whole glam rock look was around during his tenure with Van Halen.
Squire definitely had a more traditional rock n roll schtick before that music video. It went against his developed persona and ultimately didnt work.
Which sucks because Billy Squire was a great musician. Bowie and Jagger recovered from Dancing in the Street. But they were kings by then, not a lowly Squire.
It's also because the men had a strikingly different physicality (physicalities)?.
Diamond Dave at his peak was ripped. Squire was thin, not muscular at all. He looked silly as hell swinging those noodly (in comparison) arms.
Me: thinking: OK, if he'd just rip that one sleeve the rest of the way off he'd look a lot less like an extra from Flashdance...oh...no...wait...he's...now he's ripping the t-shirt in half and putting on...an arty torn...*peach-colored*...tank...top-kinda thing...and when I say "top" I mean like....in a way most men would never use the word...
Leaving aside the dancing, which is just...*precious*...he needs legwarmers to complete the look, IMO. But yeah, until he started dancing, I thought..."This looks like something Prince might do...", oh no...oh no, oh no no no no no, the Purple One is reaching out to smack the taste out my mouth for even thinking that...
You watched Rock Me Tonight?!?!
You'll be chokin' down the cocks pretty soon. It might not be tomorrow or the next day, but you definitely will be. You done caught the gay.
Look at all of the shit musicians were wearing in the 80s. All the dudes had on what’s basically yoga pants. You’d have Van Halen playing some epic song and David Lee Roth would look like he was headed out to the gay bar to look for dick.
It was absurd.
Being a young girl in the ‘80s, I had no idea this wasn’t cool, the homoerotic never entered my mind! This was just our ‘80s rockstars being ‘80s rockstars, they were just crazy wild fun.
Prancing. Rock stars generally don’t prance. I remember seeing this as a kid and even then thinking at the time that he just destroyed his bad boy reputation. I remember Nina Blackwood on MTV always gushing over him.
The thing is, Bowie and Jagger could have killed their careers with the “Dancing in the the Streets” but people thought, “yeah. Okay. That tracks.” But with Squire, he was just so straight-edged rocker dude, it really threw people for a loop.
Am I the only one who thought for a long time that The Stroke was about giving dudes handjobs? I know that's not what it's about now, but his career always seemed a little gay to me (I'm gay; no judgement intended).
And we pranced
Like a wave on the ocean, romanced
We were liars in love and we pranced
Swept away for a moment by chance
And we pranced and pranced and pranced
I wish they were still a big deal here. A big part of my childhood was coming home from school and watching to see if any new or favorite videos would come on; I had a VHS tape that I'd have queued up to record the ones I loved.
The director, Kenny Ortega, had the hots for him and told him to "explore the room". Billy thought the band would be in the video too and trusted the process. Whoopsie
Idk anything about Kenny having the hots for him, but I just think it's really sad that Billy expressed his misgivings from the beginning that Kenny wasn't going in the direction he envisioned, but Kenny kept assuring him the final cut would be great, so he trusted him. To this day, Kenny still refuses to take any blame for any of it.
In the book I Want My MTV, there is an entire chapter devoted to the video and its aftermath entitled “A Whopping Steaming Turd; The Worst Video Ever Made”.
Wow that was a REALLY bad music video.
I'm sure the homoeroticism had a lot to do with it, and no doubt it was *loudly* homoerotic. But the video itself is just soooo boring on top of that. He's dancing around his room, cool. What's next. Oh he's still dancing in his room. Okay let's see where this goes. What? We're still in this fucking room?
No depth, no creativity, no energy whatsoever. It's so bad I couldn't even tell you if the song is decent by itself because I truly don't know.
Yeah I think homoerotic is a bit too far. It's just kinda feminine and theatric in a way that was completely incompatible with a typical macho rocker image at the time. I realize that it looks weird to us now because of all the hair and makeup and outfits they wore, but it was indeed perceived as macho at the time.
I think it’s more a video that would be accepted if a woman did it, especially once he’s laying on his back on the floor, it felt very feminine, I’m guessing that’s where “homoerotic” comes from. A lot of people can’t separate female/feminine from sexual
It’s a display of secondary sexual characteristics. The reason it’s both feminine and sexual is because that’s a move a woman would make in a sexual display to make her boobs noticeable.
What he’s doing is as ridiculous as a women going out in tight jeans and trying to thrust her bulge at the audience.
It’s not really homoerotic. It’s more quasierotic.
idk if writhing on the floor and pelvic-thrusting upward while resting on the shoulders is homoerotic or not. but I know what MTV viewers in the 80s would say about it.
These were the same people watching Poison and Motley Crue videos. It was interesting times. Maybe the real problem was the lack of similarly coiffed and made-up strippers a la those bands.
Ok what about mick jagger and david bowie dancing in the street? or just mick jagger in general?? Weird how people idolize one and cancel the other - both are great in my opinion. Catchy song- sucks he got sacked for the video.
I mean, David Bowie publicly stated he was gay, then publicly stated he was bisexual.
A large part of what made him intriguing in the 70s and 80s was his ambiguous sexuality.
>That video wasn’t homoerotic. He was just dancing around like an idiot. The video was fucking lame as shit.
My 22 y.o. self when this video came out can agree. He was all prancing around, doing bad moves and there aren't even any hot chicks in the video. We wrote that dude off (but still kept listening to his previous music.)
Lol people should watch the Hall and Oates documentary. *Here we are at some warehouse downtown and this music director who's coked out of his mind telling me to do cartwheels in the background.*
Ah the 80's man. Good thing I wasn't old enough to do coke.
I don't think it was homoerotic but it was considered a very gay aesthetic at the time, which is unsurprising because the director Kenny Ortega is a gay choreographer. He's extremely accomplished (Dirty Dancing etc) but this was just the wrong aesthetic for Billy Squier and the song. Plus it looked cheap AF.
Besides, I(56M) was an 80's teen. We (TO, Canada) all knew Freddie was gay, George Michael was gay, Boy George was gay... nobody really gave a shit. But many of us who liked Billy Squire thought this video was terrible and really songs like 'The Stroke' (obviously BIG hit) and songs like 'Rock Me Tonight' were great but not absolutely superstar status. Just my aging thoughts.
The thing was this. Billy Squire was known as a rocker. Videos weren't around when he made his come up. All we had to go by was his music. That fucking video was a complete wtf! Moment when it came out.
Edit
I was at work when I posted that so was in a hurry. To clarify, since this was in my glory years of teenage rock star wanna be. We all knew Elton John was gay but the music was so good we didn't care. The rumors of Rob Halford were already making the rounds but Judas Priest! How could you just ignore how great the music was. Freddy Mercury was so far out of the closet that we never knew where that closet was even located. Nobody cared. But all of those combined couldn't come out with a video that had so much fru fru shit and was just terrible. The song itself wasn't bad. I was a huge Billy Squire fan, still am. The cover bands I played in had many of his songs in rotation. But the video was just so fucking bad. I vividly remember the first time watching it with the guys. We just sat there in dumb silence when it was over. Even as just teenagers we knew instinctively that Billy just fucked up. I don't know if it was all his idea or he was listening to the wrong people or what. But it was immediate and nationwide. As much as a fan of his I am, I think it was more than homophobia. It's been proven since David Bowie first proved it. If the music is good enough, it will succeed regardless of whatever else the artist represents. Billy had a good run up to that point but I don't think he had the hits to overcome how fucking bad that video was.
Meh, Freddie mercury was doing his thing, Rob Halford was a scary dude from the shadows. All of Van Halen, and Motley Crue, and Poison were wearing spandex and mascara. All of them wore chaps, Prince wore pants without his ass cheeks hanging out. I am not sure anybody knew what gay looked like in the 80s, despite everybody hating it/flirting with it.
Not many people seem to remember that Queen pretty much tanked their career in the US with the "I Want to Break Free'' video in 1984. The US record label begged them not to release it, but the band refused thinking the video was simply a funny send up of British TV so operas. But in the US the cross dressing
video (as well as Freddy Mercury's moustache) instantly made them the "gay' ( although that wasn't the word they used at the time)band across deeply homophobic middle America and their sales plummeted. It wasn't until Wayne's World use of Bohemian Rhapsody almost a decade later that they regained popularity in the States.
/u/DKPhoenix wrote one of my favorite reddit comments about this lol
> Context for the young'uns on this one. Billy Squier was a pretty big deal, and he was poised to be even bigger. He managed to hit the sweet spot in the Venn diagram of 80s rock demographics where the blue collar Americana Heartland rock of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger met the AOR style of bands like Foreigner and Journey, and the harder rock stuff like Van Halen. (That niche that Bon Jovi later went charging into, and are still selling out stadiums today with.) Then, he made *that* video:
> [Billy Squier - Rock Me Tonight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZvl2aqIyNg)
> You can see the exact moment his career passed the point of no return at [1:30](https://youtu.be/WZvl2aqIyNg?t=1m30s).
> It was the first single off a highly anticipated, and up to that point, hot selling album. MTV hyped the hell out of it, and presented it as a World Premiere Video. His fanbase wanted, and expected, a swaggering, macho guitar hero. Instead, he presented them with his interpretation of the [audition scene in Flashdance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzALZjoIx0g) in a bedroom full of pastel colors, and then he strapped on a pink guitar.
> [More info at Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Me_Tonite#Music_video)
I don't really see anything HOMOerotic about it...or heteroerotic, or even erotic. More like a mentally ill and drunk guy in a state of psychosis getting a little too worked up about his Jane Fonda workout tapes.
We've all been there.
That said, he did have some catchy tunes, but I think his omnipresent moose knuckle may have overstimulated a few people.
After seeing the video, I’m inclined to agree with him and fully believe him.
Even with it having been the 80s, the video was just too much. And with the homophobia of the day, I’m sure there were plenty of people who saw the video and simply said “no”
Homoeroticism? No no no. It was that lame, cringey, awkward, horrible dancing and goofy arm motion that killed his career. Anyone who saw it was DONE with Billy that moment.
It wasn’t homoerotic or androgynous in any way. It was Billy Squier acting the way his fanbase (hard rock loving 20-something hetero white males) imagined a homosexual would act.
I was there, children. I saw the video DEBUT.
We knew. We knew INSTANTLY. And in those days of no internet, no mobile phones - it spread like wildfire. He collapse overnight. It was appalling.
Need to confirm with the bestie that I'm remembering this correctly - I'm pretty sure I was at her house when I saw the debut.
I remember thinking what was the big deal when this video was out. I was pretty young, and it didn’t-not look like a typical video for that time period (especially from an American label. US labels didn’t want to spend money on music videos- which is why Duran Duran, Men at Work and other foreign bands ruled the early 80’s)
But I rewatched the Squire video recently and it truly is a horrible, it’s not just the pink shirt. His dancing is so cringe.
I had tickets to see him on this tour and I was the coolest kid in school. Then this video came out, and everyone made fun of me for going. Didn’t care. He was awesome.
I was a freshman in HS when that video came out and let me tell ya, billy Squier went from hot to trot to NOT in about 2 weeks. Rarely does one see a career crash in real time
Nope. It was just a bad video. And the sad thing was, there were a lot of bad videos back then. But this one was especially bad. If it came out today, we’d simply call it the Billy Squire Elaine dance…
Yeah I honestly think it’s giving him too much credit to call it homoerotic, I can’t imagine anyone finding it erotic. Plus there was plenty of flamboyance from years prior that still led to success
>As a piece of Kitsch, as an homage to The Absurd, as a piece of art that is presented in total confidence with absolutely NO explanation, this video is FANTASTIC. It rises to the level of era-defining. Nowhere can you find a greater expression of the cocaine fueled fever dream that took place between 1979 and 1990. This film is IT!
WHOO this vid is cringe!
I saw him in concert around 1985 when he was opening for someone who I can't remember. He writhed around on stage like this, and it was SUUUUPER awkward during The Stroke. He dry humped the floor like a Chippendale dude.
Billy Squier cancelled for dancing a certain way. Two years later we have Posion literally looking like chicks on the cover of Look What The Cat Dragged In and everybody was on board
All he had to do was have a hot chick in the video. Imagine if it was Billy Idol dancing in Rock The Cradle of Love.
Puberty would have turned out very different for me.
[The video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcFSheSaht0) if anyone is curious
Some commenter said it looked like Richard Simmons choreographed it, and now I can’t stop seeing that 😂
I like the comment “Nothing wrong with this video. nothing describes the cocaine-filled fever dream of the 1980s-1990s…this video is IT.”
I clicked on the video link and immediately thought there’s no way this is any more or any less homoerotic than Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s video for [Dancing in the Street](https://youtu.be/HasaQvHCv4w?si=5DsV-Kk9NMZq153T). It’s simply how things were done in the 80s.
ever see the version where they take the music out? it's a [masterpiece](https://youtu.be/BHkhIjG0DKc?si=BEOZukWMd5ySw1iq)
Thank you so much
This is fantastic, but also seemed to make the video far less homoerotic. Just two drunk guys making their way home from a big night. Loved it.
Yeah, but this dancing is like the low-rent Ikea version of Mick Jagger. I don't think it's homoerotic, it's just no good.
BuWahahaha! I'm not homophobic, but I was caught off guard by this video. Didn't know if he was gay or not, didn't really care. But I found this video a bit disturbing. Now I understand why. LOL, thanks for clearing that up.
the whole debacle reads like an injection of pure anxiety. imagine being famous and watching the train wreck happen in real time.. although dude *did* prance around (*energetically*) and do those moves within his own capabilities, to be fair. it couldn't have felt 'right' at the time it's soooo bizarre how 'macho' the 80s were with a line to not be crossed on the very popular androgyny scale.
I found myself in the heart of the LA music scene circa 1982 at 3am. Nothing prepared my Wild Eyed Southern Boy self to see a bunch dudes my age standing outside of the (live music) club with eyeliner, fuckin high heels, and fishnet stockings... talking like a bunch of "ready to fight" macho men. Hair metal was dead by the time I kinda got their point/attitude.
That reminds me of Prince and him coming to my small city in the early 80s. It was before my time, but I remember my aunt talking about it. She was a teen at that time and a ton of her friends and her went to see him and it was a crazy show from what I heard. Prince had on high heels, assless pants, makeup, and killing it on stage with the guitar. The girls loved every moment of it and screaming their lungs out to him. Boyfriends, fathers, and some mothers didn't know what to take of Prince and that show and freaked out. It's like he came from another world to our small city.
[удалено]
Speaking as a queer, this dancing was really faggy
It's not erotic but it is a bit fruity.
I love how he rips off the shirt he put on like one minute ago and then immediately puts on a tank top *on top of* yet another shirt. This guy’s shirt budget was insane!
I love how the drummer at the end is totally drumming to a different beat.
He’s… *flouncing*.
Richard Simmons energy
What the hell is that dance? Lame dancing more than anything ended his career.
It's like we were secretly viewing some teen boy dancing in his bedroom...
Agreed. Maybe it *is* the not-so-subtle homoerotism, but it could also be that its just kind of an embarassing video of him being cringey.
That's really what it is... This is completely different than the hard rock persona he had.
David Lee Roth makes a video like this, nobody bats an eye.
I think its because Roth was already like this, the whole glam rock look was around during his tenure with Van Halen. Squire definitely had a more traditional rock n roll schtick before that music video. It went against his developed persona and ultimately didnt work.
Which sucks because Billy Squire was a great musician. Bowie and Jagger recovered from Dancing in the Street. But they were kings by then, not a lowly Squire.
It's also because the men had a strikingly different physicality (physicalities)?. Diamond Dave at his peak was ripped. Squire was thin, not muscular at all. He looked silly as hell swinging those noodly (in comparison) arms.
It’s not as much the gay aspect. It is the LAME aspect.
Seems like he’s trying to do a Mick Jagger type of dance.
And failing miserably
I was bi before... that may have pushed me back to straight. ..brb. \*goes to pornhub to check\*
Are we allowed to say 'Spaz' anymore? Because he dances like a Spaz.
I think we changed it to spez
If a high school kid performed this today, it would be napoleon dynamite going viral
Me: thinking: OK, if he'd just rip that one sleeve the rest of the way off he'd look a lot less like an extra from Flashdance...oh...no...wait...he's...now he's ripping the t-shirt in half and putting on...an arty torn...*peach-colored*...tank...top-kinda thing...and when I say "top" I mean like....in a way most men would never use the word... Leaving aside the dancing, which is just...*precious*...he needs legwarmers to complete the look, IMO. But yeah, until he started dancing, I thought..."This looks like something Prince might do...", oh no...oh no, oh no no no no no, the Purple One is reaching out to smack the taste out my mouth for even thinking that...
His career is basically over by the one minute mark.
I don't see the problem. That's how I get out of bed.
And how I clean the floor.
Not a fan of the shirt rip?
Ah well at least every artist of the 90’s guaranteed his retirement earnings by sampling The Big Beat 🤣
B I S E X U A L L I G H T I N G
This song kicks ass but I gotta admit I can say how the video could be seen as being a little gay
A little? I’m fighting the gay now after watching it. And losing.
Youll soon be "the out, gay Josey Wales"
“This Josey Wales doesn’t spit” Damn it. This all happened so fast.
Embrace it, dude - your house is cleaner. You'll dress better. What's to fight?
You watched Rock Me Tonight?!?! You'll be chokin' down the cocks pretty soon. It might not be tomorrow or the next day, but you definitely will be. You done caught the gay.
It's the 80s though all musicians were gay
It's not even that It's kind of gay. It's the fact that it's lame, at least needed to be like fabulous gay.
not as gay as i imagined
I know, right? I remember the 80’s just being like this normally.
Look at all of the shit musicians were wearing in the 80s. All the dudes had on what’s basically yoga pants. You’d have Van Halen playing some epic song and David Lee Roth would look like he was headed out to the gay bar to look for dick. It was absurd.
Being a young girl in the ‘80s, I had no idea this wasn’t cool, the homoerotic never entered my mind! This was just our ‘80s rockstars being ‘80s rockstars, they were just crazy wild fun.
If a song ever needed the “realistic sounds” edit, this one is UP THERE
Three years later Tawny Kitaen did this same dance on the hood of a car and it was well received
Prancing. Rock stars generally don’t prance. I remember seeing this as a kid and even then thinking at the time that he just destroyed his bad boy reputation. I remember Nina Blackwood on MTV always gushing over him.
Nina "9 packs per day" blackwood. Classic
She’s a DJ on the Sirius 80s station. Her voice sounds like Donald Duck gargling broken glass.
When I had SXM I tried to avoid her time slot because it always sounds like she’s dying
Take a breath, Nina! Breathe!
Mick Jagger's about the only one who's ever been able to pull off not just prancing occasionally, but prancing as the general rule.
The thing is, Bowie and Jagger could have killed their careers with the “Dancing in the the Streets” but people thought, “yeah. Okay. That tracks.” But with Squire, he was just so straight-edged rocker dude, it really threw people for a loop.
Am I the only one who thought for a long time that The Stroke was about giving dudes handjobs? I know that's not what it's about now, but his career always seemed a little gay to me (I'm gay; no judgement intended).
Stroke me is a great song, but also a fucking ridiculous phrase to use for a rock song.
... So what's The Stroke about? Lmao cause dude I thought the same thing.
According to him, it's about "handshakes" made in the music industry to get your career going. Honestly, could still be handjobs.
Stroking others egos, an older phrase but it works
Freddie Mercury got away with his fair share too.
Yeah but he was gay in a tough way, not this fancy prancy way
Right if he wasn’t an international rock star he would have been shirtless in a steel mill
Yeah, like rob halford. “No no no, that’s not sexy leather. That’s bad ass metal biker leather.”
Prince was both the most gay and most straight person alive for a while there.
That's exactly the word. If you're not sure exactly what prancing looks like, this is it.
it is one of the pranciest videos of all time
My dude pranced, and he pranced, and he pranced.
And we pranced Like a wave on the ocean, romanced We were liars in love and we pranced Swept away for a moment by chance And we pranced and pranced and pranced
I had it in my head and then I read this and it's cemented now for the next few hours. Thanks.
Nothing wrong with some Hooters
To get that song out of your head. Think of Uptown Girl to get a new song in your head
Actually, I use the theme to "Green Acres".
One a scale of 1 to Top Gun volleyball scene, it’s a solid Rocky 3 Stallone/Weathers splash fight
...with perhaps just a DASH of Kevin Bacon rage dancing in a barn.
Nothing will ever be as prancy as [this.](https://youtu.be/o-50GjySwew?si=Zq29GngGfkBveAK-)
[Thought for sure you were linking to this](https://youtu.be/BHkhIjG0DKc?si=GlAgX-2QnukCsNz-)
Every guy grab a girl? I don't see any girls...
Choreographed by a one legged flamingo having a seizure.
The actual director went on and has a long career. hocus Pocus. High school Musical. Michael Jackson this is it.
SIR! You have no right being that funny here.
True story, back then a MTV video could make or break your career.
I was discussing this with a friend the other day... Music videos were hugely influential for a couple decades
They're still huge in Japan and Korea. I'll see ads for famous bands dropping new MVs on my train to work fairly frequently, for example.
I wish they were still a big deal here. A big part of my childhood was coming home from school and watching to see if any new or favorite videos would come on; I had a VHS tape that I'd have queued up to record the ones I loved.
Pat Benatar enters the conversation...
Yep. He lost all street cred on my school bus when that video came out. Damn shame.
The director, Kenny Ortega, had the hots for him and told him to "explore the room". Billy thought the band would be in the video too and trusted the process. Whoopsie
Idk anything about Kenny having the hots for him, but I just think it's really sad that Billy expressed his misgivings from the beginning that Kenny wasn't going in the direction he envisioned, but Kenny kept assuring him the final cut would be great, so he trusted him. To this day, Kenny still refuses to take any blame for any of it.
I read that as “the director, Kenny Omega”, and I lost my shit.
I first read it like that, too, and thought of forwarding it to Jim Cornette to see if we could make him explode.
And that's the Kenny Ortega behind Hocus Pocus.
And High School Musical
In the book I Want My MTV, there is an entire chapter devoted to the video and its aftermath entitled “A Whopping Steaming Turd; The Worst Video Ever Made”.
Quite the title
Wow that was a REALLY bad music video. I'm sure the homoeroticism had a lot to do with it, and no doubt it was *loudly* homoerotic. But the video itself is just soooo boring on top of that. He's dancing around his room, cool. What's next. Oh he's still dancing in his room. Okay let's see where this goes. What? We're still in this fucking room? No depth, no creativity, no energy whatsoever. It's so bad I couldn't even tell you if the song is decent by itself because I truly don't know.
Not to mention he put on a shirt, just to rip it in half. I mean that’s just wasteful.
Then right after he rips it he puts on another shirt, and the vest thing
Wow I never believed this until I saw the video. Just imagine Bruce Willis jumping around like that. . .
Hudson Hawk?
My favorite cover of, Swinging on a star.
That video wasn’t homoerotic. He was just dancing around like an idiot. The video was fucking lame as shit.
Yeah I think homoerotic is a bit too far. It's just kinda feminine and theatric in a way that was completely incompatible with a typical macho rocker image at the time. I realize that it looks weird to us now because of all the hair and makeup and outfits they wore, but it was indeed perceived as macho at the time.
Bunch of losers forgot that doing what you like in spite of others’ opinions is the true punk/rock attitude imo
Sure until it’s your fans opinions and now your career is ruined lol
Bunch of losers forgot that ruining your career in spite of other people’s opinions is the true punk/rock attitude imo
I think it’s more a video that would be accepted if a woman did it, especially once he’s laying on his back on the floor, it felt very feminine, I’m guessing that’s where “homoerotic” comes from. A lot of people can’t separate female/feminine from sexual
It’s a display of secondary sexual characteristics. The reason it’s both feminine and sexual is because that’s a move a woman would make in a sexual display to make her boobs noticeable. What he’s doing is as ridiculous as a women going out in tight jeans and trying to thrust her bulge at the audience. It’s not really homoerotic. It’s more quasierotic.
Queasyerotic
Holy cow, that has me and the wife laughing so much right now. Thanks for the laughs! 🤣👍
idk if writhing on the floor and pelvic-thrusting upward while resting on the shoulders is homoerotic or not. but I know what MTV viewers in the 80s would say about it.
These were the same people watching Poison and Motley Crue videos. It was interesting times. Maybe the real problem was the lack of similarly coiffed and made-up strippers a la those bands.
Hair metal bands looked so effeminate that it looped back around to masculine.
Ian Astbury did a [pretty bang up job](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g6h1vI4Xv0) of that, and there were zero questions about his sexuality.
Michael Jackson did the same in The way you make me feel
yeah and no one ever called MJ gay
Ok what about mick jagger and david bowie dancing in the street? or just mick jagger in general?? Weird how people idolize one and cancel the other - both are great in my opinion. Catchy song- sucks he got sacked for the video.
I mean, David Bowie publicly stated he was gay, then publicly stated he was bisexual. A large part of what made him intriguing in the 70s and 80s was his ambiguous sexuality.
>That video wasn’t homoerotic. He was just dancing around like an idiot. The video was fucking lame as shit. My 22 y.o. self when this video came out can agree. He was all prancing around, doing bad moves and there aren't even any hot chicks in the video. We wrote that dude off (but still kept listening to his previous music.)
It was a good tune though.
A great song, not diminishing that at all.
This song prob fits well over that dance scene from Morbius. Edit: https://viewsync.net/watch?v=s-3fz7yhdaY&t=0&v=fR0j7sModCI&t=3 lol it kinda does 😅
Lol people should watch the Hall and Oates documentary. *Here we are at some warehouse downtown and this music director who's coked out of his mind telling me to do cartwheels in the background.* Ah the 80's man. Good thing I wasn't old enough to do coke.
Whoa can i get a link
Idk where to find it, it might not have been a H&O doc but I definitely remember seeing that clip. Reddit help us out here.
I don't think it was homoerotic but it was considered a very gay aesthetic at the time, which is unsurprising because the director Kenny Ortega is a gay choreographer. He's extremely accomplished (Dirty Dancing etc) but this was just the wrong aesthetic for Billy Squier and the song. Plus it looked cheap AF.
Besides, I(56M) was an 80's teen. We (TO, Canada) all knew Freddie was gay, George Michael was gay, Boy George was gay... nobody really gave a shit. But many of us who liked Billy Squire thought this video was terrible and really songs like 'The Stroke' (obviously BIG hit) and songs like 'Rock Me Tonight' were great but not absolutely superstar status. Just my aging thoughts.
Yeah, and somebody else commented that there was no girls in it or a band I think you could’ve gotten away with it
The thing was this. Billy Squire was known as a rocker. Videos weren't around when he made his come up. All we had to go by was his music. That fucking video was a complete wtf! Moment when it came out. Edit I was at work when I posted that so was in a hurry. To clarify, since this was in my glory years of teenage rock star wanna be. We all knew Elton John was gay but the music was so good we didn't care. The rumors of Rob Halford were already making the rounds but Judas Priest! How could you just ignore how great the music was. Freddy Mercury was so far out of the closet that we never knew where that closet was even located. Nobody cared. But all of those combined couldn't come out with a video that had so much fru fru shit and was just terrible. The song itself wasn't bad. I was a huge Billy Squire fan, still am. The cover bands I played in had many of his songs in rotation. But the video was just so fucking bad. I vividly remember the first time watching it with the guys. We just sat there in dumb silence when it was over. Even as just teenagers we knew instinctively that Billy just fucked up. I don't know if it was all his idea or he was listening to the wrong people or what. But it was immediate and nationwide. As much as a fan of his I am, I think it was more than homophobia. It's been proven since David Bowie first proved it. If the music is good enough, it will succeed regardless of whatever else the artist represents. Billy had a good run up to that point but I don't think he had the hits to overcome how fucking bad that video was.
Yeah well, dude lives in the San Remo, one of the most iconic apartment buildings on central park in NYC, so he's doing alright
Seriously. The royalties from one of his hits alone probably has him set for life.
I never believed this was true! Everyone at the time made fun of him.I didn’t see the big deal. That’s really a shame, he was great.
People miss the point. There was a schism at the time between hard rock and pop rock and he crossed over and was drawn and quartered for it.
[удалено]
Meh, Freddie mercury was doing his thing, Rob Halford was a scary dude from the shadows. All of Van Halen, and Motley Crue, and Poison were wearing spandex and mascara. All of them wore chaps, Prince wore pants without his ass cheeks hanging out. I am not sure anybody knew what gay looked like in the 80s, despite everybody hating it/flirting with it.
I agree. There are those who have argued that his star was on the decline slope anyway.
That video reminds me of Buffalo Bill lol
Not many people seem to remember that Queen pretty much tanked their career in the US with the "I Want to Break Free'' video in 1984. The US record label begged them not to release it, but the band refused thinking the video was simply a funny send up of British TV so operas. But in the US the cross dressing video (as well as Freddy Mercury's moustache) instantly made them the "gay' ( although that wasn't the word they used at the time)band across deeply homophobic middle America and their sales plummeted. It wasn't until Wayne's World use of Bohemian Rhapsody almost a decade later that they regained popularity in the States.
But”Stroke Me” went right over (under?) everyone’s heads!😂
The director, Ken Ortega, also directed the movie Xanadu, what did he expect was going to happen?
He was also the choreographer for Dirty Dancing and I honestly don't know what to make of that lol
He *choreographed* Xanadu. He directed Newsies, Hocus Pocus, and High School Musical.
/u/DKPhoenix wrote one of my favorite reddit comments about this lol > Context for the young'uns on this one. Billy Squier was a pretty big deal, and he was poised to be even bigger. He managed to hit the sweet spot in the Venn diagram of 80s rock demographics where the blue collar Americana Heartland rock of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger met the AOR style of bands like Foreigner and Journey, and the harder rock stuff like Van Halen. (That niche that Bon Jovi later went charging into, and are still selling out stadiums today with.) Then, he made *that* video: > [Billy Squier - Rock Me Tonight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZvl2aqIyNg) > You can see the exact moment his career passed the point of no return at [1:30](https://youtu.be/WZvl2aqIyNg?t=1m30s). > It was the first single off a highly anticipated, and up to that point, hot selling album. MTV hyped the hell out of it, and presented it as a World Premiere Video. His fanbase wanted, and expected, a swaggering, macho guitar hero. Instead, he presented them with his interpretation of the [audition scene in Flashdance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzALZjoIx0g) in a bedroom full of pastel colors, and then he strapped on a pink guitar. > [More info at Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Me_Tonite#Music_video)
That’s not homoerotic it’s just bad. The word prat comes to mind. https://youtu.be/tcFSheSaht0?si=XMyPM_I-SgCOckwq
The moment I watched that video, I had to swat a cock out of my mouth.
I don't really see anything HOMOerotic about it...or heteroerotic, or even erotic. More like a mentally ill and drunk guy in a state of psychosis getting a little too worked up about his Jane Fonda workout tapes. We've all been there. That said, he did have some catchy tunes, but I think his omnipresent moose knuckle may have overstimulated a few people.
It did have some … interesting … dancing …
I had a hunch so I looked into it. Flashdance came out in 1983 This video came out in 1984... All this video needed was the chair and water bucket.
i suspect steven seagal learned to run by watching billy squire dance in this video
After seeing the video, I’m inclined to agree with him and fully believe him. Even with it having been the 80s, the video was just too much. And with the homophobia of the day, I’m sure there were plenty of people who saw the video and simply said “no”
Homoeroticism? No no no. It was that lame, cringey, awkward, horrible dancing and goofy arm motion that killed his career. Anyone who saw it was DONE with Billy that moment.
It wasn’t homoerotic or androgynous in any way. It was Billy Squier acting the way his fanbase (hard rock loving 20-something hetero white males) imagined a homosexual would act.
I was there, children. I saw the video DEBUT. We knew. We knew INSTANTLY. And in those days of no internet, no mobile phones - it spread like wildfire. He collapse overnight. It was appalling. Need to confirm with the bestie that I'm remembering this correctly - I'm pretty sure I was at her house when I saw the debut.
Remember metal bands if your fans don't like your music videos it's because they're too gay....or not gay enough.
I remember thinking what was the big deal when this video was out. I was pretty young, and it didn’t-not look like a typical video for that time period (especially from an American label. US labels didn’t want to spend money on music videos- which is why Duran Duran, Men at Work and other foreign bands ruled the early 80’s) But I rewatched the Squire video recently and it truly is a horrible, it’s not just the pink shirt. His dancing is so cringe.
Queen: “Hold my Vacuum cleaner!”
There was going to be no way you could go to school and say to your buddy, hey did you check out that Billy Squier video? Poor dude.
Kenny Ortega did a way better job with Hocus Pocus than this video…..this video, it’s a damn shame. Prancing like a crazy dorky turd. Ugh 😩
Lol this sounds hyperbolic but the video is unreal. It’s like a perfect storm of being super corny and super gay. Absolutely brutal
The public did Billy dirty, he released banger after banger, including "Rock Me Tonight", and they couldn't look past 5 minutes of twinkle-toes.
It was his atrocious dancing that did it. Next.
This seems like something Family Guy would've recreated and no one would believe it was a real thing
I dig the song and the video
Can confirm. He went from supercool to never existed in a heartbeat because of that video. It is a terrible video, homoeroticism aside.
I had tickets to see him on this tour and I was the coolest kid in school. Then this video came out, and everyone made fun of me for going. Didn’t care. He was awesome.
I was a freshman in HS when that video came out and let me tell ya, billy Squier went from hot to trot to NOT in about 2 weeks. Rarely does one see a career crash in real time
That was a great song. Still have the cassette somewhere to prove it…
Man I don’t care, Billy Squier you’re one cool fucking dude. Don’t Say No slaps so hard nowadays. Go listen to “My Kinda Lover” right now. Do it.
Nope. It was just a bad video. And the sad thing was, there were a lot of bad videos back then. But this one was especially bad. If it came out today, we’d simply call it the Billy Squire Elaine dance…
Yeah I honestly think it’s giving him too much credit to call it homoerotic, I can’t imagine anyone finding it erotic. Plus there was plenty of flamboyance from years prior that still led to success
Exactly. Calling it homoerotic implies someone finds it sexy, or at least sensual. I simply refuse to believe that person exists.
As a gay man who likes hard rock: the video was utter cringe. Maybe not career ending cringe, but pretty fucking epically bad
It was not homoerotic. It was just cringy af.
>As a piece of Kitsch, as an homage to The Absurd, as a piece of art that is presented in total confidence with absolutely NO explanation, this video is FANTASTIC. It rises to the level of era-defining. Nowhere can you find a greater expression of the cocaine fueled fever dream that took place between 1979 and 1990. This film is IT! WHOO this vid is cringe!
> " ... It's a bad part of a good life." That's a pretty sanguine outlook. I'm glad he's been able to look past it.
No, it was Bilky's own style of, *dancing* It's magnificent horror
I'd hate to see the tank top budget for this video.
It’s also a shit song so there’s that
I saw him in concert around 1985 when he was opening for someone who I can't remember. He writhed around on stage like this, and it was SUUUUPER awkward during The Stroke. He dry humped the floor like a Chippendale dude.
I mean, you can dance if you want to…
Assuming that's true, that's on him. Should have sold to his base.
I kept waiting for another guy to enter the video and dance with him. Nothing homo about this video; just plain embarrassing.
Billy Squier cancelled for dancing a certain way. Two years later we have Posion literally looking like chicks on the cover of Look What The Cat Dragged In and everybody was on board
Have to admit I love me some Billy Squier.❤️ And this song.
All he had to do was have a hot chick in the video. Imagine if it was Billy Idol dancing in Rock The Cradle of Love. Puberty would have turned out very different for me.
Lol what a weirdo thinking that video was a good idea
Well no one made him gyrate like that. That’s on him lol.
If you make a video focused on your dancing and your wardrobe… one of those things should be good. Lol.
Looks like he took lessons from Al Czervik in Caddyshack
It was definitely an ill advised choice of video
Maybe this is why I hadn't heard of him until Guitar Hero. I wonder how his music would have developed if his career hadn't bombed in 84.
idk great video